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How long does it take to get good?
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
- Start date
One final comment, then I will depart. "Good" is highly relative and subjective. Anyone see the Rams vs Falcons game last night? Most would agree the Rams are a very good football team. One running back on the Falcons made them look like they never played the game before, ran right past highly trained defensive backs, made them look like rookies. Self comparisons against other players are unproductive, and a waste of energy. Just try to be the best you can be, and keep playing. Be grateful you can play, some members here on TB are losing that ability due to health and age related issues. Just saying...
You’re “good” when you can clean press a 125lb barbell with one hand while playing bass with the other. (And I’m not gonna argue with him!)
So true. The body can restrict you in ways as you age so it's important to learn feel and the quality musical choices. You'll always be able to play well if you have good feel and know what notes to play. 1 good note is worth so much more than 10 wrong ones.
I seriously recommend Molly Gebrian. Her book is good. As a fellow adhd type, I prefer her video course.
www.mollygebrian.com
I got pretty good playing in a band in my 20s. We gigged a LOT. THIS WAS THE 90s. Now in my late 50s, I’m trying to make progress for the first time in over 25 years. And I’m getting better faster now than I did then.
Courses — Molly Gebrian
www.mollygebrian.com
I got pretty good playing in a band in my 20s. We gigged a LOT. THIS WAS THE 90s. Now in my late 50s, I’m trying to make progress for the first time in over 25 years. And I’m getting better faster now than I did then.
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Absolutely! The hardest thing is not playing notes. I tend to overplay. My first and only teacher IRL told me during one of my 4 bass lessons that "it's generally better to play more notes." Of course he also told me not to play open strings, and only drew out the blues scale in E, so I always wanted to play songs in E. Not the best teacher, but he did motivate me by saying "keep playing, don't give up, you do some things on that bass that I don't see a lot."
I have no idea what those "things" were? Did he mean playing it with my teeth? Everyone does that!
I've been debating whether to post or not. Because I'm going to be a negative Nellie.
From 5th grade until Junior year of college I played viola. Very well. I have a box somewhere of medals from orchestra and ensemble contests. I played some with the OKC Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra. In a nutshell, I know music.
I will never be a really good bassist. I love the bass more than anything I've tried to learn. But there's something about the tie of bass lines to songs that I will never completely feel. I have about 50 of my favorite songs that I can play along with in my spare bedroom and I'm happy with that. But ever playing in public I would never get to.
From 5th grade until Junior year of college I played viola. Very well. I have a box somewhere of medals from orchestra and ensemble contests. I played some with the OKC Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra. In a nutshell, I know music.
I will never be a really good bassist. I love the bass more than anything I've tried to learn. But there's something about the tie of bass lines to songs that I will never completely feel. I have about 50 of my favorite songs that I can play along with in my spare bedroom and I'm happy with that. But ever playing in public I would never get to.
He must have heard something beyond an E blues. I tend to overplay too. Sometimes I have to tell myself, "don't over do it!" The proof is in recording. I like how I sound better when I'm more economical. Someone once said, "stupid is as stupid does".
@bass12 @JonathanPDX @JazznFunk -y'all consistently post excellent advice. I really appreciate reading all of your comments.
I think there are a lot of feel-good comments about how there is no "good" but I'm actually gonna respectfully go against that. I think it's pretty clear that there is "good" and it is a label you can acquire, although for most people it's gonna be a much higher price than they are willing to pay. While there's no concrete "good", here are some signs that indicate someone might be good:
1) Watch the people when you play. Do they smile, do they dance, do they express excitement? Do they use profanity in a positive way? I guarantee you when Sharay Reed picks up a bass, people react. Because he's good. 2) People want to pay you money 3) Musicians that you respect, without being asked, say you are good. 4) People ask you to teach them . If none of this stuff happens, there is a chance you aren't good. This doesn't mean music isn't fun or has no value for you though.
@Dr. Cheese you have great taste in players, so I know you know what good is, and that is a big part of becoming good. A question that only you can answer is, do you really want it? Getting good and being happy don't necessarily have a lot of overlap, and 95% of people I know just want to be happy. If you play hard stuff that's slightly beyond your grasp every single day, you will get good. But this is no fun, and makes most people unhappy. Comparison is the thief of joy, but a healthy dash of it is what you use as resistance to build your strength. Talented people figure this stuff out very early, and most of us will never catch those people. Being Marcus Miller is beyond most of our grasp, but making people say "Hell yeah!" and jumping up and down is possible if you want to pay the cost.
