100 Hours of Practice & Underwhelming

[cheechi]

@JulienneFrankus just reminded me of a great idea.



[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]. Ought to keep you busy for a while. I still can't play it full speed.

 

[Eminor3rd]

Join a band

 

[tbz]

stop practicing scales and all that baloney immediately. go join 4 bands off craigslist and start rehearsing and writing music and jamming with them.

then practice along with recordings of bass heros of yours copping licks and learning how to groove, rock, etc.

you can do the noodly scale stuff later

That is literally the worst advice I've seen.

You don't get paid to gig much. If you do there's no chance you'd get paid to gig much in LA, Nashville or NY.

There's nothing "noodly" about knowing scale tones.

Your own playing is a good example of why it's good to have more knowledge.



Fairly boring man, this seems like a jam kinda tune and you don't do anything vaguely interesting. I've stretched further on jam night with people I've never played with...much less a set band I've rehearsed with.

 

[JulienneFrankus]

You need to learn to enjoy practicing tedious exercises for at least 2 hour stretches at a time...To be honest I never got anywhere with my bass playing until I started forcing myself to practice the same way a person would discipline themselves to do exercise daily.
It's supposed to be tedious. 100 hours of practice? That's two weeks of practice, not half a year, so try to change you're attitude towards improving

 

[gidbass]

I am sure it has been said, but play with others. To me, that is the fun part. Once you are good enough, you play for others, and that is a real blast!

Good Luck!

 

[MalcolmAmos]

I knew that was going to be the first reply

I want to keep having fun and if someone asks me if I want to play along with them I want to be able to. Last weekend at my friend's house he asked if I wanted to play and I declined cuz I didn't know what to do.

We will not get into how long ago this happened, but it was back in my rhythm guitar days. Playing with friends in the garage just jamming. A rhythm guitar saw that I was hesitating, so he said to me; "It's in D, grab a blues progression, and hang on".

I happened to know how a D blues progression would play out so I swallowed twice and started strumming a 12 bar blues progression to his beat. Got by just fine....

Just stay in key, it's not rocket science. Never turn down a chance to play with real people. Why would I say that? Because if they see you need help, guess what; they will help.

No really I have never seen any one get bent out of shape with a newbey, if he/she was trying. They will bend over backward to help you.

Jump in and have fun.

 

[Bassngtr]

"...but he's familiar with TB, thinks it's great and has friends here..." Well if that doesn't make him suspect, nothing will!!

A lot of good info here -I'll add what worked for me when I bought a bass and started playing at 34 without ever taking a lesson:

1. LISTEN!! A lot! As you are already doing, listen closely to tons of songs in various genres and listen for the bass...starting to play bass completely changed how I listened to and examined music, in a GOOD way.
2. Learn the fretboard. Did not see this one mentioned above. I played guitar for many years and never felt the need to learn which fret was which note - just learned chords. For bass it is essential. And liberating. Along with knowing the major and minor scale patterns in all positions, and the constant relationship of note positions all over the fretboard. Knowing the fretboard (even just the first 5 to 7 frets to start) will help you immensely when you play with others, and reading basic chord charts.
3. Play with others as often as possible. I played guitar by myself for many years, disregarding timing in an effort to perfectly finger every chord. I learned more, and progressed more, in my playing in the first 30 minutes playing with other people, because I had to forego perfect fingering to keep playing along with them - the song kept going. It was the first time I ever changed chords in proper time, even though my fingering was a mess that first time. COMPLETELY changed my playing approach for the better.
4. Over time you will learn some of what I call "go-to" moves - patterns that (almost) always work to embellish a line.

All the best to you!

 

[Rev J]

Right now I'm taking a break from the band thing. I have a bunch of insecurities I'm working through. One of them is an ex who played guitar who was always down on me for playing "pretty". It kind of killed melody in my songwriting to the point of near writers block in that one area. My current solution is to spend about an hour a day working through some Janek Gwizdala stuff.

I generally practice about 3 or 4 hours a day 3 or 4 days a week. I'll spend about 15 minutes on a musical example and move on. But I can see solid improvement.

Not that it has much to do with the op but maybe it will help put his situation into perspective.

