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| Hey Willis, I am 16, and I have been playing a 4-string fretless Ibanez for about a year now. You are one of my four main influences, along with Jimmy Haslip, Rocco Prestia, and Jaco Pastorius. I am not very good at anything scholastic-y or business-y, but I CAN play the fretless bass guitar. My dad is a musician. Should I follow his footsteps and go professional? Do you have any other helpful advice for me? Anything would be highly useful and greatly appreciated. Thank you, Miles |
Hey Miles,
It sounds like you have some good things going for you – first of all a cool first name, plus some great influences 😉 I’m sure you can list your dad as an influence unless your at that rebellious stage like every teenager goes through – rejecting all things related to parents – If it hasn’t happened yet, it’s still likely.
IMHO I think you’re too young to make the kind of pronouncements and judgments about yourself that you make. Of course I’m reading between the lines here, but you say that you’re not good at scholastic or business things. Unless there a lot of factors that I’m missing (bad school system, bad teachers, subtle undiagnosed learning disabilities) it seems like you’re asking for some approval to blow off the educational opportunities that are currently in front of you. Since I don’t know your situation first hand, it’s possible that yours is a legitimate request so I’m not just going to repeat to you the tired old line of “stay in school”. But, one of the most important attitudes that I’ve kept about life is this – if I ever stop learning – I’m dead, finished. I dropped out of university when I realized that two and a half more years of classical upright bowing lessons in order to get a “teaching” degree was not how I wanted to spend my immediate future. I was 23, and didn’t have any illusion of “going pro” – the next thing I did was join a top-40 band in order to make enough money to buy a ’65 Jazz bass in order to make it fretless . . . etc. I’m not going to bore you with the rest of my bio, but one thing for sure is that I kept making decisions based on the opportunities to improve, learn and get better – it just wasn’t in a structured school environment anymore.
Unless you’re some kind of super-gifted-prodigy-genius, a year of playing fretless doesn’t really qualify you to be able to make a decision about going pro. Playing bass well, and especially fretless, just isn’t enough anymore. There’s soooo much to learn (and I’m speaking for myself, too) about new ways to make music, write music, package music, sell yourself, sell a band, market yourself, start your own record label, incorporate other media elements, etc. And these are all changing super fast. You need to be a voracious learner of everything, and it needs continuous – it’s never finished.
The analog instrument that you and I play is over 50 years old and hasn’t changed that much. It’s been refined a lot and it’s still capable of expressing a lot but really, it’s a dinosaur and its days are numbered. It’s nothing compared to the instruments that are just around the corner (think iPhone with a touch screen the size and length of a fretless fingerboard).
I know It sounds corny – but if you make it your decision to become a “professional learner”, then go pro as soon as you want.
best of luck,
GW
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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