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Boy, do I suck!!!

#41
Hey everyone, thank you for sharing your stories about your situations. Always helps to hear about folks in similar situations when you feel you're at a crossroads.

So day 4 of my road back to bass wellness, and I feel like I'm at about 90% of what I was, as opposed to the 50% I felt when I started this thread. I'm relaxing more, I'm more nimble..it's really paying off. That 10% is the struggle, though, and that means sticking with this long term.

To keep myself entertained while doing this (and I know I probably shouldn't do it but I am), I'm going through all my basses. I've got 9 of them...most are $100-300 cheapos, a couple good Fenders, and a couple boutique basses I bought a while back. I'm noticing my abilities are better on some basses than others. Flatwounds seem to slow me down bigtime compared to rounds, even though I use the same gauges and similar action for both. And it seems like the better I'm getting, the less tolerant I am of my cheapos. One of them I've got no desire to play ever again. And my most expensive bass, made locally by Guitar Factory,, was a good bit easier to play than all of them. My cheapos aren't hard to play, either. They actually play pretty well with low action on all of them. But whereas I stopped believing that ease of playing was related to price for a long time, now it's making me rethink it. Maybe my chops just weren't back at a level where it mattered, but I'm definitely better on that one bass. Wish it were more suited to the music I play. I used to use it in this band but Fenders work so much better...hmmm...honey, remember those guitar makers who build real expensive copies of Fenders I told you about?

:D

On the other hand, how good a bass do you need to play "Shout"?
 
#44
I stopped like 3 years after almost 12 years of playing bass and studying music at college.

when I stopped I was good enough to play some Jaco, Dream Theater or Tommy The Cat. To built me back up I went through 6 suites for Cello. Quite a workout at first but now I think I can do better than before.
 
#45
Embrace the wankery...again.

Seriously, I don't get to post much on TB because I feel like I'm not in a position to add a lot of value. However, I've seen a lot of YOUR posts and I find them valuable to the point of looking to see what JimmyM had to say on TB today.

So maybe you can't wank like you used too. So what, you're a solid contributor to the forum, and as I understand it, to the music world as well. You've earned a lot of respect around here so you really shouldn't feel bad about "sucking" a bit when you've been working.

I can have 2 cents too. There they are. All the best.
 
#46
Bo_H said:
Embrace the wankery...again.

Seriously, I don't get to post much on TB because I feel like I'm not in a position to add a lot of value. However, I've seen a lot of YOUR posts and I find them valuable to the point of looking to see what JimmyM had to say on TB today.

So maybe you can't wank like you used too. So what, you're a solid contributor to the forum, and as I understand it, to the music world as well. You've earned a lot of respect around here so you really shouldn't feel bad about "sucking" a bit when you've been working.

I can have 2 cents too. There they are. All the best.
Click to expand...
:D

And thanks to you and the others who have shared in this thread.
 
#48
I think it is a couple of things - - -

First - we do get a little slower as we get older. I know that I played some amazing stuff back in the 60's and 70's that I could never play now, but I work now at getting in the groove and being a steady and reliable player.

Also - I think that the bar gets set a little higher as we get more experienced. Perhaps what we think "sucks" now we would have liked a few years ago?
 
#51
JimmyM said:
My chops have totally gone to hell. I admit it. I just spent the past 90 minutes or so trying to play some of the songs I grew up playing in bands, and a lot of them were pretty hard...maybe not Jaco/Stanley hard, but they definitely took some chops. Stuff like "La Villa Strangiato" by Rush, "On The Radio" by Joe Jackson, "Strawberry Letter 23" by the Bros Johnson, "The Trooper" by Maiden...I used to be able to pull all that stuff off and then some. But I'd try to pull them off tonight and they all sounded like crap, even after I'd practice them. What broke my heart, though, was not even being able to play the solo in "My Generation" anymore. That solo was ingrained in my DNA, or so I thought.

Man, I used to be good. I was never the kind of bassist who could hang on a Flecktones gig, but I could play. Don't get me wrong, though...I can still play, thank you. But about 15 years ago I started playing almost all oldies from the 50's, 60's and 70's, and very little of the stuff I do is hard to do. It's mostly about being solid rather than being able to dazzle people. The hardest stuff I have to play these days is Motown, which can be hard, but not in a chops wankery kind of way.

But dang it, I miss having the wankery. And it's all because I let this oldies stuff make me lose focus on what's important...chops. I don't care what anyone tells you...yes, you need to be solid. But if you don't have the chops to go along with your solidity, what are you going to play? You won't always need them, but what happens if you do? You suck, that's what you do!!!

It's clear I've let myself go because I could. I knew it all along, to be honest, but tonight really drove it home for me. And I'm not getting any younger, and if I don't do something about it now, I may never get it back.

