O.N.N.B. (since 2022)

Friday, 5th December 2025

Let's move on to item 11 on my rapture list, which is to play the bass guitar.

I first became fascinated with its sound when it was the main instrument being used in Queen's "Another One Bite The Dust", released in 1980.  Other great retro songs with a very distinctive and catchy bassline include Shalamar's "There It Is", Wax's "Bridge to Your Heart", Olivia Newton-John's "Magic", Whispers' "It's a Love Thing" and Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do, I Do it For You."

About 15 years ago, I actually bought a 2nd-hand Cort bass guitar for my daughter, and she played it occasionally at her Youth Service as well as at my dad's 80th birthday party.  When she stopped using it in recent years, coupled with me having much more spare time on my hands, I decided to try it out sometime in late 2022 and have never looked back. 

When I left the corporate world, my wife's mom gave me the term of endearment "Oi Nang" (which is Teochew for "闲人" ie. a person who has a lot of free time).  I was just embarking as a newbie ("noob") bass guitarist.

Hence, this gave me the inspiration to create the Instagram handle ONNB (Oi Nang Noob Bassist) -- a play on the initials KNNB -- to upload reels of songs I have attempted playing.

To date, I have more than 70 songs in my repertoire.  You can check them out here:

https://www.instagram.com/oinangnoobbassist/

My CG leader Vivien See so kindly invited me to join our CG worship team.  Sometime this year, I bought a bass ukulele and a mini-amplifier (as shown on the right).  Both are very portable, so I can take them along with me when I play the bass at our CG meetings.

At home however, I continue to play the full-length Cort bass connected to a proper Yamaha bass amplifier (as shown below) as it produces a richer and more solid output.

The bass has been called "the lazy man's guitar" and rightly so because one hardly works up a sweat when playing it.

At the moment, I am still very much a learner, preferring songs with a slower tempo and which require strings to be played singly.  My favourites are songs from New Creation Worship and Hillsong Worship.

Thus far, the toughest songs I have tried playing are Parachute Band's "All The Earth" and 岳雷's "乡间男孩" because of the constant changing of chords.

You can check out my attempts to play those 2 songs here:

All The Earth: 
https://www.instagram.com/reels/CnZSdiWrk6D/

乡间男孩: 
https://www.instagram.com/reels/C5VpnwMvPY3/