plateau

[daverrdog]

Hi ray. I'm a newbe to both the bass guitar and any forum. Since starting bass about a year ago.I belive I found my calling or at least my passion. Im learning through those DVDs with books a few lessons and daily practice. My passion has not diminished but my bass skills have not increased in the past 6 months. I understand I'm a complete beginner but need some practice ideas. Thanks for any ideas in advance

[rayriendeau]

My advice is to find a credible teacher that can give you concepts and ideas you can develop and ultimately learn about how music works and how that transfers to bass. Your goals should be to obtain and understand the elements of music and how it all applies to bass.
A good teacher will also see what areas you need work in and give you specific things to work on to accomplish your goals. Steer away from teachers that just want to show you songs or just teach "random" things without any real understanding of why, where and how something works.
I cannot say enough about getting with a good teacher that can help you obtain your goals.
I also would recommend playing with as many people as you can. I've even told students to post an ad in your local area looking for other players (with your skill level or better) to get together to jam. Interaction with other musicians (even other bass players) is a great source for learning and sharing info.
Lastly, let me just talk about "plateaus" for a moment. This is a big part of any journey in music and even other things like sports, martial arts, etc.
In the beginning of learning anything we see results almost every day, as time progresses we see these "advancements" farther and farther away with "plateaus", time periods where it seems we are not moving forward. This is just the natural process of learning.
There is a book I HIGHLY recommend regarding this subject in detail. It is "MASTERY - The Keys To Success And Long-Term Fulfillment" by George Leonard.
I'm glad you used words like "passion" and "your calling" when describing playing bass. This tells me that you should be able to look at practicing/learning/discovery as a ongoing process that is a benefit of music and not something that seems like work or you don't look forward to.

[NickInMesa]

MY lessons have always been on technique and theory and that's how I progressed. As Ray says, it's important to make sure you will actually learn something.

As far as learning songs, that's something you can do on your own, and it's actually not a bad thing at all, on the contrary.

With all the tools of today, such as guitar pro and others, you really don't need someone to teach you a song.

My teachers in junior and high school would spend more time teaching us to play songs, because they have to show results by having the band play, but the one positive point was that I learned to read music (somewhat).

When you concentrate on your instrument and have one on one lessons, learning songs is a waste of time.