2-Year Bassiversary

1

Today marks two years since I went to Guitar Center and bought my first bass and amp, a Squier 70s CV Jazz and Rumble 40 amp as our Trusty Bass Teacher Josh recommended, came home, and signed up for B2B.

Since then a lot has happened. After finishing B2B, I, like many others was a bit lost and fumphered around the interwebs looking for what to do next. What I did was went back to playing sax for months. I was having some oral surgery issues that made it hard to play sax, so I ended up redoing some lessons and re-visiting this forum.

There is zero doubt in my mind that my deep love of all things bass grew exponentially from the good folks here in the forum. The encouragement (in playing and spending $$ :open_mouth:) got be back into bass permanently.

  • The information shared here, from a bunch of ‘beginners’ is better than most other sources online.
  • The feedback and encouragement and positivity is like no other online.
  • The (virtual) friendships made here continue to astound me and make me happy daily checking in on everyone’s own journeys, getting to know each person and their personalities better each day.
  • I would have never started recording myself without the encouragement and guidance here (something I never did in all my trumpet or sax playing, except to personally analyze my playing). This is due to all of you being so helpful

It is truly the friendliest place on the interwebs.

Although I don’t have the Rumble 40 any longer, I still have the Squier, although modded up (a new ‘side’ hobby/skill learned here) and it now has 18 friends to keep it company (collecting, yet another side hobby fueled here).
Besides modding, I have learned the basics of audio/video recording, audio mixing, DAW use, video editing, navigating the world of amp/cab differences, pedals (oh my the pedals), modular synth programming, and how to do my own setups, and to be able to help others with all the same.

All due to the encouragement of the gang here.
What I think I have enjoyed the most in the last two years is all the learning, supported by the community here (and the Sweetwater candy).

It really is a shame we can’t have a band with 46 bassists in it, because I would like nothing more than to play with all of you.

My intent was to post a more difficult cover today, but, my diversion into building an amp/cab stand - workbench - clean out the garage derailed me a bit. But that’s ok, there is plenty of year left.

Wishing you all great success in achieving your goals, or goals you didn’t even know you had.

Happy bassing1 (side note, auto-correct wants to correct ‘bassing’ to gassing - makes sense :grinning:

34 Likes
2

Happy Bassiversary @John_E and what a great post. :+1:t2:

I definitely second your comments about this forum and the great people in it. There are people of all skill levels, but I have found everyone is motivated to really help each other, and offer advice based on their own experience and a wish to pass on what they know.

12 Likes
3

Happy bassiversary @John_E . Not only have you done all in your post you missed out that you have become a valued member of this community. Good on ya mate :+1:

Also good to see you back @Mark_UK

11 Likes
4

Cheers @Mac good to be back.

5 Likes
5

@John_E , I resemble that comment! It will be my two year bassiversary this year as well, and I couldn’t be happier that I will reach it in the company of this motley crew of merry pluckers.

Once I have a couple of songs from the challenge under my belt, I would love to do a live bass-along online with you lot :sweat_smile:

10 Likes
6

Happy Bassiversary @John_E .

5 Likes
7

You’ve contributed to that a lot yourself! Congrats on the two years.

9 Likes
8

Very nice post, John @John_E . . . :slight_smile:

And you made some good points, too!

Wishing you continued success as you continue forging ahead . . . :wink:

Cheers
Joe

9 Likes
9

Happy bassiversary @John_E and I sign all you said about the forum. Being here, getting input from the members and listen to all the great covers boosts motivation a lot.

I’ll have my first bassivasary on Saturday, so you @John_E are double as old than me :grin:

12 Likes
10

Happy bassiversary @John_E! I can relate to a lot of your comments about this forum and playing bass in general. Thanks to everyone for being part of this community!

8 Likes
11

Happy Bassiversery :cake:

I just hit my one year last week coincidentally

Here’s to another year of low end madness

7 Likes
12

Happy bassiversary John, @John_E ,
I agree with all your comments, it’s a great place to connect with like minded folk who want to share and grow together to be the best we can be.
Cheers Brian

8 Likes
13

Happy Bassiversary @John_E !! Appreciate you my friend and your support to making this truly the best forum on the internet.

Cheers, JD

6 Likes
14

It’s my 2nd year bassiversary this month as well. Unfortunately, my career is pretty demanding (it’s complicated; you could say I have an all work no play problem. Can’t enjoy myself when I have so much work to be done). As a result I am still plugging away at it…but enjoy every minute when I can! 2021 was a tough year, hopefully I can make 2022 more like 2020 was.

Staying hooked into this forum is a great way to do that!

8 Likes
15

Happy Bassiversary John!

I’m really glad you’ve taken the time to share back with the community all you’ve learned and have made such an effort to stay connected and support so many others on this journey. :sunglasses::+1:

7 Likes
16

Happy bass birthday! I’ve not made my first year yet, but it’s coming.

I too have found that the online forum here is filled with really supportive and kind people.

The real reason I bought the program was I thought ( correctly ) that it would be shame-free.
I had a huge fear that it would be one more thing I would consign to the dustbin of life. That I would try it for a month or two and give up, because I’ve always been great at that.

Had a terribly bad encounter with music as a lad. Decided one day that I was tired of that affecting me doing this. So I got in the forum here and just talked about it a little.
It was hard to comprehend-i had never gotten the amount of support, kindness and understanding that I got here anywhere. For anything.

And I got that fear of not having enough basses.
Started out with the cheap one from Amazon, modded heck out of it because it had a good neck. ( pretty much everything else is retrofit now.)

Somehow now 8 months later I’ve got five of them. And three amplifiers.

Maybe I should examine this, on account I can only really play one at a time?

10 Likes
17

Happy Bassiversary

2 Likes
18

You can only play one at the time, it’s exactly t what my wife wife said all the time she visit my little studio!!
Mike

2 Likes
19

Well here we are again. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I decided to dedicate way way way too much time to learning a Jackson 5 song for my 1 year Bassiversary.

2 years ago, I watched a French house music producer play a bass line to one of his tracks live at an event. It seemed impossibly cool and out of reach. Music seemed like some kind of magic to me and it was probably too late to give it a try.

But now that riff is super straight forward. So how did we get here? Well a combination of a few things:

  1. @JoshFossgreen’s excellent course which set me up for success. I’m still so very grateful for that.
  2. Learning songs has been and continues to be the best thing to improve my playing. By learning songs I don’t mean learning riffs. Learning the whole song front to back. Chord changes, walk ups, walk downs, fills, counting, dynamics etc and then when I’ve got it down, recording myself to use as a yardstick to see my development.
    We tend to be quite short sighted as humans and it’s easy to forget how far we’ve actually come. We fixate on the thing we can’t do and re watching a year old cover is a good reminder that maybe our timing has slightly improved.
  3. Using a drum machine (Beat Buddy) to practice has really improved my internal sense of time. It’s pretty much always on for all my practice sessions.
  4. This is still the nicest forum on the internet.
  5. Putting in the work. My conservative estimate is, over 1000 hours of playing bass in 24 months. I’m lucky, as I have no other commitments but if you want to suck less, then the only way out of that place is playing more bass. Buying more stuff (as cool as that is) won’t improve your timing!
  6. Lastly I’m still so very glad I found bass, even this late in life :slight_smile:

I’m working on my 2 year bassiversary cover, which hopefully I’ll get done over the weekend.

If you haven’t already done it check out the best thread on this forum to see fellow bass buzzers like yourself making music.

Cheers Amigos

2020-02-16 06.31.05

14 Likes
20

Congratulations @Barney
You can certainly play so well after only 2 years! Your covers are some of the best on here

2 Likes