I’d turn this in its head…I’m good enough to play what I can play now, so are you. You know the stuff I’ve been playing and it isn’t all that complex - but I want to get to a point where I can play more complicated material. For me, that goal is Rio, I may never get there, but along the way I’ll play some fun tunes - by way of example, the various versions of Tainted Love. Yep, I will drop another one . I see no reason why you could not adopt a similar approach…
Years ago, I did the Myers-Briggs personality test. Turned out I was on the cusp of introvert/extrovert - neither one or the other. What I’ve learnt through my working life is that one has to put oneself out there, push outside the comfort zone. When recording this stuff, you’re playing to an iPhone (at least I am ). . You then put the video on YouTube, where ummmm, roughly 7 people are going to look at it, and then for about 7 seconds.
As for me laughing, why would I do that? I’m 6 / 7 months in to this journey too, I’m a beginner. I think we’re all here to support each other, encourage each other. I can’t imagine many, if any of us heave delusions of becoming a professional bass player. I certainly don’t! It’s just a bit of fun in a world that can be crazy, beautiful, scary, exciting, meaningful, meaningless…
I am deeply introvert by heart. I have thought about it a lot when I was younger and concluded that introverts get nowhere.
So I learned to behave like an extrovert. Mind over matter!
I still think that extroverts are only loud and obnoxious after all , so that’s easy to mimic
Most people don’t believe that, but “funny” story: an ex-girlfriend told me, at the end of a seven year relationship, that she never knew what was going on in my head and what I would do in the next moment. She was very right, though for everybody else I was/am as outgoing as it gets!
Appearing to be extrovert helps a lot, especially in my job, where I also need to do a lot of presentations, convince unwilling management or get the team to pursue the impossible. You know the drill…
I would be laughing about my cover - especially about (someone like) me! But of course in a tender and respectful way ^^
Definitely! I’m quite the introvert as well, yet my work requires me to be outgoing and something of a cheerleader so I have to work in concentrated bursts of extroversion for public speaking, trade shows, and all that. I have to have some quiet time to recover afterwards.
More topically, I knew my bass playing sucked when I first started posting covers. It’s still nothing to brag about, but I do kinda cringe when I watch the old videos. But, it does give me a reference point to track improvement over time! And ironically, I wouldn’t have improved as much as I did if I hadn’t focused so much on practicing/learning songs well enough to post a video of me playing poorly.
Long story short, I couldn’t think of a better more supportive place than here to share that kind of content without having to worry about people being overly or nastily critical.
You are right, and this is exactly what @Whying_Dutchman does all the time in this forum. Maybe he acts a lil bit overexcited, but he keeps being polite and respectful to anyone. Definitely not a jerk.
…and by the way I shovel the driveway for my neighbour for years, this doesn’t make me a kinder person.
I would probably say yes. I bought the course a while ago on another discounted promotion (apart from my first course with him I’ve bought all on discounts - which he runs quite regularly). I’ve only done the first theory part so far where he talks about a bunch of techniques, but really the meat of the course are the etudes - typically 4-8 bars of music with short videos where he talks you through the etude and what you should get out of it. This style works really well for me and I am loving doing the Groove Trainer courses that are presented in a similar way.
And to be honest $40 is not a lot of money - these days you’ll probably spend that in one night out! In comparison this is definitely more for your buck!
I’m also looking for another online course I can do simultan to b2b because I stuck over a week in module 11 and I need something to keep me motivated. Which talking bass course would you recommend? …and where to you get the discount codes?
I respectfully disagree. Doing nice things for people is a kind thing. I didn’t have to shovel his driveway, I just thought it would be nice for him not to have to it after a long drive.
Let’s not make something out of nothing here.
Oh and I fully appreciate that @Whying_Dutchman wasn’t being serious when he referred to himself as obnoxious. I understand that he was being self deprecating. A fine Dutch trait in my experience.
Mark Smith currently has a 30% discount code for commemorating his 11 years since starting TalkingBass.net.
It is: thankyou30
As for which course to start with: It all depends on a player’s level and interests. Check out the course descriptions at Talking Bass for details on each.
Maybe a little justification: Dutch is a very rich and complex language, and we really are a very funny people, but it’s for us hard to convey that due to linguistic reasons
This elaborated humour gets lost in the translation, unfortunately. Most languages neither have the the wealth of words, nor the complexity of grammar to reflect Dutch prose - so for English and even French speakers, it can sound a little blunt sometimes, even though we mean well.
Dutch is in that respect much closer to other ancient primal languages - like gaelic, for example: a language that has this blue @ss humour built-in, never to be understood by the British (remember Braveheart?).
Oh, was that not a joke? I can catch like 80% of what’s going on if I watch a bike race on sporza, it’s not that different from English. I have seen some Dutch idioms translated before and it seems like there’s a lot of thinking about cows going on in Dutch speaking areas.
. I see no reason why you could not adopt a similar approach…
). . You then put the video on YouTube, where ummmm, roughly 7 people are going to look at it, and then for about 7 seconds.
