Tomorrow is not promised.

[Samatza]

I appreciate your bass playing, your thoughtful insight, and all the love you bring to our blessed bass forum. Thank you Sir! I have also been playing (studying) bass 40 + years and just being in the moment working on my technique, rhythm, sound brings joy to my life. We are so lucky to be in this time playing. I think of Steve Swallow who transitioned from being a great upright player to bass guitar, plays jazz electric bass with a pick, and the dude is like almost 80. I hope we are all rocking it at 80!

Indeed! Here’s to us all rocking out at 80 like we’re teenagers!

In this modern age life expectancy is a lot longer so it makes sense to do what you love for as long as you can do it.

Stay healthy and happy friends and play those low notes and make people dance, it’s a gift that transcends age, let’s not waste it.

 

[Johnny Fingers]

This is an inspirational bass thread. Hit it!

 

[nonohmic]

If you've got one foot in the future, and one foot in the past you're taking a poop on today.

Play and enjoy. I do it for myself cause I like it, not cause I'm good or anything. Took me a few years to figure that out.

 

[Matty Koff]

From time to time, I have questioned why I am making a serious effort to study Bass as an older person. Today, however, a thought came to my mind: Jimmy Blanton; Scott Lafaro; Jaco Pastorius; Oscar Pettiford; Doug Rauch; did not know their lives would be short. They just got the most out of the time they had. That should be my approach, whether I have ten days or twenty-five years left to play.

I play bass and guitar because it makes me happy. I get to create something and sometimes it's beautiful. If nobody else ever hears me play.. that's okay because these slabs of wood have helped to pull me through some dark times. It helps keep me sane.. and you get what you put into it.

The most talented players imo were given instruments in their early developmental stages and have continued to hone their craft throughout their lifetime. Music is as familiar to them as is their native language.

You don't have to have Jaco's chops to be able to make good music imo. It just has to sound good, and that starts with two ears before it has a chance of reaching everybody else.

 

[Jazz Ad]

Meanwhile, the oldest french person just got out of covid like a champ at 116 yo. Yeah don't bother with the end, just make sure you don't leave debt to your kids and live on.

 

[JW56789]

After we do what our lives require us to do, whether work, family, the many obligations we all face daily, it is VITALLY important to do something(s) that frees and feeds your soul . . . . . to better handle all that other stuff, and to feed that little kid in us that just needs to have fun on its own terms. This is NOT age correct or dependent, in fact, it's ageless. I have to have this respite to just feel human, in a world gone damn crazy.

And life is indeed fleeting. I always remember the adage I attribute to Carrol Shelby, a guy who drove and built ferociously fast cars while gobbling nitroglycerine for his heart condition like most of us eat M+M's:

Yesterday's History,
Tomorrow's a Mystery,
and Today is a Gift, and THAT's why we call it 'The Present'.

A fellow Texan, 'Old Shel' nailed it.

I can put on a favorite CD, play along, and on the right day, I'm just transported into it, I forget about the clock or responsibilities, and just float in it, riding along on the buzz from all those Music Endorphins that are flooding my brain, and I'm gone for a few minutes. Priceless.

 

[Rib 13]

Its never too late in life for anybody to reinvent themselves

 

[MVE]

I don’t study, practice and drill because I want “to be good.”
I do it because I want to learn the next song and play it well enough to be proud of it.
I feel a strong sense of accomplishment when I play back my own recordings and enjoy listening to them.
Thats enough for me.

 

[stringthrough]

They say, when you stop living you start dying... Don't stop living!

 

[Raoul_Duke]

Wise words and applicable for lots of things in life. Enjoy your bass, enjoy your family, enjoy your friends. We really aren’t promised anything, and every second we spend with people or activities that enrich our experience, that is a gift worth appreciating.

 

[lbbc]

I play because it gives me happiness. I practice music that my band plays (as a warm-up) then other stuff I've always wanted to learn but never did. I'm lucky....to be retired, have the time/energy/passion to play bass if not every day, then every other for 2-3 hours.

When other aspects of life aren't going the way I had hoped, my bass is a refuge of sorts. Also, lucky that my wife shares my passion for music and well.

 

[Splash7]

I spent fifty years raising kids, working my butt off at stressful jobs and doing all the other things that my "manhood" required of me. When I retired, I picked up the bass guitar to learn and have some fun exploring the bass lines of all my favorite songs (and then some). Pleasure for my heart and soul. After I have done this bass guitar thing for at least fifty years, then, I may consider this thing called death.

 

[dalkowski]

Great thread, much needed this morning as I've been struggling to find the joy, let alone the motivation, for a great many months. Thanks as always Doc and everyone else here.

 

[BassBrass]

They just got the most out of the time they had.

I support your introspection about life, as That may be the most valuable thing a person can do, and more so naturally as we get older. But who's to say what "getting the most out of..." is for someone else, and even for ourselves, we may to hard a judge.

 

[RichardW]

After he retired, Thomas Jefferson took up gardening and wrote to a friend "I am an old man, but a young gardener." Learning new stuff keeps you young, regardless of how many pages you've torn off on the calendar.

I picked up the bass at 45 and am approaching 62. Still a "young bass player" in my mind and have a long way to go. And if I'm going to get older anyway, why not do so trying to always get better at something?

 

[JakobT]

At 58, I've stopped worrying about my age. I was me at 15, I was me at 30. I'm still me. Now I just concentrate on what I want to do with each day I'm given.

 

[PWRL]

I think Edward Ka-Spel of the Legendary Pink Dots put it best: Sing while you may. At least I will attribute those words to him, because I've only heard them in relation to him. I suppose he could have pinched them from someone else, but anyway.
I will never be famous or even very good. I lack the discipline to learn every Steely Dan and Mark King bass line just exactly the way they sound on the record. The up side is that I'm not in it for any of that stuff, I'm in it to play my own music and have my own fun for as long as I am able. I appreciate that I can have a musical voice of my own and that I can use it every day, so I do. I really don't think about age.

 

[Yummy Notes]

I always knew I wanted to play music (any instrument) even as a child. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity presented to me early in life. After reaching middle-age and checking off the boxes (study, career, family), I pursue my hobby in a serious manner.
"What would you regret not doing if you died tomorrow?" My answer was always "never learning to play an instrument." So now I practice everyday. I make sure I practice in front of my kids, so that they know they have someone who they could go to if they ever want to learn to play music. The challenge and mental stimulation of learning music is a worthy endeavor by itself, but working towards having no regrets in life gives my study an extra urgency and incentive to persevere.

 

[PWRL]

I always knew I wanted to play music (any instrument) even as a child. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity presented to me early in life. After reaching middle-age and checking off the boxes (study, career, family), I pursue my hobby in a serious manner.
"What would you regret not doing if you died tomorrow?" My answer was always "never learning to play an instrument." So now I practice everyday. I make sure I practice in front of my kids, so that they know they have someone who they could go to if they ever want to learn to play music. The challenge and mental stimulation of learning music is a worthy endeavor by itself, but working towards having no regrets in life gives my study an extra urgency and incentive to persevere.

I didn't have the opportunity until after college, and wasn't even in a band that played any shows until I was 31.

 

[1958Bassman]

From time to time, I have questioned why I am making a serious effort to study Bass as an older person. Today, however, a thought came to my mind: Jimmy Blanton; Scott Lafaro; Jaco Pastorius; Oscar Pettiford; Doug Rauch; did not know their lives would be short. They just got the most out of the time they had. That should be my approach, whether I have ten days or twenty-five years left to play.

"Because I want to" is all the answer you should need. Tell them "You do what you want, I'll do what I want".