Beginner Class of Winter 2021 - How is it going?

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Hi everyone,

I started B2B on January 1st, seemed like a good date to start :slight_smile: I had been playing for about a year before, but just learning songs I liked off youtube etc. Although, I picked up a few things, I never felt like I was progressing, so decided to give B2B a go.

I went for the 3 month plan, but am only halfway through Module 6, I made a really fast start then my bass broke so had to go for surgery at my local Bass Hospital. A new set of pickups a week later I was back in the groove.

I do try to play for 5 mins a day, and do a lesson about 3 times a week at the moment. I try to do a lesson then work on learning a song from the 50 songs. So far Iā€™ve done Another Brick In The Wall and Bad Moon Rising.

I like to record my songs as well, so spend a bit of time playing around with my DAW and plugins etc to learn about recording and plugins etc.

Up to now Iā€™ve felt comfortable enough with the lessons, and can usually play the fast workouts after a few attemptsā€¦Iā€™ve noticed that quite often I find the medium and fast workouts to be easier than the slowā€¦they just seem to make more sense to my ear I gues. Billie Jean aside of course !

Iā€™ve also found this forum to be a brilliant resource, as well as being a great motivator, uploading your recordings and having people comment on them is a great way of checking your progressā€¦for me anyway :slight_smile:

All the best to my fellow students

Thanks
Matthew

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Welcome to the club :wink:

Yes! Me too. I thought it is because I donā€™t have so much time to think and rely more on muscle memory and getting into the flow. This often works quite well, especially on medium. I wish there were medium tempo jam tracks with no bass.

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Yikes! Just tried M6L3 Cranking up right hand speed again and my plucking is all over the place some bars had 8 notes, but others have 7, 9, or 10! Alas, plucking fast only counts if youā€™re in time. More metronome practice required.

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hi all. So, I picked the course up 2 years ago it looks like back in May 2019, before pandemics and everything. Made it to module 9 or 10, then ran into something (bad work stuff i think?) and I stopped-like a jerk. Anyway, restarted things over Xmas break I think and have been grooving again. Just finished ā€œSong for my Fatherā€ which is so fun. And yeah totally agree that often the medium/fast workouts can be easier than the slow.

I also decided I needed to set a goal for myself this past winter. I love seeing live music, and I always have wanted to play in a bar and entertain a bit. So my goal is that in 5 years, I want to be good enough to roll into a bar and noodle around on bass whether in a band or maybe just with a guitarist and play. Sadly Iā€™m a bit on the older side, so itā€™s not like I can hang out with a bunch of teenagers/college kids and play that way. Missed my chance back then, but it doesnā€™t mean I still canā€™t do it. So weā€™ll see how it goes. Anyway, good to have a goal. And once the world returns to normal a bit, iā€™ll find a good teacher and start in person lessons as well.
-Matt

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I picked up bass literally five days after the New Years. My band had trouble finding a bassist in my area and I had been seriously considering moving from guitar to bass for months and so that fateful I grabbed my cash, went to Guitar Center and bought the cheapest bass, a Squier Bronco. To complement the impulse, I put down money for B2B since I had been watching Joshā€™s videos casually for a while and knew about the course.

Since that day, a month and a half ago, I finished the course, upgraded my bass to a beautiful Squier CV 60ā€™s P Bass, and am now the dedicated bassist for my band. Best part of learning bass is following along my favorite tracks. I hear the chord progression, a leftover skill of my guitar days, and improvise a bass line. Also, I feel like Iā€™ve become an all around better musician since moving to bass has made me really focus on my rhythm, something that I knew I lacked but didnā€™t know how to fixed other than just spamming scales over a metronome.

What Iā€™ve learned is a new appreciation for bass, especially in my native genre of punk rock. Although the bass isnā€™t the glorified instrument in that genre, itā€™s undoubtedly the most important one. I didnā€™t understand what people meant when they said the bass was the foundation of a rock band but now I do, because through chugging, I, not the drummer, become the time keeper, laying out a foundational rhythm for the drummer to play around with and a chord progression for the guitarist and singer to play on top of. In a way, I feel like I become the driving force of the song, the one in the back pushing everyone forward.

This is not to say that chugging is all I do. I also understand that with register changes and complete silence I can affect the vibe of the song more-so than playing notes. In other words, not playing is just as powerful as playing.

Also that roots/fifths/octave trick blew my mind. This whole time I was amazed by Fleaā€™s slap technique only to find outā€¦

My favorite song from this course was honestly Under the Bridge, because I showed it to my friends and they were like YOOOOO HE CAN BASS. My least favorite were all the jazz ones, relatively speaking. Ngl I had most fun learning to bassline to With or Without You. I know itā€™s just a 1-5-6-4 chugging but it sounds so epic in the mix.

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Iā€™ve had fun with most of the chunks we are learning! Here are some of my favorites so far.

M4 L2 With or Without You
M8 L1 All Star
M9 L7 Feel Good Inc.

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Great to see you back again, Matt @The_Baron . . . :slight_smile:

Good luck in reaching your goals, too!

Cheers
Joe

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Hello All @Regina,

Lets just say that Josh and the tribe are reading these. Lets say they are starting up a sequel course. My Two Cents;

Would really appreciate the Beat Rule Graph stay up during the slow practice groove. They beat rule makes so much sense to me and would merry so well with the TAB during the slow exercise.