I think there are a lot of feel-good comments about how there is no "good" but I'm actually gonna respectfully go against that. I think it's pretty clear that there is "good" and it is a label you can acquire, although for most people it's gonna be a much higher price than they are willing to pay. While there's no concrete "good", here are some signs that indicate someone might be good:
1) Watch the people when you play. Do they smile, do they dance, do they express excitement? Do they use profanity in a positive way? I guarantee you when Sharay Reed picks up a bass, people react. Because he's good. 2) People want to pay you money 3) Musicians that you respect, without being asked, say you are good. 4) People ask you to teach them . If none of this stuff happens, there is a chance you aren't good. This doesn't mean music isn't fun or has no value for you though.
@Dr. Cheese you have great taste in players, so I know you know what good is, and that is a big part of becoming good. A question that only you can answer is, do you really want it? Getting good and being happy don't necessarily have a lot of overlap, and 95% of people I know just want to be happy. If you play hard stuff that's slightly beyond your grasp every single day, you will get good. But this is no fun, and makes most people unhappy. Comparison is the thief of joy, but a healthy dash of it is what you use as resistance to build your strength. Talented people figure this stuff out very early, and most of us will never catch those people. Being Marcus Miller is beyond most of our grasp, but making people say "Hell yeah!" and jumping up and down is possible if you want to pay the cost.
Thanks for your input. I’m not worried about being Marcus Miller or Anthony Jackson. Those fellows are geniuses of bass and I know I am not that. I have actually improved a lot over the last eight or nine years in terms of knowing the fingerboard and reading. I want to increase my fluidity in quickly spelling chords, recognizing keys when playing, quickly picking out chord progressions.. These are goals that are attainable.
+100. I will add that I think reading helps one "codify" rhythms. This (for me at least) makes remembering and recalling rhythms easier (I can often remember how a rhythm "looks", even if I can't remember how it sounds). I also think reading helps with awareness of note duration and, ultimately, with playing in time.
For sure. The wording I would use for what you are describing is "good enough". I think this can be reached relatively quickly. Maybe 2-3 years. I'm splitting hairs and using my own definitions here, but I was mostly trying to cut through some of the hazy platitudes. The "you're on a journey" talk may be very useful to a lot of people to feel good, but I've never felt like that is a way to see the world that maps onto how things actually are.
Don’t ask me. Ive been playing for almost 50 years and I’m still not that good. Really, it depends on your training, your desire, your proclivity, how much time you can devote to it, lessons or self-taught, etc. They say to be great it takes 10,000 hours.
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That number is completely misunderstood. It’s 10,000 hours of FOCUSED practice, not 10,000 hours of hands on the instrument.
As someone with ADHD who knows all about hyperfocusing or nothing, I've found that it's good to SMART your goals - make them Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Instead of saying you want to get better, pick something specific you want to improve and work strictly at that. Set a yardstick for it. Make sure it's really attainable and reality based. Make it relevant to the bigger picture of improving. And then put a time limit on it. Say a month or two for each specific goal, and then move on to the next goal - you can set up each mini goal ahead of time, but divide them up and work on one at a time. You'll find you have improved beyond what you would have loosely set your sights on a year out.
JazznFunk
Supporting Member
The world definitely loves absolutes. With music, it's tough to define those absolutes because it's an open-ended art form and discipline beyond a certain scope. It's very easy to get too 'new age' for sure, and I have to check myself on that. Having the benefit of 30 years of playing makes it easy to forget about how bare-bones the struggle to get even the physical strength to play bass well in the first place was. I still find that reminding people that the journey is NEVER done when it comes to musical proficiency is actually important so that people don't get stuck in the clinical end of things too much, and ONLY focus on a clinical 'if this, then that' sort of metric... so they don't beat themselves up when they don't master that scale or that bass part even after the first 5 or 10 times of trying it. Usually, it's after you put the bass down and grab a cup of tea and come back to it that you do nail it. When you've absorbed it so that the execution is second nature.
I do agree with the notion that FOCUSED practice is key. Putting in 6 hours of time just to say you spent 6 hours with the bass in your hands isn't really moving the bar. Some structure is necessary. As a runner, we call those 'junk miles'. Not fast enough to get faster, not hard enough to test your legs and lungs. Sometimes junk miles do more harm than good. 3 fast miles with some strides thrown in can be a better workout than 6 miles. Depends on what you're working on.
