Simple examples of your evolution as a player (for experienced players)

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

Hi everybody.

Yesterday I was recalling my own experience and thought it would be cool to ask fellow TBers about this: Of course, everybody who's committed to his/her instrument has a logical improvement, but can you name some bass parts that made you sweat (because of nervousness) when you started gigging (nobody gets nervous when practicing alone in the bedroom, right?) and now are piece O'cake for you? (The simpler the better). I want to share three examples, all of them taken from the tropical music repertoire since I started playing that music exclusively:

- Merengue duo (keyboard-bass). I really struggled with this at the time (1987) and never played it well while it was part of the band's then current repertoire.

- Salsa (another keyboard-bass duo). The whole part wasn't that difficult, but the triplets really made me nervous and never sounded clean back then.

- Caribbean. I can't find an mp3 recording of this, so here's in standard notation:



It would have been really easy for me if I had to slide just one note, but playing that fifth, sliding both notes and making them sound loud, clear and on time when reaching the octave without plucking them again (and totally exposed) was a real nightmare for me.

Really simple stuff for experienced players, for sure. But again, there was a time when it wasn't that easy. Any similar situations/examples? Thank you in advance for your input!

[bassybill]

One of the things that caught me out on early gigs was playing from chord symbols, especially four in the bar walking stuff. I just didn't know how to do it and was 100 times more comfortable playing from dots. The main thing thing that helped me sort this out was a bit of a top up theory wise and a lot of listening to other players, and the realisation that there's a lot more to doing this well than just playing chord tones (especially the chromatic aspects of lots of really good lines).

[Jimmy Bones]

Actually, my big epiphany came a couple days ago when the concept of chord creation actually sunk into my head.

[Ubersheist]

YYZ by Rush. Now, I can.. Oh wait.... Never mind.

Bonin' In the Bone Yard, by Fishbone.. wait... I still can't play that one, either... [/bad jokes]

It took me a long while to get Meshell N'deggiocello's "Diggin' You like an Old Soul Record." It's not technical, but I never got the timing down, especially the breakdown. that was about 10 years ago, and I had already been playing for about 10 years...

[CapnSev]

I can do some pretty complicated tunes, but when my cover band does Cult of Personality, I choke. Every time.

I don't know if it's some kind of mental block or something, but I really suck at that song.