@peterhuppertz that is an awesome and well crafted point of view, and I agree wholeheartedly. I have refrained from posting my thoughts on this “rushing through the course” concept, but you have just said everything for me. There’s nothing more I can add.
Well, It’s done, can’t be undone now. Will have to see if it’s a bad thing.
I have to wonder if you really did read my posts thoroughly, and everything I was saying about taking this course, from the beginning, and
continuing thru it, Or just skimmed and decided doing it in a week couldnt be ok in any circumstance?
Either way it’s fine, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, and I respect that you are completely.
And I am not trying to change your opinion, actually, it’s mostly sound logic.
However, I have spent about 2 months completely prepping for this course (unbeknownst to me at the time) and had past playing experience, both whit attributed to me being able to move thru the course with a firm grasp on most of what was going on.
What I see the course having done for me mostly, the first time thru it, was to connect the dots more then anything. I knew Major scales well, and many of the other fundamentals. I just did not know what to do with them, or where to go next, but I had spent 2 months learning a bunch of the things that would have otherwise had me spending hours to master before moving on.
Is there more for me to learn, hell yeah.
Is there more I will get out of doing the course again, and then again when I take my daughter thru it, of course. Did I learn this time thru, I sure I did. When I started last week, I couldn’t play any of the excercises thru the workouts of any speed. Today I can do them all. Do I need to keep working on it, and improve technique. Of course I do. Am I satisfied with myself as a bass player today, of course not.
I will just say, I had a great week running thru this course. I had fun, I played cool Bass lines, had some laughs, got great hand training and workouts, and I am am more excited about playing bass today then ever before. And that is all thanks to @JoshFossgreen and BassBuzz, and all of you here in this great forum.
Anyway, I hope we can all be friends and get past this silly week.
Even if it’s not optimal, it’s still practice and I think you have a great attitude about it. Let’s be honest. Not many people do anything the optimal way. We do things “our way”. And that may in itself be optimal, because we are all a bit different and we need to find what works for us. The key is that whatever you choose to do, you are learning, but more importantly, having fun (or you will just stop playing). Sounds like you ticked both boxes to me, so well done.
I seem to be on a six month pace myself, but that is ok for me. I still practice and do other stuff most days, but only do a lesson when I feel like it and am mentally ready for it (and the mad house is calm). Sometimes this can be a couple weeks after the previous one. Is that optimal? I doubt it. Does it work for me? Yep.
@T_dub This is all that really matters.
+1, agree
Ah, but here is the good part: it can be undone. Or rather, it can be redone, without any lasting effects.
“No” and “that is definitely something I am curious about, but also skeptical”.
Which, as has been pointed out, is the most important bit in these days of Corona and self-isolation. And I also have no doubt that your intellectual baggage that you brought in from your guitar days helped you grasp the theoretical bits.
It’s just that I think that taking the course at a more bite-sized pace is going to generate a more profound result than “binging through it” – at least for the vast majority of bassbuzz students. I found this to be true for myself when I binged through the first three modules in a couple hours myself… only to revisit them over a few days before I went to module four – and found some stuff that I had ignored previously is all.
If we would not have the inclination to do so, we both wouldn’t have wasted an hour or so coming up with a weighted response. We would just have shrugged and moved along. The fact that we didn’t indicates that we do care.
And that’s a Good Thing™.
After completing the course in 6, and passing the quiz on 7, I had planned to take day 8 off…
But I can’t. I started Module 1 with my 5 string today.
Which is the reason @peterhuppertz I had pondered if you had read my full posts, because I finished my very first one stating that I planned to start over with the 5 string when finished.
Another cool fact. I am going to go thru the course with my 18yr old daughter soon. She has been in the hospital since March 3rd, and will be coming home as soon as tonight.
The night before she landed in the hospital via ambulance to the ER, I had texted her a pic of my then “new” bass and amp, letting her know I started playing again, but Bass instead of guitar.
She always wanted me to teach her guitar, but I was not playing, and didn’t have any guitars after her mother sold my Carvin while I was away back in 2009 (when we were divorcing).
After she was stable in the hospital about 10 days later in mid March, and learning she is facing a long physical recovery that keeps her sitting a lot, I bought her a Daisy Rock short scale “Daisy Bass” from “Let Go” for $80.
So, after her return to her mothers house, and when she is settled in a few days, I will be taking her thru B2B.
I think this is a great way to get needed mental therapy while going thru long term physical therapy. She had a foot amputated, and is still about 6-8 weeks from being fitted with a prosthetic and learning how to walk on it.
She will have a pretty normal life, as the prosthetics will only limit her very minimally, but she will have a new passion and talent moving forward in life.
She is an excellent singer too.
I will srart another thread for her progress, or let her if she chooses to.
This will be fun.
Any other people gone thru the course with, or concurrently with a child, parent, sibling or spouse / significant other?
Damn. That is rough. I hope everything goes well with your daughter’s recovery.
Thank you
I was planning to – but it won’t happen, I’m afraid.
In August 2018, my wife suffered from a small cerebral stroke.
We had planned to somehow rekindle our love for making music, and my wife, who has a guitar background, was interested in learning to play bass, so we thought, once her recovery is well under way, we could try and pick that up.