C/S,
Rev J

 

[ESPweasel]

That is literally the worst advice I've seen.



Fairly boring man, this seems like a jam kinda tune and you don't do anything vaguely interesting. I've stretched further on jam night with people I've never played with...much less a set band I've rehearsed with.

I got the joke...

That's not boring. Thanks

You need to learn to enjoy practicing tedious exercises for at least 2 hour stretches at a time...To be honest I never got anywhere with my bass playing until I started forcing myself to practice the same way a person would discipline themselves to do exercise daily.
It's supposed to be tedious. 100 hours of practice? That's two weeks of practice, not half a year, so try to change you're attitude towards improving

Um yeah. No, that's not my goal. Maybe you have 2 free hours a night to practice. I don't. I also have other hobbies and interests.

I do enjoy practicing though.

 

[cheechi]

At the risk of whatever judgement comes my way, Rocksmith or similar is my go to if I'm not jamming. Practicing is less work if I can play scales with video games.

 

[tbz]

I got the joke...

Based on his playing I can't concur it was a joke.

You'll see advice like that here constantly. There's a lot of people that are defensive about not knowing theory and compensate by giving bad advice on the forum.

So, hopefully it was a joke?

 

[ESPweasel]

Based on his playing I can't concur it was a joke.

You'll see advice like that here constantly. There's a lot of people that are defensive about not knowing theory and compensate by giving bad advice on the forum.

So, hopefully it was a joke?

Ha! That's scary. I've been a forum mod for 14 years. I can usually spot troll from a mile away and totally and completely thought he was joking.

 

[tbz]

Ha! That's scary. I've been a forum mod for 14 years. I can usually spot troll from a mile away and totally and completely thought he was joking.

Hopefully he was and I'm just a dick lol.

 

[Rev J]

To me people who think learning to read music or theory will hurt their playing is like saying learning grammar and how to read and write will mess up their ability to speak and communicate.

C/S,
Rev J

 

[obimark]

Wow--- 100 hours is nothing- I have played for 1000s and still have much to learn.

One suggestion, learn whole songs, accurately until you can play them with no music. Led Zep, Rush, etc...

 

[Mushroo]

That example made me laugh! Pretty funny.

You'd be amazed what % of players can't play that "easy/funny" example in all 12 keys with good time and feel.

 

[Jeff Bonny]

It's supposed to be tedious.

No practice is NOT supposed to be tedious. Bored practice is absolutely worthless and you should never ever do it......NEVER........EVER. Since ten minutes of focused practice is really about all a lot of beginners can do anyway it's actually how most players make real progress. A lot of what people call "practice" is masturbation and that definitely includes playing anything that's become "tedious". People who can practice focused for longer periods have taken years to learn to effectively string together those ten minute segments.

That said I was serious as a mother ****** about having 9900 hours left to do. If the idea of playing bass hasn't captured enough of your attention that you can't do at least an hour a day just stick with your "other hobbies and interests". The world doesn't need to be cringing listening to another bass player who can't count to four or hit 1 on the downbeat.

 

[Rev J]

I spend a LOT of time listening to music.....My problem is that I like an enormous amount of what I listen to and when asked what I'd like to learn I go completely blank and am reduced to blurting "EVERYTHING!"

That's when the cat doesn't crap in your headphones ;-)

C/S,
Rev J

 

[Jamvan]

I just did some metrics on my band's current playlist in iTunes. Based on number of plays and duration of songs over the past 13 months, I've put 368 hours into 57 songs, not counting the number of times we've played it live or I've played them without the backing music. That's learning, practicing, studying, etc. So, averaging about an hour a day for just the songs. This doesn't count all the other playing/learning I do with online lessons, general practice and other tomfoolery. Again, that's having played off and on for nearly 20 years. Keep working at it.

 

[chaosMK]

I think once you know the principles of how to produce a sound and more a less properly hold the instrument and all that, like technique basics, then you can just roll from there. Strike some notes, play around with the sound of the instrument, discover a few of your own licks, figure out how to play them in a way that sounds cool to you. If your teacher has given you exercises feel free to expand on them or create your own variations. Some people like to take the path of replicating what other people do- that's great. Dont be afraid to explore your own expression with the instrument.