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Making Peace with My Mediocrity

#61
Dr. Cheese said:
I have been playing bass longer than many who post here have been alive. For years, I was mainly self taught, and was mostly a bedroom bassist. I have played in bands, and I have gigged a little. Mostly, I have played with choirs since the 1990’s. About five years ago, I started taking lessons, and I have really been consistent for the last three years. I can see the improvement, but it has become obvious to me that I have some ingrained habits that are very hard to stop at sixty. To be blunt, I do not think I will ever come close to what I might have been if I had started serious study at least thirty years ago. Ideally, I should have stuck to string bass in college. That would have given me a very strong foundation. I do not plan to quit lessons or serious practice. I just know that it is more for personal enrichment at this point in life.:)
Click to expand...

I have a similar mindset about sax.

I was a pretty talented sax player before moving to bass. Something about the bass just drew me to it, and frankly, being in jr. high school playing f*cking show tunes on an instrument at home in jazz and bebop wasn't exactly fun for an early teen.

Bass, especially electric bass, meant rock and metal! Sign me up, I said!

Now I'm 38, going to be 39 here real soon. I'm on hiatus from bass lessons as we are in the middle of building a house and packing up to move, but I'll be getting back to lessons once things have settled down. But I still pick up my bass book and do the exercises; not as often or with the same intensity I did when actively taking lessons, but still trying to keep the edge sharp.

Where I am just like you is on sax. I wonder what I'd be doing now if I had stuck with it instead of switching instruments. I don't regret my decision as I've gotten back into playing, but I do wonder "what if...?"

Nevertheless, I will never be on the level of Mingus or Coltrane, my heroes in music, but I do love where I am right now--enjoying playing music that makes me happy and brings me joy in this sh!tty-a$$ Covid-19 world.

By the way Doc, I've seen your videos of you playing, and if that's mediocre, then sign me up to be that good!
Keep on rocking!
 
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#66
There's no law that says music HAS to be technical, complicated, and flashy.

There's tons of music out there built from simple origins. More important to me on whether a piece of music is a technical masterpiece, is that it sounds good. *shrug*

I will say this though Dr. Cheese - bad habits can be fixed. It's more work than learning it right the first time, but before I picked up bass @30 y/o I was hard at work correcting picking habits on guitar that I'd developed over about 15 years. It's muscle memory now. The key is slowing down, and focusing on doing it right until you don't have to think about doing it anymore. Then speeding it up.
 
#67
I find it best not to measure my ability with anyone else's. There's always someone better out there. If I feel like they are doing something I want to do, some technique, I'll work to get that down, but it becomes my way of doing it... It may not be exactly like they do it, but I focus and develop my own way and it works, that's what they did.
It's the combination of all these things that raise one out of so called mediocrity.
Even acknowledgment of such terms can hinder one into thinking they are less of a player in someway.
 
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#69
IamGroot said:
Doc,

I will admit to being over 65.
I have found that getting results from practice are not impossible, but take a little longer and more focus.
During covid isolation, I found that I was not happy with my speed and sight reading. When I dug in deeper, I found that my rhythmic precision was off. So I dug in for two months working on getting absolutely crisp 16th reading and playing ability, both with and without the instrument. Heavy use of the metronome for speed drills. And I got the results I wanted.

Maybe it would help if you assess you playing, and work intensely on your biggest challenge for a few weeks?
Click to expand...
Good idea!
 
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#70
I hear ya. I'm in the same boat; there are things I'd really love to be able to do that I am just unable to do, and the older I get, the more difficult it is to even try. I've always been a utilitarian player at best; I'm fairly good at getting into the pocket and staying there and playing some simple turnarounds and learning songs, but I'll never be able to play the entire Led Zeppelin catalog and I'll never be as proficient at walking through changes in interesting ways or composing solos or ... well, you get the idea. But here's the thing- we get by on our strengths, not our weaknesses, because we know how do take what we have and make it work, and we're still able to find those areas that we really can still improve on and make that work for us, too.

We'll never have it all because learning never is finished. I don't think either one of us will ever be the players we want to be, but we can keep learning and applying that learning. So it's all good, from where I sit.
 
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#71
The fact that I'll never be a great bassist was a realization I had many years ago. The biggest issue is that I've been playing piano and guitar nearly as long as I've played bass, and I enjoy playing those instruments as well. On top of that, I enjoy composing music. So the fact that I don't focus solely on one area of music means I'll never be great at any of them. That said, I feel I'm a very good bassist, and based on your videos @Dr. Cheese, I'd say the same about you.
 
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#72
Just keep doing what you do. Enjoy playing. I have no formal bass education and am self taught. Having said that, I have had no problems joining and being in bands. I'm 61 now and am now in a band led by a band teacher and it is literally run the way he runs his classes. I'm being presented sheet music and charts. I have not read music since I was in grade school. Not gonna happen now. I will continue to learn by ear and memorize. Thank the lord for Youtube!! I'll never be great and I'm a horrible slapper but it is what it is.
 