Example of how this works well for me: 4 & 1 during Module 8 Lesson 2 Higher And Higher. I become so focused on the two bar riff that I miss coming in on the one. With the BR up on screen, four and one reads clear.

Its just something that I personally became aware of later in Modules of the course. Yes, we all learn differently for sure and this is not a complaint.

Just have my fingers crossed that a sequel is coming down the pipe

All The Best,
Cheers

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Great idea for a thread! I just started the B2B course in January and wish I had this years ago. I had bass lessons a couple times 10-12 years ago (in my early to mid 20ā€™s), but fell out of practice for a number of years. My brothers both play guitar and started playing again recently. That prompted me to pull out my Fender Jazz and dust it off. Some things are coming back to me, but I feel like beginner. Going over fundamentals has been helping my playing a lot and Iā€™m starting to correct bad habits such as the dreaded flying pinky. That is tough sometimes. I have very long fingers, so they tend to fly about pretty easily!

Iā€™m enjoying the song lessons, but also have been working on some easier bass lines using what I learned here. I recently was able to play The Thrill Is Gone by BB King and Weird Fishes by Radiohead. Weird Fishes is a pretty tricky song for keeping time! Thereā€™s a lot of space and sustained notes in there.

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Welcome aboard @beaurapp,
Enjoy the ride,
Cheers Brian

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I started B2B about three weeks ago, at the very end of January, after watching BB and other bass instruction videos on Youtube. Now I have almost completed Module 7. I have played before, but it was very intermittent and non-structured, never took any bass lessons, or played bass in a band, though I have background from other instruments. So when I picked up my bass in December, it kinda felt like starting from the beginning.

I admit I really rushed through Modules 1 and 2 (though I tried not to miss too many potentially useful technique tips). I got to Billie Jean in a week, which I actually had to practice and still couldnā€™t keep up with the fast workout. Decided not to spend too much time on it and moved on. I have at least slowed my pace down.

So the most important things Iā€™ve learned in the course so far, I think, is better technique, namely getting more mindful about plucking hand technique and position, fretting hand fingering, and muting. These were things I specifically tried to concentrate on in the earlier modules. I knew music theory beforehand, but the scale-based improv in recent lessons has also been fun (as was the exercise with chromatic scale, which I admittedly didnā€™t nail).

After completing M7 Iā€™m going to try Billie Jean again, and after M8 probably take a week off the course to practice things Iā€™ve learned. After that Iā€™m gonna take it slower, like module a week.

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i agree with you guys

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Iā€™m probably saying something you already know here butā€¦ Matt Freeman of Rancid is an absolute beast of a bass player. Even if you arenā€™t into Rancid, you should give Mattā€™s work a deep dive for some punk rock bass inspiration.

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Billie Jean update: I tried the fast workout again this afternoon, after playing it a couple of times on my own and revisiting the medium workout, and it wentā€¦ okay. Didnā€™t get it perfectly right any of the times, but one time went pretty close, though the pattern switch to D string still is kinda messy. Noticing that taking like 15 seconds to breath before trying again seems to help. Decided to count this as a win.

ā€¦but I still kinda wanted to nail it, and tried again after a couple of hours. Went considerably worse :sweat_smile: Yeah, moving on.

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I know what you mean, @kowry . . . :slight_smile:

Hang in there!

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Yeah, Billie Jean is a tough one. What Iā€™ve been doing as I go through the course is circle or note the lessons that are particularly tough or fun. My plan is after I complete the course, I can go back to all the hard lessons again and give it go. In the meantime, just spent an hour working on Papaā€™s Got a Brand New Bag. Tough one and itā€™s been making me irrationally angry because I cant quite get it.

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I can relate. Struggled with Papaā€™s Got a Brand New Bag yesterday. Did better on the slow workout today but I skipped the medium and fast workouts for the first time because I was getting frustrated too. The next lesson turned the difficulty back down and included some new theory in it.

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I started the course in September last year, so I donā€™t officially qualify for this thread, but Iā€™m progressing at my own pace (read: slowly), and I was struggling with Papaā€™s Got a Brand New Bag only three weeks ago. Definitely a frustrating experience; I wrote about it in another thread. I eventually managed to play it kinda decently-ish at the medium tempo. Will have to revisit it at some pointā€¦ Not really looking forward to that :roll_eyes:

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Hi everyone. Iā€™ve recently got my bass and Iā€™m learning things here and there but I know I wanna eventually take a course to solidify my learning. Hereā€™s the thing. My 9 y/o daughter has also recently taken an interest in bass and Iā€™m excited for her. I think itā€™d be a cool journey for us to learn together and I was wondering if yā€™all think the Beginner to Badass course is geared for someone her age. Thanks for hearing me out.

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Welcome aboard @Indelaxiom,
I would absolutely recommend this course for a 9 year old, The way the course is structured and Joshā€™s fun style is addictive, motivating and would keep a young person enthusiastic.
The course gives a great introduction to music and once you purchase it, you have it forever which is really good because you can always go back over some or all of it.
Enjoy the journey with your daughter, it will be a lot of fun,
Cheers Brian

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