We are now more than one and a half year further, and it has become clear that her recovery will never get to a point where she could even relearn to play guitar or anything of that complexity – getting dressed in the morning is something she has to consciously think about (think “Now I have to put tooth paste on the toothbrush”…), she still has trouble forming coherent sentences, and from here on, no significant progress is expected.
So in the end, it turns out that I’m on my own, bass-playing-wise.
Sorry to hear that.
My daughter did have a small stroke, luckily in an area of the brain that would not affect her from having a normal life, it will pretty much not be noticed in her life.
However, when she was taken to the hospital she was in cardiac arrest, and it was a fight to save her life.
She was in an induced coma for about 8 days, the whole time, all we knew for sure was that her brain was certainly oxygen starved ore an unknown length of time. So, we didn’t know what she was going to be like when, if she would come out of it. They did an MRI and saw the stroke, but told us that, at that present time, that was nothing to worry about, we need to hope and pray that she lives, and she is not a vegetable, and that her heart, liver and kidneys all come out ok.
Fortunately after8 days they were able to take the breathing and feeding tubes out, and she was coherent and breathing on her own.
Unfortunately, her foot had to be amputated. And for that, I am truely greatful, because I could have lost a daughter.
It is a bummer that you two can’t do the course together, but I am sure you are ok with that being a small drawback, and that you still have time on earth with your wife.
Wow, that sounds like a LOT to have to go through, @T_dub . . .
Hope all continues to go well for you and your daughter, and best wishes for a full and speedy recovery
Cheers, Joe
Man, between this and the info in the other thread it sounds like you folks have been through a lot. Really admirable that you’re keeping a good attitude and it’s great that you will be able to enjoy this with your daughter.
I had to come back here and admit it.
I’ve been binging myself – on the Music Theory Comprehensive course from Jason Allen at Udemy.
I haven’t practiced or even played bass in two days – I’ve just dug into this course.
Not everything in there is new to me, but over the last two days, on top of waking up, and refreshing, stuff I had learnt in a previous life, I’ve discovered a lot of new knowledge – and I feel a lot of pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
The MIDI keyboard I got a week ago definitely contributed to this newfound enthusiasm, and also helps putting this into practice.
But, yes, I am binging. I am now aware that I need to make sure I won’t walk into the overfeeding-my-brain trap that I outlined earlier in this thread…
I promise I will pick the bass from the wall tomorrow again. I have deployed an old trick – when I enter mystudy annex listening room, the first thing I see when I stand into the door opening is
I’m not okay with that. Not in the least. But the main reason for not being ok with that is because I see every day how her diminished abilities bother her – she is acutely aware of how it affects her, and she hates it. She acutely misses having the mental capacity that she had. It’s a huge drawback, a monumental setback, especially since we know it will never improve.
We’ll have to make do with what she can do today, and we’re not at a point where this feels remotely comfortable yet. This causes a lot of frustration, and that, in turn, tends to send us into a downward spiral. We fight quite a bit more than we used to, and then we hate ourselves for that. And that’s a cycle that’s hard to break.
That’s what keeps us up and running – the alternative would have been a lot worse.
I in no way meant to minimize the severity of your situation @peterhuppertz. I wholeheartedly apologize for it coming out that way. Poor choice of words on my part. I was comparing it to my situation, where Although my daughter lost her foot, She did not lose her life. For that I am ever greatful. And you are correct, her losing her foot is a rather large setback, so I see your point.
Really sorry to hear you folks are going through this. I admire your strength.
I wasn’t interpreting it as such. Better reply later, when I am near a keyboard…
As I said, I did not interpret it as such.
Don’t let your daughter read this, but:
When she’s just out of hospital, and in a recovery phase, that gives ground to optimism.
I remember buying my wife a wooden heart, which has the text “It’s all gonna be alright, sweetie” (in Dutch)… and at the time, we really believed that everything would be alright, because the recovery progressed well (as it does in the initial recovery phase)… and the things she couldn’t do were, at that time, things she didn’t feel like doing anyway, so she didn’t miss them as much.
But when progress slows down, and the initial enthusiasm is dampened, this changes. If any of the damage is permanent (such as losing a foot), the realisation about what this means for the patient’s life creeps in.
Be prepared, @T_dub – somewhere down the line, she’s gonna need your support. It won’t be a walk in the park. Pun not intended… but not avoided either, otherwise this will be a very bleak comment in this thread.
In my wife’s case, it was probably somewhat different, because she has always been quite bright… and she still is in her own way. But her capacity for processing information, or compiling and communicating information, has been seriously impacted. Her short-term memory is affected negatively too. As a result, she is now distrusting her own mind – she thinks she’s not right in the head.
We had never seen this coming, and now that we know, it hits hard.
But if we didn’t see it coming, how could you? I would never think of accusing you or anyone of taking this too lightly.
Anyway, I’m rambling.
When frustration hits her… be ready. Listen, and primarily acknowledge it, allowing her to be frustrated and validating it. Don’t tell her to concentrate on what she still can do… but do help her in discovering this herself, and remembering it when she goes through a rough patch.
For your sake, I’m hoping the loss of the foot will turn out to be the only lasting “inconvenience”. I seem to remember that you said she also had a small stroke?
Is she out of hospital yet? How is she doing? Any rehabilitation planned?