So it's clear what I have to do. I practice very little because I don't need to. Nothing I'm doing requires it. So I'm going to resolve to practice an hour a day at the very least and way more most days, and I'm going back to the jazz stuff to get myself back up to speed. Might get a couple of those trombone etude books Jeff Berlin likes. Might even start transcribing again, which I hate, but it really does help your playing to do it.

But first I think I'll need to buy a couple new basses and 4 or 5 dirt pedals.

:bassist:
Click to expand...

Well, you could do that. Or you could just say, "That's not bass playing! All the money's below the 5th fret! I play bass, I don't wank! All that Jazz and Fusion is just unlistenable noise-gimme a groove! Yadda yadda...." like some folks we know ;)
I'm with you! My New Years Resolution is to log at least an hour on Electric and an hour on Double Bass daily. Teaching is showing someone else what to do, and playing gigs is just playing what I can already do. Time to get uncomfortable again.....
 
#53
Changed my mind again...just had a very nice practice session with my P Lyte strung with flats. Last night I was to the point where I could really feel the difference between my Guitar Factory bass and my P Lyte, tonight not so much. It's only a tiny bit harder to play tonight, and certainly not enough to slow down my re-emerging wankery. So that comes as welcome news to me, because I really hate paying a lot for basses.

Now to get reacquainted with my 5-string, so I can fill all those requests I get for a 5-string once every 5 years ;)
 
#54
I stopped for close to 17 years after playing for 6, lol I know what it's like to lose your chops. I've been focusing on chops ever since I started playing, been back at it for almost 8 months time flies. I'm almost my goal chop wise, then i can start working on all the hard stuff lol.
 
#55
I really don't enjoy playing by myself too much, but sometimes it's just necessary.

Every time I pick up a bass, I try to do something physically challenging - it's a matter of hanging out there on the edge of what you're capable of and trying to push that. I'm 56, but thank God don't have hand issues.

Sometimes it's really helpful to put yourself into situations where you are outside your comfort zone. I've been doing a lot of pickup work lately and that keeps me on my toes. If you don't like to solo - play with some cats that expect you to.
 
#56
No matter how good your chops become, or how solid your tone is, it can all be easily undone by less studious musicians in the other positions you support.

As much as I practice, for whatever the musical medium, there's always someone else in the band who phones it in, undoing or at least undermining all that woodshedding.

Granted, I play in an environment where music is secondary to putting food on the table for many folks in working bands. Thus, I work to learn the music I need to, eschewing the flourishes that won't make it onto the setlist.

Pursuit of 'how'd they do that? is something I'll not grow out of but, it does have its limits. My time vs what benefit it provides.

Not trying to buzzkill but, it's the reality in this region anyway.
 
#57
Jimmy, I think you and I are probably in the same general age bracket. I recently had a friend remind me of a tune I did with a band back in the early 80's - Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder. He's also a bass player, and his comment was, "Any fool can do some of that flashy slap and showoff, but you guys nailed that groove." Well, I went back and found a bad recording of that tune from a practice hall. Man... we did really nail it!

Anyway, I've also felt like I played better when I was younger. In my case, I know that most of my practice time these days, if any, is spent learning a tune from a recording an hour before rehearsal, or slogging through an Andrew Lloyd Weber score! <G>

Ah well... a few more years at the day job, and I'll be able to devote a lot more time to practice... yeah, right I will!
 
#58
JimmyM said:
...Last night I was to the point where I could really feel the difference between my Guitar Factory bass and my P Lyte, tonight not so much. It's only a tiny bit harder to play tonight, and certainly not enough to slow down my re-emerging wankery...
Click to expand...

Words of wisdom indeed. I'm as bad a gear slut as anybody, but I have to grin sometimes when I see people on TB talking about the right bass for this or that. The stronger your chops get, the less gear matters.

I used to be a total gnat-note wank in my teens and early twenties, thanks to a year of jazz at college, playing lots of casuals, and an obsession with bands like Gentle Giant. My "Aha moment" about my declining skills came after cutting back on gigging for nearly ten years while I started a family.

For a while after I got back into gigging, I was obsessed with finding the right gear, until I remembered the range of material I used to cover with a single P-bass and three pedals, run through crappy, underpowered amps...
 
#59
I know how you , sometimes I feel I have lost half the stuff I could play in my sleep . A couple of months back I was listening to a song on the radio and I mentioned to my buddy how I thought the bass was really good on that tune . He gives me this puzzled look and tells me it's me , and I honestly have no recall on it . I even played it for myself and it did'nt sound right! SO PRACTICE !!!!!
 
#60
I can understand where your coming from. When I got back to playing 10 years ago I was practicing and learning every song I could. I played classic rock and hard rock then went to country and now Amerciana, alt- country originals.

I lost some of the chops I had which were never really that great but I'm good with it. I did learn to be a less busy player and listen to the drums more, to play the bass and not push the music. I may of simplfied my playing style and chops but overall I am a better bassist for it in a different way.
 

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