The big trap is biting off more than you can reasonably chew for a practice session. Feeling overwhelmed that you aren't doing enough and that you'll never get it all done.
Bill Evans, when asked about his practice regimen, once said that he only practiced 'the minimum'. What he meant was he practiced the minimum amount of MATERIAL - not time. He worked on one tune, or one exercise, until he mastered it, or until it was at a point where he felt like it was 'good enough' to take out of the woodshed onto the gig. Then, it was back to the shed to work on the things that didn't go well in performance. Rushing material into performance that isn't ready yet will likely make you feel like you 'aren't good enough' as a player, when it's the material that isn't ready yet. The journey never ends.
Personally, I got 'good enough' to perform with other musicians within a year or 2 of picking up the instrument - but I was nowhere near where I wanted to be, when I compared my playing to the people I admired at the time - Stefan Lessard of Dave Matthews Band, P-Nut from 311, Marcus Miller, and others. This was before I really went headlong into Jazz and my standards and expectations for myself jumped exponentially. I put in the work to get the fundamentals together to have a sound and be a solid player in terms of time early on. I was playing with a group of fellow high school musicians in an original band, gigging once or twice a month. I learned every time we rehearsed/wrote/performed. But - was I a GOOD bassist or musician yet? Nope. Not even close.
For the first 4-5 years of my musical existence (into college), before I was really out gigging regularly, I spent a ton of time (sometimes 6 hours a day) shedding scales, modes, reading lead sheets, learning melodies, practicing with a metronome, and doing sessions with people to learn how to play together. I was building the foundation. That stuff is absolutely necessary, and THOSE skills are definitely things that you can quantify with a 'good/bad/needs work' sort of metric. That work is essential. But that just makes someone a good clinician and technician - it doesn't mean someone is making music. When you start playing with people and having to reconcile the vocabulary you are building with reacting and creating in the moment - that's the next part of the journey where things get less defined. That's where you start figuring out your voice, your feel, your approach. I have recordings of early college sessions where the quartet I was in was swinging hard. We had good time. We were executing the songs (somewhat), but when I heard my playing, I wasn't speaking the language. I was saying the words, but they weren't mine. I stunk as a soloist. I was listening and playing to survive, not listening to converse and respond.
I think the phrase 'good enough' is possibly too nebulous.... it could honestly be changed to 'what are my standards for myself AND others as a musician'. Being 'good enough' in my personal metric is about constantly raising the floor (and the bar?) for what you accept in your personal performance and accuracy in the situations where you're playing. The 'floor' being the absolute bare bones standard for your worst possible gig/performance. The bar being your absolute best playing where you come away on Cloud 9. Most of us live in the middle. 'Good enough' is always changing. What was 'good enough' when I was 16 or 17 would be absolutely unacceptable now. Shoot, some of the things I played even 15 years ago wouldn't cut it for me now. My floor and bar have moved upward.
The one thing that cannot be rushed, or quantified as easily, is the development of one's ears. Most of that happens by osmosis, and it takes time for your ears to internalize some of the clinical things are are being executed in the practice space. i.e. you can PLAY a certain scale or mode over and over, but your ears need time to really absorb and learn what that sounds like. Eventually, you get to a point where you can hear what's happening even without the instrument in hand. That skill has allowed me to compose/sing ideas for compositions into my phone pretty accurately and then translate them to the instrument once I'm home. I'm still working on unifying my hands with my ears though.
When I and others talk about 'being on a journey', it's more clinically about taking stock of how you feel about your playing, how others feel about your playing, and how you can objectively look at/listen to a performance of yourself and say 'yeah.... we sounded great there. I flubbed that, but I know what I messed up. I'll work on it.' Clinical practice in the shed should ideally become supplemented by evaluation of yourself individually and collectively in a rehearsal or performance. Recording yourself is CRITICAL in all phases. If something isn't getting better, you know what you need to really work on.
Pat Metheny shared once that his 'practice routine' after 50-60 years revolves less around sitting down and running scales, and more about playing actual music and dealing with things he needs to refine along the way. That way, it's always about applying X skill/concept on a clinical level to the pursuit of making music in the moment.
I knew I reached a key point in my musical proficiency and communication when I could listen passively to recordings of performances and ENJOY them purely as a listener, while still noting areas which needed improvement. Eventually you become your own teacher.
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JazznFunk
Supporting Member
Until you get into ii-V-I's. Then it's a different interstate highway altogether! haha
