Hi all, new user here.....
Have been learning online for a few years (talkingbass)....where I fall down is in learning songs. Great at theory and exercises but know very few actual songs. Am a bedroom player so dont have a band or playing partners to motivate
I know the answer is to play what you like, but as someone who needs to be pushed, is anyone aware of teachers or channels that teach by playings songs in order of progression/difficulty?
Thanks
It's how I learned.. I picked one, worked at it till I got it. Princess Of The Streets, Stranglers, relatively easy one from them, and solid enough to stand a lot of repeating, and with enough interesting bits to make it worth tryign till I could cope with all of it.
A song like that, which has kept you interested in it for years, is a good way in. By the time you get it well, you'll have solved many things, like efficiently getting around on the instrument, fluent legato phrasing, damping finished notes, etc.
The thing I found most interesting was that a bass offers up to four ways to play one pitch, and some ways of playing a melodic bassline work better than others, and not always the easiest one works best.
Close listening to catch details you may have missed helps, and experimentation goes a long way. It's very thorough, and rapidly makes it easier to pick up other songs later even though it can be a slow start if you're very new to the instrument.
Something I do is to avoid playing along with the song! I internalise the entire bassline so I can deliver it in the way that most makes sense to me, because a bass player is laying down a foundation. If they can do that alone, it will be strong, and other musicians can more often rely on the result. It really helps to record your efforts, you'll hear timing errors you otherwise miss, and above all, it will help to reduce any self-consciousness you might otherwise experience in front of recording devices. (I find it easier to play to a bunch of strangers in a pub, than I do in front a sound recorder).
EDIT:
There's another advantage of this method.. If you pick songs from bands who do interesting structures, then you'll be getting a subconscious lesson in composing as you do this, getting the proportions of what makes a very interesting song. You may end up with ideas of your own, but if that happens the way it does for me, it's likely to happen when you're walking or running, and you'll need to figure out ways to capture the ideas so they're not gone from memory by the time you get home and want to use them. Repetition works to help memory, and also to make a better tune even before you get back to an instrument. I made this edit because this process started early with me, very soon after I started analysing and playing songs I liked.
The more you use the method of analysis and experimentation to play with the best sounding results for existing songs, the more likely your own ideas will be playable on the instrument, so it's a double-win.
