Beginner to Badass Reviews? 🎸

[Benjinx]

I’m a badass now! I loved the course. I felt that a lot of things were simple, but at the same time because they were simple they helped me work on other things. I’ve tried to learn bass and other instruments in the past and this is the first time that it really clicked for me. Josh, you do such a good job of breaking things down and designing exercises that make everything easier to absorb. I really love that we also got to get to know more about you and your personality through these lessons. I totally want to learn more Slap Bass. What should I do next?

[scottlaunier]

Wow–how could I do better than to second Lanny’s review?!!

The course does everything it promises, and much more.

[JerryP]

Welcome to the community @Benjinx!

[TNKA36]

Welcome aboard @Benjinx,
Enjoy the ride.
Cheers Brian

[Mac]

Welcome @Benjinx and congratulations on completing the B2B course

[drusolis]

I just finished the Beginner to Badass course tonight. I took it pretty slow, but still finished in just under a year. I never had a musical bone in my body. Growing up, I avoided musical instruments and singing. I’ve tried the recorder, a harmonica, a keyboard, never was able to click with any of the instruments. A few months after I first got my bass guitar, I was afraid the trend would continue. By chance I found some of the free lessons Josh posted on the BassBuzz YouTube channel. I really enjoyed Josh’s enthusiasm and while I wasn’t sure how a video course would work for music, I took a chance and bought the B2B course.

While I still don’t consider myself ready to play in a band yet, I definitely feel like I’ve learned a lot, and more importantly have a good foundation to build on. My assessment of my bass skills is not a reflection on Josh or the course, just my natural pessimistic view of any skills I have (You know, nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills, bass playing skills. Girls only want boyfriends with great skills).

Josh’s teaching style is wonderful - he’s enthusiastic, clear, and very encouraging. In every lesson, I remember him saying “hey, you did great” or “thanks for sticking through this lesson” if it was a tougher one. The early lessons are simple and clearly designed to help someone like me who has felt like a failure in all other musical endeavors to get some wins and gain confidence.

So much thought has been put into this course, and while there are a few spikes in difficulties in some of the lessons, they never got to a point where it got so frustrating that I wanted to give up. Most of the spikes were to introduce something brand new and then the next lesson dropped back down to something to get your confidence back if the spike was a little too hard. Josh also constantly reviews past topics too – so you might learn syncopation notes in a lesson and then maybe five lessons later in another module you’ll need to do syncopated notes and he’ll briefly review that in the same lesson so if you forgot what it was you don’t have to struggle to find the old lesson again (or what a major scale shape was, or a minor scale, etc.).

Another thing I really loved is that the lessons all had a slow, medium, and fast workout. And while I would usually want to 100% a thing before moving on, Josh constantly encourages you to move on once you can nail the slow workout (he’ll encourage you to try the medium and fast, but to not get hung up on them, preferring you keep your forward momentum). I still recall some lessons I skipped that I eventually want to go back to (I’ll get you yet, “Billie Jean”!!), but that’s the great thing about these lessons - you can always go back and review them.

There were a few lessons where there’s a lot of bars to play and therefore a lot of notes to remember. While there is a tab scrolling on the bottom for all the lessons, I remember there were a few where because only 4 bars are shown on the screen at a time, that sometimes I’d mess up the 5th bar because I couldn’t remember what the notes were and didn’t have time to see it ahead of time. Some of that is probably just my non music brain struggling and needing more practice. I solved that by just rewinding the lesson a few times until I was able to memorize the notes on the transition for that lesson.

My last bit of praise is that in every lesson there’s a comment section where you can look through and see what other people struggled with or succeeded with for that lesson. If you ever have a question, I’d encourage you to post in the lesson thread – I’ve done that quite a bit and I always got a reply – often within just a few days of the post.

If you’re at all interested in learning bass, definitely can’t go wrong with this course. This is the only music course I ever completed and it was strongly influenced by Josh’s clear, fun, and encouraging teaching style. Even though it was just through a video, and not even interactive like an actual video call lesson, I felt Josh was a great teacher and friend I could spend some time with at the end of a work day to relax and learn/play bass with.

[TNKA36]

Firstly welcome @drusolis,
Great to here that
1: you worked your way through from start to finish( Great Work)
2: based on your positive feedback regarding the course structure and the lesson flowing style, you have proved not only to yourself but to anyone else contemplating doing the course,that with some self motivation we can achieve anything.
I’m proud of you for completing the course, and like you said you now have a solid foundation from which you can develop your own style.
3: my suggestion would be to keep on developing your skills and try to find some easy songs to play along with.
1 really easy one is U2 song “with or without you”
Straight 8s on 4 notes , builds muscle memory and strength in your finger alternating etc, I think it’s E. A. D G🤔 around and around.
And like you say you can go back through the course at different times and tackle the things you think are hard and you will see your own development over time, look back and say that’s easy now​:+1:
Cheers Brian

[JerryP]

Congratulations on completing the course and welcome to the community @drusolis! My complements on a very well written review of the course.

