I guess you meant “Players Path level 2” 
(it is confusing…)
Welcome @markjsmith - I am one of the few in here who has yet to take one of your courses… there is just too much else out there, and too little time really!
But… that “Keep it greasy” breakdown was phenomenal 
Thanks. I’m a complete Zappa freak. I wrote a 250 page thesis on his compositional techniques on my degree final year. Keep It Greasy is a tricky one to play although it’s easy by Zappa standards.
Cool! My thesis is probably… boring compared to that, I am sure 
Zappa is a bit hit and miss… lots of brilliant stuff, but also some stuff that is either weird or just plain out there. Never boring though (well, some might argue 10 minutes of guitar solo, even over an odd meter, gets a bit boring )!
That was part of his charm/point/etc 
I saw Zappa in concert back in the day. The guy was a phenomenal guitarist but also kind of a jerk. He was a dick to the adoring crowd, really derisive for no apparent reason, which I didn’t get at all.
Yeah, I guess
See Howard’s comment above 
Ever see the clip of Zappa on the old Steve Allen show? 1963, playing the bicycle:
https://youtu.be/HYmf1qLMVxk
Nah, that’s OK. You had to be there.
Calls to mind stories Moon told about being woken up at 2 am on a school night to record Valley Girl
He was a character. Kinda narcissistic
Very narcissistic.
He was invited to host Saturday Night Live because Lorne Michaels presumed Zappa was as wacky as his lyrics. He was a smug, openly disinterested train wreck throughout the night.
At the traditional “goodnight” segment at the end of the show, many cast members refused to appear onstage with him in protest of his bullshit.
Lorne Michaels banned him from ever appearing on SNL again, even as a musical guest.
I watched that episode when it aired, excited to see what would Zappa would do. It was literally a shitshow.
May be my internet connection here is the US, at both work and home but talkingbass.net is very slow to load or doesn’t load at all.
It pops up in less than a second here in Austin.
It should be lightning fast. We’re using a dedicated cloud server setup with some crazy RAM and processing power.
The membership site might be slightly slower because of the high database usage in the social network and courses area but the main site (https://www.talkingbass.net/) should fly.
I think that it is DNS related here at work.
Yeah, it’s immediate for me and I’m in Japan.
TB works great here in Asia
Well after spending many moons on books videos and classes I have come to this conclusion
If I had to do all again after BassBuzz:
All of these simultaneously (which I have been doing):
TalkingBass Sight reading Course (straight forward, learn to read and play, well organized)
Dan Hawkins Beginners to Bassist (finished and loved this)
Ryan Madora Bass Cafe Foundations on TrueFire (all technique and band play)
Note: I own many of the Talking Bass courses which I absolutely love and still best bang for the buck but after sometime the ‘University feel’ wears too much. Its not overwhelming; it feels like overload.
Dans course is great for me. Upfront, personal feel, makes you work for it and figure things on your own. Its not all handed to you like the ‘Uni’ courses. < this is how I lost interest the deeper I got in those TB courses aside from the SightReading
Madoras course is just spot-on technique. Great addition for anyone who isn’t playing flawlessly.
Currently I am still doing:
Talking Bass Sightreading and Ryans Course
Have added Dan Hawkins Funk Bass Course.
For me, after BassBuzz has been a bit confusing. I have tried:
I found that I liked the idea behind Fender Play, but the first time I tried it, it was very fragmented and hard to follow. The whole “different instructors for each different thing” wasn’t doing it for me. So I found a teacher at a local music store, but it wasn’t a good match. I’m sure there are others out there who would be, but holding a regular schedule for lessons was a challenge. Then I tried a number of the free lessons over at Talking Bass, and they just didn’t hook me (no offense to Mark at all).
Then, finally, I gave SBL a shot. I did the Bass 101 - Getting Started course and began going down the Players Path. The course was kinda remedial for me, having done BassBuzz, but the Players Path was neat, if a bit easy for me at level 1. I also started on the Functional Theory for Bassists - Volume 1 course, which was a bit advanced for me. I don’t understand the “hate” Scott gets; sure, his free content is showy offy and he’s noodley with his playing, but his actual paid content is quite good, and as I’ve said many times before with Josh and his click-baity YouTube titles, if I were using free content to market my paid content, it would be showy offy and noodley to the max. Anyway, I enjoyed the SBL content, but I found myself getting lost as I couldn’t find a clear BassBuzz-style laid out path through all of it. That might have been me, though.
At that point, I’d heard that Fender Play had made some changes to its “rock bass” curriculum, so I gave it another shot. Same problems, though… I felt like I couldn’t connect with any of the instructors as each lesson within a path had a different instructor with a different style. So I left Fender Play again.
Eventually, which brings us to recently, I decided to give SBL another shot. Evidently they had recently completed the Learning Pathway: Beginner series, taught by Ian Allison, so I decided that I’d go back to the beginning and start there. It’s a good course that covers a lot of the same topics that Josh covers in BassBuzz, so I’m getting through it pretty quickly. But what it does do is provide that “clear BassBuzz-style laid out path” through the Learning Pathways and Player Pathways. So that’s a plus.
So there it is. I’m back on SBL and doing well. I’m currently on level 3 of “Learning Pathway: Beginner” and “Players Path”. Once I finish that, I’ll dive back into (which, by that, I mean re-start) the Functional Theory for Bassists - Volume 1. Beyond that, I dunno. I’m sure I’ll find other courses at SBL, or figure something else out.
I can say this: SBL does not seem to have the community that BassBuzz does. Sure, they’ve got forums, and a lot more users, but it’s nowhere near as friendly and close-knit as is this place. So as far as that is concerned, BassBuzz is, and will always be, “home”.
I liked SBL but just started with James Eager at BassLab. I love his style. The only thing I do not like is he provides no tab on the screen as he plays. He has pdf workbooks for each lesson, but it has to be printed. I have gotten good at following along to his fingers. He is really groove oriented and wants his students to understand how groove fits what is happening musically. I just finished his absolute beginner module and learned “Summer of 69”. I need to polish it a bit and will do that tonight. I also do Studybass. Not as easy to follow but there are some good lessons. I have Ari Cap books and the lessons that go along with them. Still too advanced ATM. I am going to start with Luke and Dan Hawkins as well. Someone will gel with me and that’s where I’ll stay.