Yeah I get what you’re saying. I know GAS is kind of glorified on this forum (hopefully jokingly, but I sometimes wonder). But in the real world not everyone suffers from it. LOL
E.g. Every gear purchase I make is carefully considered. I don’t buy things on a whim, and I don’t buy things I don’t need. E.g. octave and synth pedals are cool, but I haven’t bought either because I have no real need for them. The pedals I do have, I use all the time. An observation I’ll make is a lot of people out there are terrible with money. Not saying you or anyone else here is, just saying in general.
At the end of the day, most of us are dealing with a finite amount of money, and we have to decide what to spend it on and prioritize. For most of us, this is a hobby, so is lower priority than a lot of other expenses in our lives.
I agree that in the early days, education is likely more useful to most than new gear would be (unless your gear sucks so bad it makes you not want to play/practice). But if we’re talking beginner level, $250 can go a LONG way toward education. Especially if you’re savvy and able to self-teach via things like blog posts, YouTube videos, etc. Which I assume most of us here are since we’re here. Someone suggested a free app (which I’m using) that has been very helpful to me, and I’ve frankly learned to read bass clef more and faster from that than from classes, private lessons, etc. Josh’s course is a damned good deal and teaches loads of skills. I’ve paid a certain YouTuber $6 over two months for their Patreon and learned a buttload of songs (and have tabs and transcriptions for a lot more I’ll learn “some day”).
I just see these quite pricey courses recommended quite a bit on this forum when people ask questions like these, and I don’t think those recommendations are nearly as helpful to most people as the ones making them think they are. Is the course worth it? I’m sure it is if that’s exactly what you need. But for a lot of people, they can get a lot more bang for their buck than that, because they don’t need that deep of a dive that will take years, when they could get something much cheaper that they can use right now.
Personally, I don’t give a whit what anyone plays or chooses to learn, or how. Everyone is free to follow whichever path seems most necessary at the time. To each his own.
That said, my own is quality education from great instructors, so that’s what I recommend when generic questions are posted about sources of education.
Do those recommendations fit one and all scenarios and needs? Absolutely not. But that wasn’t the question.
We each have personal levels of experience, as the wide variety of stated life and musical experiences of forum members proves here every day.
Very hopefully, everyone learns something from everyone else in this forum, whether he/she be a beginner, intermediate, or advanced player. Sometimes it’s something good. Other times, maybe not so much. But if we’re all lucky, we learn something. At least, so I sincerely hope.
250 seems like a bargain when you evaluate what you’re getting for the money. I didn’t think twice about 200 for the B2B course, which again, seems like a bargain. For context, my son’s lessons for banjo and sax are 320 per month which is 4 hours of instruction, total. Good instruction/instructors don’t come cheap.
Also, what has been glossed over regarding @markjsmith’s sight reading course is that it’s available for purchase as individual volumes, with each volume costing 90 bucks.
In other words, there’s no need to spend $250 in one go. The set of three volumes presents a discount over purchasing each volume individually, that’s all.
Regardless, the amount of training and practice materials in Mark’s sight reading course volumes each present in return unique progressive playing insights and months of practice — taking a student from complete sight reading newbie to very advanced player.
I’m currently taking a number of your courses at Talkingbass and own pretty much all of them. I’d have to agree that the Sight Reading course is so comprehensive, progressive, and complete, that it’s very difficult to describe how amazing it really is.