[russki98]

I’m only in module 3 but one thing that resonated with me from
drusolis review was noting “Josh’s enthusiasm”. For me THAT is the golden nugget in all of this.
As I have played bass for quite a while, the lessons (so far) haven’t taught me a lot but have reinforced things to remember and concentrate on. Josh’s enthusiasm and friendly and fun disposition has made every lesson an absolute joy, even if I knew the things he was teaching me it was still a lot of fun to participate.

[russki98]

Also, I am not so cocky to think it wont teach me a lot of new stuff in later lessons
given Josh’s amazing knowledge and ability.

[Riastarthae]

Okay, from the point of view of someone who’s been playing a while on and off and played in bands.
I wanted to consolidate what I thought I knew and add in a better understanding of theory. The course most certainly helped me achieve that. Going in I understood my major and minor scales, but was fairly confused on the relationship between key and the chords. The way this was taught, with a lot of practical application, gave me many moments of understanding on topics that before I had edged around without quite hitting.

The actual technique parts were less useful (although hugely confidence boosting).

I did realise my slap technique didn’t align with that taught( my thumb position is at 1 o clock not 11), and although I’m still more comfortable the way I am used to I will endeavour to adjust.

I would love to see more on chords.

[Liffguard]

I started the course in June and have finally finished on 24th October. A little longer than I’d originally planned, but there’s no accounting for life getting in the way of things.

A little background first. I’m primarily a pianist and wanted to pick up a new instrument for personal interest and a new challenge. I like piano a lot but wanted something “meatier,” something with a bit more oomph behind it. I was torn between drums and bass, and chose bass mainly because it took up less room and was more portable!

I tried a few different online lesson plans before settling on BassBuzz, because I found it had by far the best designed course structure that provided the most fun and engagement whilst learning.
The way the course is split into lessons followed by workouts is excellent. Being able to actually play along with music from the very first lesson played a key role in keeping my interest. Rather than just being told theory and then having to practice dry drills, I actually felt “musical” from the beginning of the course to the end. This lesson/workout structure is the main reason the course works so well IMO.

I was already comfortable with music theory from my piano experience, but it was still useful to go through it again and have a refresher. For anyone coming to the course without any experience in music theory, I can confirm that it covers it in an easily digestible, progressive way.

I do have one criticism. I felt that having an entire module for slapping was too much, and it killed my momentum for a bit. I struggled with slap technique a lot, but being a completionist, didn’t want to skip the module. As a result I didn’t practice for a couple of weeks. Ultimately I did end up skipping this module and coming back to it after completing the rest of the course.
Personally, I think it would be better to have individual slap lessons interspersed throughout the course, rather than concentrating it all in one module.

Overall though, that’s a fairly minor criticism. I enjoyed the course very much and feel like I have a good bass foundation to build on in the future. I strongly recommend the course to other beginners.

[JerryP]

Welcome @Liffguard and congratulations on finishing the course!

[TNKA36]

Welcome aboard @Liffguard,
Congratulations on completing the course
The big advantage you have is that your piano training will help immensely with reading the bass music.
As Josh says during the course if your struggling move on and come back later, I didn’t even do the slapping module, I wasn’t interested
None of the music I play will ever have slap in it, just a choice thing.
It’s great to hear you were determined enough to complete it👍Although it put you on the sidelines for a couple of weeks.
Enjoy your journey.
Cheers Brian

[Mac]

Welcome @Liffguard
I too struggled with the slap module and I’ve yet to go back to it but I am determined to one day.
Congratulations on completing the course

[bernds64]

Dear Josh and all you others,
i had little doubts making this online course to learn an instrument cause it is held in a language i´m not a native speaker for BUT all my thoughts about that were wiped away after a few moments and i really enjoyed it more and more. Sure i miss the opportunity where Josh could criticize my hand-holding and other things that would pop up while having an eye to eye situation but i think that the main idea of gettin someone to play bass who did nothing with music before is a big success in two ways and that means the content AND how Josh is “transporting” it (forgive me my bad english).

So i would like to give a big applause/standing ovation and can assure that i´ve already told some people about it and recommend it.
At least i want to give a constructive critic and that is what you @JoshFossgreen told us about practicing at the end, cause i think that is such an important thing to know that it could be placed much more earlier in the course, but that is polishing diamonds
So Josh and the team behind it

[Mac]

@bernds64

forgive me my bad english).

@bernds64 , I cannot speak any other language except English ( not even my traditional language of Gaelic I’m ashamed to say) so please don’t apologise for your anything but poor English!

[Jamietashi]

I speak Scottish @Mac and most non native English speakers I’ve met fae Europe can fair get a better grasp o the English than I can. All the road signs in Scotland are now also in the Gaelic
Jamie

[Mac]

The road signs are awesome @Jamietashi!
I knew the Welsh had done it including their cop cars ( how many times can you get pulled over just for riding a motorcycle in one day )

[howard]

Wow. Now I am picturing middle english run amok.