During a seven day period recently in my home of Lincoln, Nebraska, I was fortunate enough to have twelve gigs, all in town with no traveling, no motels, and no drive-through curly fries required. That's three music genres, three premier venues (the legendary Zoo Bar blues club, Duffy's, a regional showcase for the best in original and indie rock, the Haymarket Theatre, an adventurous, privately run home of great musical theater), and two instruments.

Not one P bass and one fretless. Not one five string and one four string. Not one upright and one electric.

It was one electric bass and one electric guitar. Four dates on bass, eight on guitar.

If you want to enhance your playing schedule, consider opening up your availability as both a bassist and as a guitarist. But don't be fooled into thinking they are the same instrument. The guitar isn't a bass an octave higher with two more strings. It is, and it isn't. Neither is the bass a guitar minus a couple of strings.

The key to being able to pull off a sequence of gigs, or even an occasional gig interchanging between bass and guitar and back again is making the proper adjustments. Not just those to your amp, EQ settings, and shoulder strap length, but real mental and attitude adjustments.

Of course the first step is to be sure you are a competent player on the level required to cover the needs of the dates you might be playing. But just because you are proficient enough technically to play different gigs on different instruments, it doesn't mean you are going to come off sounding good and automatically playing successfully and satisfactorily to the band leader or music director's liking. For your own artistic and professional advancement, and for the better enjoyment of the audiences you play for, you must be sure to make the right adjustments.

The adjustments you need to make fall into three categories. They are attitude, perspective, and role.

Attitude adjustment sounds like a phrase a supervisor might use with a disgruntled assembly line worker. To the bassist playing guitar or guitarist filling in on bass the term is every bit as important. Before playing the first bar of the first song, you must shift your thinking about the musical approach you are going to take. Envision what needs to be done from the perspective of the instrument you are playing.

This attitude shift is no different than what would happen if, when playing bass on two different days, you went from say a three piece free jazz date to a classic country cover band. Everything you played would change. Your choice and quantity of notes, the scales, arpeggios, and chord extensions you use, the way you sustain and present each note, the rhythmic figures available, your tone and volume settings, and everything else. The same elements must be considered when going from guitar to bass or bass to guitar, even when playing the same genre of music.

A practical exercise to help this process is to run through your normal warm up routine on each instrument. Chromatic scales, thirds, modes, riffs, or whatever standard procedure you use is fine. Set the metronome at a slow or moderate speed and run through the exercises as quarter notes on the bass. Then, switch to guitar and do the exact same exercises as sixteenth notes. In other words, play every warm up pattern on guitar exactly four times faster than the bass. It doesn't have to be at breakneck speeds. A good starting place for the metronome would to set the bass quarter pulse at 60.

Besides orienting your hand to the significant differences of feel between the bass and the guitar, this exercise can help you get accustomed to the fundamental differences between what you play and how you play it when switching. As a bassist doubling on guitar, you can't let the habit of holding notes long and building a foundation take away from the melodic role you have as a guitarist. And conversely, the last thing a band wants to hear coming from the bass amp is lead guitar playing. As a guitarist switching to bass, you need to control the urge to play too many notes. Allowing the notes to sustain and resonate requires a conscious decision on your part. A focused warm up routine can help set the mental framework you need for that.

A second adjustment you will need to make when gigging on both guitar and bass is what I would call your perspective. This is how you see and hear yourself in the context of the band, and what you listen to while playing. As a bassist, you must constantly focus on the backbeat, the groove, and the tempo. When I play bass, I am primarily watching and listening to the drummer, not because of some cliché, but because that is where the foundation is made. I concentrate on the bass drum, and where his fills are, and the overall feel and basic groove. When playing with a keyboard player in a musical or jazz gig, I'm watching and listening to their left hand. Only after these groove and tempo issues are resolved on a certain song as my options allow am I free to listen to and complement the melodic impulses of my inner self by playing off the guitar riffs and singer's phrases.

On the other hand, as a guitarist you can be aware of tempo and foundation but not actively listen for it or try to hear it. As long as the bass and drums are solid, you are freer to play with the tempo instead of trying to control it. You can play on top of this rhythmic foundation, and play parts that sometimes are radically different from that.

A guitarist should hear themselves in the mix of a song above everything else, except for the vocals. This doesn't mean volume; a good person running the sound should be able to take care of those balance issues. It means listening to the emotional dynamics of a song at any given point and playing things dynamically, rhythmically, and melodically to enhance that. Your job is to flush out the song by being the frosting on the cake, or more accurately the frilly candy decorations on the frosting. If you are playing a cover tune with signature riffs, they must be played on the money every time. If it is an original tune, you must capture with a riff or a solo the essence of that song.

A guitar player has to listen to the music and the song from this perspective. The guitarist plays melodically and sonically in tandem with the singer as featured performers in the same way that the drummer and bassist must synch up as support for the music.

The third adjustment you need to make is in the understanding of your role in the band. This is an area that encompasses the earlier aspects I've already mentioned, but also everything else. Fitting the role of your instrument in the context of the band or music you are playing is fundamental to how good it comes across. We are talking about the general roles of guitar and bass here, not specific roles in specific styles of music. Those things will always be important playing any instrument in any kind of music.

As a bassist going to guitar, you can't be reluctant to pump up the volume and bring out the punch of your instrument. You have become a featured instrument, and your volume level, tone, and effects should reflect that. You should also be willing to experiment much more on a song by song basis with variations in those tones and effects. Your role is more prominent on guitar and therefore variety and creative use of dynamics is more important.

As a guitarist playing bass, the opposite is true. Stability in tone, volume, and texture is the goal. A less busy, more controlled style is needed. And with some exceptions, the sound and tone settings can remain relatively the same from one song to the next.

Making these adjustments may seem obvious but when playing gigs on both instruments, especially if you have to do that on the same day, you must really put concerted mental effort into these things. It doesn't hurt to go through a mental checklist of the above items before you even play a note. Review the role you have, not just for that specific show and that specific music style but also as a bassist or a guitarist in the general terms listed above. And you should also refer to that checklist when it is needed throughout the night so that it can bring you to a certain place of reference and awareness for the remainder of the gig. For me, this is a real comfort zone, and it makes me feel secure knowing that even when there are chord slips or forgotten cues in my playing, the show's overall feel and presentation will be right.

Getting your chops in order on both bass and guitar, and making the right adjustments, can enhance your career. To paraphrase Woody Allen, being a multi-instrumentalist immediately doubles your chances for a gig on Saturday night. It may help your dating life too, but that's a whole different article.