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Bass in a Year
- Thread starter Mike Saville
- Start date
well, in context means you can't reach a state of enlightenment by holding on to attachments of what it would take to become enlightened, or even being attached to enlightenment itself!
for the thread, it means there's no real way to measure how good you will be in a year. Just be 'one' with your bass and go where it takes you!
for the thread, it means there's no real way to measure how good you will be in a year. Just be 'one' with your bass and go where it takes you!
It's not. IMHO it not mutually exclusive - it's just another way of reflecting notes. If I had to learn to play any of my instruments without tabs, I would have been light years behind as most training material has tabs - with or without sheet accompaniment. In addition to that, in my 7 years of playing in bands I can count on one hand's fingers the times when anyone in the band was using sheets. Chord sheets yes, but not common music sheets. Maybe your circumstances will be different, but why tie yourself into one world just because it's 'smerter' than the others?
Get used to using both tabs, sheets and chord sheets in order to have the best of all worlds. You'll be glad you did.
Sheets and Chords I already know.
This might be a really dumb question but then again I'll ask a lot f those this year . ..
Any indication of rhythm in TAB? I've had a look round and now understand the basic idea of TAB. Can't help feeling rhythm is kinda important but not there as far as I can see?
This might be a really dumb question but then again I'll ask a lot f those this year . ..
Any indication of rhythm in TAB? I've had a look round and now understand the basic idea of TAB. Can't help feeling rhythm is kinda important but not there as far as I can see?
If I only played songs that I had access to sheets for, I wouldn't know any songs. I know several songs thanks to TAB.
I have students who were ready to gig with a decent rock or country band well within a year.
I've had students who were still trying to remember the names of the open strings after a year (okay, I exaggerate, but you get the point).
It's all what you put into it.
Good luck!
I've had students who were still trying to remember the names of the open strings after a year (okay, I exaggerate, but you get the point).
It's all what you put into it.
Good luck!
I don't consider myself especially talented, and I was auditioning for (and getting into) music schools (not Julliard, mind you, but decent schools) after just a year and a half on upright, and I'd say I made 90% of that progress in the first year. I think a solid year of hard work, and any reasonably talented person could become pretty decent, with a lot of room to grow, ESPECIALLY if they already played another instrument, could read music, knew some basics of theory, etc. (I had been playing saxophone for about 6 years prior to taking up bass).
since you already have a great musical background it shouldnt take you that long to get really good. i started playing in march of this year and im already in a band. you already have some good gear to get you started. what you need to do is find a good instructor. nothing better than live instruction, thats what really helped me. make sure you get your technique down, practice scales and theory on bass, learn notes all over the fret board, and something i cannot stress enough, LEARN HOW TO TUNE YOUR BASS! it wont sound right no matter how much you know or how good your technique is, it wont sound right if its out of tune. if you have a electronic tuner, thats great, but its also important to be able to tune the strings without a tuner. the E string is the same note on the 5th fret of the A string. the A string is the same note as the 5th fret on the D string. the D string is the same note as the 5th fret on the G string. since you already know how to read music, that's really good and you wont have a problem reading tab. some good sites for tab are songsterr.com, ultimate guitar.com, bassmasta.com, and ttabs.com. another thing, make sure you know the ins and outs of hooking up equipment. i lost a few cables to my amp recently :/ and i had to take a couple cables from an old guitar amp that i dont use to make my bass amp work... thats all i can think of at the moment, have fun playin... oh, something else, dont stress to learn or it wont be fun, just take ur time 
How good can you get in a year? It's a question I've been asking myself for a while now. I've been giving advice to others on practice for the past five years in person and via my website. I've played as a professional musician in London and all over the UK in various orchestras, bands and shows. I'm going to continue to read and prepare for a week or two longer before jumping in with both feet. Wish me luck!
I'm really surprised that with your level of experience, advice you've been giving to others, and so on that you're even thinking about bass this way. Kinda like asking someone, after you've given them all the details you think are pertainent, whether you will make a 3.5 GPA or the Dean's List at a university or college in a year from now.
Play bass because you enjoy it. Or play golf or whatever.
The only answer I can think of is that it's it's impossible to tell you how good you or anyone else could get in a year. Considering your claimed level of experience as a musician, I would hope that you would have already known this answer before it was even asked, with all due respect.
I'm sure others will mention sites, books, etc, etc, etc...
I'm really surprised at your surprise. It seems to me a perfect reasonable question for a potential student to ask, and he's looking for advice about how to best answer it.
Really? "a professional musician in London and all over the UK in various orchestras, bands and shows" ...asking how good he/she can get in a year? Kinda like Eric Clapton asking a large internet-based music forum how good of a keyboard player he could be in a year.
Really?
Surely you understand what I'm saying here? Don't you?
I'm really trying to not be flip, here.
I will play along for a moment.
Dear sir,
Considering your formidable experience, I believe it would be fair to assume that the ear and theory skills you should have developed on whatever instrument or focus you have had, would give you potentially huge advantages over anyone starting absolutely new to music. Therefore, with that in mind, look to the very basics of bass to "get started". You will potentially be able to "connect the dots" of bass playing, where you can fill in knowledge gaps about the bass itself with your presumably developed ear, as well as with the music theory knowledge you should already have.
It would seem to me you need only a cursory introduction to a bass (if at all) and only work on some very bass-specific techniques that you would not come across in other aspects of music in which you are involved. And again, maybe not much of that.
Best of luck.
Sheets and Chords I already know.
This might be a really dumb question but then again I'll ask a lot f those this year . ..
Any indication of rhythm in TAB? I've had a look round and now understand the basic idea of TAB. Can't help feeling rhythm is kinda important but not there as far as I can see?
It depends... Some people will try to write out the rhythm using spaces to imply it like:
|-------------------------|
|-------------------------|
|-------------------------|
|--0-0--0------2--3--4--|
some will write little rhythm notation on the bottom or top of the tab:
|-------------------------|
|-------------------------|
|-------------------------|
|--0-0--0------2--3--4--|
---s-e--q------e--e--e-
*yes I know there is a dotted 8th rest missing from this measure
but in general you listen to the record to get the rhythm.
i actually have doen this since i first started playing, on the anniversary of when i first started playing, which is actually coming up, i measure how my abilities as a musician has increased in the last year
i think its a good technique to keep yourself in check
i think its a good technique to keep yourself in check
Nope.
To some people this is a negative. To me this is a possitive, as you're playing with much more freedom and base your rhythm on what your ears are hearing and your gut tells you. Since bass is hardly ever played totally on its own, but always accompanying the band (based on the general 'groove' of a song / drum patterns / common sense) the last thing you want to do is play in a rigid box (unless you're playing cover stuff in which case you'll definitely study the original song first) or classical music! And what if you want to change your groove / rhythm in the middle of a song?
See tabs as a guideline to the notes / chords being played and nothing more. It's a map. You decide whether you get to your destination by foot / car / bicycle.
Ever tried to transpose the tabs to paper? One of the issues of tabs is it really doesn't convey musical information. If you go to paper and see the actual notes, alternate fingering etc may make sense. Among other things tab is an extremely untrustworthy method of learning music. The shear number of wrong tabs is overwhelming.
I've never had issues changing up the fingering after reading a song on tab. But I know my fretboard pretty well.
