Utterly Bored!!

[El Bajo]

I am really struggling for motivation and inspiration at the moment. I play in 2 bands, one is a progrock covers band which is taking alot of my time up learning the songs set by the others. The other members are excellent musicians and I am the weakest link in the band. This means having to spend most of my practice learning these songs.

The other band is brand new and I am supposed to be the driving force but when it comes down to it I'm lost, frustrated, dont know where to start and after all these complicated bass lines and music that I like I just find an empty hole when it comes to improvising. I just feel I have completely learnt the bass the wrong way and jumped into the deep end with nothing to show for it.

When I jam byself I end up thrashing around scales at break neck speeds but it all sounds the same and have pretty similar finger movements.

Can anybody reccomend a good book that will take me away from this style. A good Blues book maybe or jazz. Anything. And it has to be tab as I work long hours, have a girlfriend and only get about an hour practice maybe four days a week.

Either that or has anybody got any thoughts on good practice regimes?

PLeas help as I love my bass and I love playing Im just fed up.

[BassChuck]

Learn to play a piece of music that is totally different from anything that you already. Jazz, country, blues... or get a recording of some orchestra music and play along to that.

anything to break out of the rut.

If you don't know how to read music, learn that.