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How's your handwriting? How does it compare to your bass playing?

#61
Bassaga said:
My handwriting is often fine and very legible, if a little casual. Occasionally it's way out there with random lines being way too long, circles unclosed, everything at the wrong angle. Usually it's somewhere in between. Basically, I can be good, but when I set pen to paper I never actually know what's going to come out, or how my hands will play along this time.

My bass playing is the same. Often fine, occasionally lousy, usually decent with some "what was that?" mistake moments where my hands just do something wacky. Still working on motor skills and such, I dunno.

Started wondering whether you folks have similar patterns? Like flawless elegance in your handwriting and your playing, or aggressively sloppy playing and writing, or whatever?
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My hand writing is mostly unreadable. Man, I spent years working on it. Back in the day I had hand writing lesson books where I spent countless hours tracing over the letters for days on end in my youth to no avail.

It sort of resembles the hand writing by somebody that had a stroke, although to my knowledge I never had one. The left side of a character looks fine, the right, nor so much.

This has not effected me playing the bass. The other crazy thing is I got Bs in drafting class back in the days before CAD.
 
#64
Bassaga said:
My handwriting is often fine and very legible, if a little casual. Occasionally it's way out there with random lines being way too long, circles unclosed, everything at the wrong angle. Usually it's somewhere in between. Basically, I can be good, but when I set pen to paper I never actually know what's going to come out, or how my hands will play along this time.

My bass playing is the same. Often fine, occasionally lousy, usually decent with some "what was that?" mistake moments where my hands just do something wacky. Still working on motor skills and such, I dunno.

Started wondering whether you folks have similar patterns? Like flawless elegance in your handwriting and your playing, or aggressively sloppy playing and writing, or whatever?
Click to expand...

I don't know what to say about my bass playing which, at best, is a triumph of experience over talent. However, my cursive handwriting ... fuggedaboudit. After a career in IT and a decent % of my time spent surfing the web since retiring, 99 44/100% of my "writing" has been done at the keyboard for many, many years. Every now and then, when faced with writing something old school (like a birthday, anniversary, or condolence card), I'll forget how to make certain letters. Now I just print and only use cursive to sign my name.
 
#66
Bassaga said:
My handwriting is often fine and very legible, if a little casual. Occasionally it's way out there with random lines being way too long, circles unclosed, everything at the wrong angle. Usually it's somewhere in between. Basically, I can be good, but when I set pen to paper I never actually know what's going to come out, or how my hands will play along this time.

My bass playing is the same. Often fine, occasionally lousy, usually decent with some "what was that?" mistake moments where my hands just do something wacky. Still working on motor skills and such, I dunno.

Started wondering whether you folks have similar patterns? Like flawless elegance in your handwriting and your playing, or aggressively sloppy playing and writing, or whatever?
Click to expand...

Handwriting... what about chart writing?
 
#68
full time professional bass player / string instrument music teacher.

handwriting that is as close to illegible as it gets. i usually cant read things i write. was like that ever since i was a kid.

i can play violin or cello in tune, so i think my fine motor skills are not the problem :thumbsup:
 
#74
PWRL said:
I've actually been meaning to practice my cursive writing, again. I meet older people with this impeccable handwriting and I don't know how they do it. I can't even remember how to write a G or an S in cursive, because I've been writing bastardized script for so long. I do still write mainly in cursive, but at some point in school, I dropped the all-cursive thing after having to take so many notes. Now, I miss it. I have a couple of nice fountain pens to do it with, too.
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How I do it is from picking one specific thing I don't like about it, and focussing on that each time I write it. Currently it's the crosses on my lower-case "t" - I'm putting them higher than I'd prefer, so each time I write one I pay attention to that.
Mostly it comes down to caring about it enough to want to patiently improve it over time. When I say that to people who compliment my handwriting, though, they tend to look at me as though I've sprouted a second head.

I did use a couple of reference books as a guide some years back, to get me back on track. Once I'd gotten the hang of it again, I just carried on tweaking it to my own taste. And then tweaked bits of it so other people could read it more easily, after copping some flak about it at work.

Funny thing: the classic cursive script (Spenserian) was actually developed to enable people to write faster while still being readable by others. Chancery cursive, which led to what we now call italic, had a similar motivation.

Fountain pens, you say? There's a topic on which I could spill a litle ink. TWSBI have won me over for all practical purposes, these days.
 
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#77
equill said:
Fountain pens, you say? There's a topic on which I could spill a litle ink. TWSBI have won me over for all practical purposes, these days.
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I've found that a good pen makes a whole lot of difference. Although I love the Pilot Precise pens, one of the great fountain pens I love is the Rotring Art Pen, as well as the Parker 25. Both of those help improve my handwriting.
 
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#80
Bassaga said:
My handwriting is often fine and very legible, if a little casual. Occasionally it's way out there with random lines being way too long, circles unclosed, everything at the wrong angle. Usually it's somewhere in between. Basically, I can be good, but when I set pen to paper I never actually know what's going to come out, or how my hands will play along this time.

My bass playing is the same. Often fine, occasionally lousy, usually decent with some "what was that?" mistake moments where my hands just do something wacky. Still working on motor skills and such, I dunno.

Started wondering whether you folks have similar patterns? Like flawless elegance in your handwriting and your playing, or aggressively sloppy playing and writing, or whatever?
Click to expand...
LOL....my bass playing is far superior to my handwriting. My handwriting is so bad that when I write things down I print everything in caps. I do use larger caps for normal capitalization, but it's all upper case. Even then...it can be a challenge. I prefer to type, by far! I remember in grade schools when I was learning to write cursive, which everybody did back in the day (50's) I got great grades except for handwriting. I always seemed to get a D in handwriting... My bass-playing is far better than that.:laugh::roflmao:
 

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