Parenting Advice Needed ...

- My son has been playing trombone in the middle school band now for a couple of years and has gotten very good at it.
 
- I’ve always told my kids that they are free to use any of my drum kits and I would support them if they had any interest in the drums (neither go near the drums).
 
- I bought my son a short neck ESP guitar and gave him my Vox practice amp a while ago and he recently started showing some interest in it.
 
Two days ago my son said the words to me that I think every parent dreads:
 
“I know you are going to be mad at me but I want to learn how to play the bass”
 
I simply don’t know what to do … any advice?

Take the E and B string off his ESP...

Have him watch every YouTube video he can find of the Dirty Loops. Their bassist is INCREDIBLE. Might as well show him the journey ahead and then see if he's ready to take a single step.

Is he still under warranty? RMA time!

In the spirit of an earlier discussion, I'm guessing you mean this:
                                    
 
and not this:
                                                                     
 
 
 
Well, the nice thing is that you could be in for some nice father/son bonding if you play together in the same musical situation, helping to create beautiful, well-crafted renditions of tunes in which you both have an interest.
 
Or alternatively, you could come to vicious blows as you scream at each other about rhythmic feel.
 
Either way, you have a ton to which to look forward!
 
But this has a certain sense to it, don't you think? Your son already plays trombone well (and trombone is a noble instrument whose practitioners are next in bountifulness only to MBA recipients and drummers on most unemployment lines. Trombonists are also the subject of numerous humorous anecdotes, often related to their employment status. Google it; you'll catch what I mean). You bought him a guitar (guitarists are probably fourth in terms of population on the aforementioned unemployment lines, although admittedly often faring better in dating scenarios). So, he, being no slouch in the grey matter department, opts for an instrument that pretty much guarantees one a gig as long as one can fog a mirror.
 
Seriously, if he can be reliable and decent at the instrument, he'll probably work. If he doubles on the acoustic, so much better the chances. It could be worse.
 
May I make one suggestion: there are many inexpensive basses out there with necks that will warp badly inside of a year, making it pretty much certain that your son (if he plays one of these) will win an award in the Gnarly Buzz and Indefinite Pitch division of your local "Musicians Most Likely to Make Us Want to Hurl" Contest. Don't buy him one of these instruments! Spend just a little extra and get him a decent instrument, maybe even an older, well-cared-for instrument. 
 
                                        
 
                                       This visual aid is designed to assist in the proper interpretation of the properly realistic dating expectations
                                                                                                   of the average rock band aggregation.
                                                                          Just in case some poor bassist somewhere begins to get his hopes up.

quantumeffect
- My son has been playing trombone in the middle school band now for a couple of years and has gotten very good at it.
 
- I’ve always told my kids that they are free to use any of my drum kits and I would support them if they had any interest in the drums (neither go near the drums).
 
- I bought my son a short neck ESP guitar and gave him my Vox practice amp a while ago and he recently started showing some interest in it.
 
Two days ago my son said the words to me that I think every parent dreads:
 
“I know you are going to be mad at me but I want to learn how to play the bass”
 
I simply don’t know what to do … any advice?

Easy fix.  Force him to pay rent.  He'll either move to freeload on someone else's couch or snap out of it and take up guitar. 

Nice to see your children involved in music. Once they experiment with various instruments, I'm sure they'll find one (or more) that'll truly interest them to spend the time on it (even bass).
 
I think I saw some fish jumping around during that performance.... 

Hi,
 
This is not a fun situation, but from my point of view, there is nothing a parent can really do. As an example, my own mom taunted me one time, by saying that she would pay for my education at UCSB if I studied Portuguese, knowing darn well that I was into Theater and Film, but she didn't care, she wanted a carbon copy of my dad to "continue" the structure of the "star" in the family that made it all possible for any of us.
 
I can understand the parental this and that, but in the end, forcing the kid, is not going to help and all it will do is get the kid into a "forced" process to succeed and eventually, it all gets thrown away, specially if the road is not easy and it takes longer than originally thought, which you and I know, could take a day, or a lifetime!
 
I would sit down, and have a solid talk ... and explain that to learn an instrument, any of them, takes forever, but if he listens to radio, tv, or his iPod, ask him how many horns can he remember and mention in songs, for example ... and he might end up thinking that dad is on his side, but would not want to see him struggle and get nothing for it. The chances of us seeing another Miles, or Dizzy, are next to nil, because the music industry, specially in America, is about money, and those were known, and are known, to not make that much money, which means, you are not going to find gigs a whole lot, and maybe showing up at the local bar and hope that you can jam with jazz folks and make it work? ... good luck, since they are also fighting for their own spot, and giving it away to you, is not an option ... they are the band selected.
 
In the end, any career in the arts is not fun, and more often than not too much happens that is very difficult to deal with, and it gets harder when you turn 18 or 20, and all of a sudden you have a girlfriend and then a child, and you have no steady gig to help pay for it all, and life all of a sudden, has a tendency to kill the music, and only allow most of us to simply do it on the side, hoping that one day we can get our own 15 minutes, and that we're good enough to turn it into 30 minutes so we have a chance to stay there.
 
I don't like to say that it's all a crap shoot, or a lottery win, but it's best if we're honest about that, instead of hopeful and dreamy about it all. This was a very serious concern at UCSB, when the folks in the Advanced Acting program were all being told they would get a "tryout" at the end of the year with professionals, and when you went there, it was 3 sleaze bags, one reading a Penthouse magazine, and the other smoking a cigar, and the third sleeping on his chair ... and you are expecting those folks to "choose" you or anyone else? It was a scam ... plain and simple scam, and every year, some 3 to 4 thousand acting students pay for that ... and then they go back home ... don't call us, we'll call you ... and you have nothing to do other than some local cheap theater that doesn't pay, and only does the same crap as the local high school.
 
The last option, of course, is you get your ass down to ________ boulevard, and scrape and scrap a gig, and somewhere along the way, things might click ... but remind him, that there are hundreds of others trying the same thing, and they are in the same shoes ... simply trying to find a meal and a bed!
 
Good luck ... this is not meant to be a down thing, but it is meant to be a wake up call ... even the "best" don't always make it, regardless of the instrument they play, and the reality is ... you have to know what you are doing and be better than the others, and that is something that no father can teach his son or daughter ... they have to develop that themselves.
 
Make sure your kid knows that ... and the sooner he/she understands that, the better! But you still have to love him/her ... regardless of choice. It's your child, after all!

Let's start with the basics