David John Miller

Bass guitarist, Vocalist & Piano Tuner

A Little Bit about Me

    Although I originally began studying piano and drums, I was drawn to Paul McCartney’s bass lines. I learned bass guitar parts from “Meet the Beatles” on my Father’s 4 string Tenor Banjo. Pretty quickly it  dawned on me that I could  tune the banjo strings to EAD and G, lowest 4 strings of the guitar. This made a lot  of sense to my ears. The Bass lines were now much easier to play and I was off and running. About six months later, I was able to swing a Kay Bass guitar and a Silvertone Bassamp at the local Montgomery Wards store in Menlo Park NJ.

After a short time I was able to buy a Gibson EB-0 from the son of one of my paper route customers sometime around 1967.  Included with the bass was the microphone that's in the picture above. It was a Turner Dynamic Microphone. Back in those days all the mics were high impedence and we just plugged into our own amps. I wonder these days, what that sounded like coming through a bass amp with a 15" speaker!

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Well folks, that's how things began.

I hope this bit of a memoir gives you a taste of  the NJ/NY music scene North of Asbury Park

Yes, I still have my Dad's Banjo

     As a young fellow I loved to sing. I really dug Tennessee Ernie Ford.

When I was twelve years old I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I have been hooked on music since that evening.

Dad's Tenor Banjo ... my First Bass

March 1967

That EB-0, along with an ampeg B15-N in 1968 purchased right from the Ampeg factory in Linden put me solidly on the road to a life in Music