First time playing after Covid

Technique
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I picked up the bass the other night after 18 days of not playing with no intentions to do a B2B lesson. I was simply going to run through some scales and do some finger exercises to make sure I still had “it”. I didn’t have “it” and ended up clanking, slurring and smudging my way through the scale exercises I attempted. My fretting was horrible, my sound was crap and my fingers did not want to stretch. My micro-shifts were off and I would either overshoot or undershoot the frets. I literally sucked. But, I will get back on the horse and soldier on. On the flip side, my raking was flawless, so there’s that.

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@EddieJones Get better fast. All the skills will return. Rock on :metal:!

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I intend to. You will see me onstage one day wearing tight leather pants, leopard print spandex top (If I can find one to stretch over my belly, otherwise just a halter top) sweating with snot spewing forth from my nose, playing in my heavy metal, hip hop, speed, grind core, neoclassical, reggae shred band. We will call ourselves “Blasted Sphincter”.

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4

I’m really glad to hear you recovered from COVID, first off.

The rest will come back, I’m sure. :slight_smile:

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start with really easy things you know are fun and dopey to play, it will come.

I stopped playing sax for a couple months due to some dental work…i have had a horrible week this week starting up again, painful in many ways, but it comes back quickly after a bit.

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I could still do BJ though so it wasn’t all bad

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:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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@John_E How long have you been playing Sax?

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~10 years ish, trumpet before that

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That’s what I thought.
And was surprised you said the following:

So, any beginners reading this take careful note note that if you stop playing/practicing for any length of time it will take time to get back to where you were.

Thanks for this insight @John_E

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11

your lip muscles are the smallest muscle group of them all.
sax, clarinet, trumpet, etc all take some time got get those muscles going again (despite all the hot air and chewing in between) to play in tune, have good tone control, etc.
its no different than going to the gym every day then stopping for a while.

It probably didn’t help that I picked up the bari first, then got smart and moved to tenor for a few days instead.

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:scream:
I’m going to try and wash my brain to see if I can remove this vision from my memory :crazy_face:

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I can live with that, except the hip hop :wink:

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