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#73
I feel ya, I'm 50, been playing bass and guitar a long time, and realize I will likely never be at the skill level I'd like. I'm at peace with that, I'm a hobbyist/amateur and playing out about once a month is the sweet spot for me with all of my other responsibilities. That being said, some of the true greats made a huge impact in a relatively short time. Eddie Van Halen was 23 when Eruption was released. Jimi Hendrix was dead by 27 (having started guitar at 15) and had released a body of work that continues to influence players to this day. Even Jaco falls into this realm. My point is, many players have made a significant mark before they even had 10 years on their instrument.
 
#75
Dr. Cheese said:
I have been playing bass longer than many who post here have been alive. For years, I was mainly self taught, and was mostly a bedroom bassist. I have played in bands, and I have gigged a little. Mostly, I have played with choirs since the 1990’s. About five years ago, I started taking lessons, and I have really been consistent for the last three years. I can see the improvement, but it has become obvious to me that I have some ingrained habits that are very hard to stop at sixty. To be blunt, I do not think I will ever come close to what I might have been if I had started serious study at least thirty years ago. Ideally, I should have stuck to string bass in college. That would have given me a very strong foundation. I do not plan to quit lessons or serious practice. I just know that it is more for personal enrichment at this point in life.:)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I feel you, I’m actually older than you and after listening to you play, I probably don’t play as well as you do. I can’t read music, I don’t know every note on the neck, I constantly struggle with note selection, etc.

What I have come to realize is that playing bass is a passion for me, maybe my biggest passion, but, it’s just one of my loves and skills.

Plus, I mostly play on a worship team with rotating support musicians, and when I play, I bring the stank and everyone that pays any attention knows it.
 
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#76
Hey Dr. Cheese,

Please don't be so hard on yourself. I'm 53, and while I haven't been as dedicated as you have (no lessons for me), I do also recognize my limitations (in lots of areas of life, not just bass). Still, I feel that it's more important to focus on what you can do well vs. striving to play at the highest level.

One of the things that makes modern life difficult is comparison. Today, you can find people who have done things at the GOAT level just a few clicks. If you spend too much time thinking about them, you'll feel bad about not being able to do exactly what they do. However, being the GOAT is typically not what's required - in fact, being having someone come in at the GOAT level is almost always overkill. For example, someone who can play like Jaco isn't needed in the vast majority of musical situations - he'd drive most other musicians crazy with his playing alone (off-stage activities aside). Also, I just finished reading the John Entwistle biography. Think about Pino stepping in to play for the Who immediately after John died. Pino is a great bassist, but because he's a different kind of bassist, he may have somewhat suffered in comparison for some fans. It's all relative.

When it comes to playing bass, I try to be a good bassist for the situation. The people I play with appreciate that I come prepared, I can learn new material quickly, I can make up a bass part to a new song just by seeing the chords, I can make a boring part more interesting by adding a little movement and progression, etc. I am definitely not a virtuoso, soloist or lead musician. I am a good competent bassist who can play well enough to fit a lot of situations. I do try to keep learning more, getting better, etc., but I'm happy enough to just enjoy playing music as best I can. As a parting thought, if you were a marathon runner, the best times are currently around 2 hours and 2 minutes. A friend of mine is a very good runner and has won our local marathon in about 2 hours and 28 minutes - that's still amazing.
 
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#78
Let me offer a counter point of view. Don't undersell the benefits of determined, small steps. I am mostly focusing on DB these days, and for the last 3 months or so have really been trying to get my bowing to a decent level. Really didn't think that I was making any real progress. I keep after the same exercises every day to overcome bad habits (2 octave scales, string crossings, bad intonation above 4th position, etc) and just picked up an etude book that I haven't worked with for several years. I started playing and realized that I was now able to do things that I really struggled with some time back. My point - keep doing the things that you know that you need to do to get to where you'd like to be. Consistently. You'll keep moving closer and closer to what you'd like to be able to do. The good thing is, improvement is exponential after a certain point. Because I can now start to do things that I struggled with, it opens up other pathways to even more things.

The best advice I ever got about this was from my wife, who's not a musician. I was whining about how slow my progress was. She looked at me and said, "what's the hurry"? She was right, consistent, slow, steady progress works much better than plowing through things and hoping to get there quickly.

BTW I'm 65, I don't think that age has anything to do with it. Look at Pablo Casals who kept growing right into his 90s.

EDIT - one last thing I'd add. When I was mostly working on electric bass, one of the most helpful resources for training my right hand and getting the alternating finger thing down is a book called Bass Fitness by Josquin Des Pres. I'd start at the beginning and do one page per week, every day - would take me 10 minutes or so. Always with a metronome. When I got to the end of the book, I'd start again at the first page. It was a game changer for me. Always alternating fingers for each note. Builds up strength and dexterity like you won't believe. Gets hard, but I would just keep at it starting slow and building up speed. Sometimes it would take me 2 weeks to get one page down.
 
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