There've been threads about these in the past, but it's been a few months since one, so I think we've progressed a bit. How are you doing with musical goals you set a while ago?
IIRC, I set goals for:
Learning to site-read
Fretless intonation and technique
Consistency and speed
Theory training
Ear training
As of now, today I started a very strict setup for learning to site-read. I'm going through a Chuck Rainey book that I bought and never used much, and I was cracking through that tonight. I was actually pretty pleasantly surprised -- I don't read nearly as much as I should, but I was doing far better than I ever had. Rhythms were much easier, notes over the top of the ledger were easier, etc. Tomorrow, I'm going another forty pages in the book, as well as finishing learning "I'm Checking Out, Goombye", and learning the intro to "Ain't Got Nothin' But the Blues", two tunes the jazz band leader gave me sheet music for to learn for September. I've also got Jump Jive and Wail, but it's pretty boring -- just walking quarter's. Sounds neat, and it'd be fun to play with the band, but it's not in tomorrow's scheduling. I'm also going to call my bass teacher to see if he has any recs for latin books and a friend/the former bass player for the jazz band to see if he has the sheets for Moondance.
I've spent most of the last two months or so playing my fretless almost exclusively out of my two basses (jamming out on my bro's guitar too), and my intonation is pretty good, and I'm very happy with how my technique has come -- mostly because I spend almost every waking moment either playing it, surfing TB, or playing Battlefield 1942
. I started learning Portait of Tracy with my teacher, which has made my ability to make clear, ringing harmonics right up to about the 2.3 "fret" come a long way. Now, I by no means can play PoT with the kind of speed, consistency, and time that it requires, but it's really helped my technique and helped to inspire my own arrangement of Amazing Grace.
Consistency and speed has come along very nicely -- I cracked out the fretted yesterday and found that my slapping (something I'd barely done for well over two and a half months) was faster, looser, and cleaner than I'd ever done it
. Consistency is very good, I've been working with using my thumb, index, and middle finger to get a really good, consistent tone. Also keeping those nails very, very short
. I'm gonna start doing Gary Willis' 3 Finger Right Hand stuff soon -- I started to do 4 finger spider-walk about a year ago, but let it go because I had more important things to develop.
Ear is coming naturally, I'm not pushing it. Playing guitar has really helped it, and I've been doing a lot of theory with my guitar teacher (bass lessons don't resume until September
) and I'm finding that my ear very much likes the sound of min7 chords. My theory is coming along better, and my modes/chords/keys are really getting along there (and thanks to Pacman for a correction in GI that could've caused a wee bit o' confusion with modes starting september).
In the future, I'd like to develop what I'm doing now, in addition to:
Latin/Afro-Cuban rhythms
Improvisation and soloing over chord changes
Tapping on fretless
Composition, creativity, and writing
Reading (a big one)
EDIT: Yes, I realize that should've been "sight-reading", and "sight-read". However, I am too lazy to edit that out...sooo...yeah, I'm aware. No need to rub in my poor grammar :embarassed: .
