I know there are 50 million posts on here about blisters and other over use newbie injuries but I have a question that might be a little different (hopefully).
I’m having a lot of fun working through B2BA and trying to play along with tabs on YT. I wouldn’t say I’m pushing myself too hard but it’s easy to be having fun and look up and it’s been 3 or 4 hours.
My fingers are a little sore but borderline on the blister/raw stage and I’ll even modify things up and cycle through a few fingers at a time if one is starting to hurt.
Anyway my question: Do you think it would help my fingers more to split my practice sessions? For instance instead of 3-4 hours do 1 in the am and 1 in the pm?
Also does Ice help with recovery? I mean we are dealing with pressure and road rash here, but I got to think there is a level of inflammation that I could tame with ice
I know there is a lot to say about taking breaks and letting your mind and body heal, but I also tend to have ADHD hot/cold tendencies so while I’m “all in” I’d like to maximize my time and try to get to the next level so that the rewards keep me going.
I just completed wk 3 in B2BA last night and I’m super stoked about finishing out the course and finding some friends to play with.
Probably. I’m new to bass, but I’ve been a rock climber for years, so no stranger to finger strain and blisters. Breaking up workouts can make a big difference.
Your playing will probably also benefit from splitting things up. After learning something new, it takes time to process and internalize.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stop playing. But I would limit how much new information you try to learn in a practice session. For myself I typically do one B2B lesson and work on learning one song in a practice session. But I will fill out additional time with playing songs I already know, doing muscle-memory exercises, and just noodling around.
If your fretting hand is bugging you, you can always work on just rhythm/plucking exercises. If you plucking fingers are bothering you, you can play around with pick, slap, or thumb plucking.
It’s best to slowly break in your finger toughness but this is a great time to learn your finger pressure because it’s throbbing and sensitive. It’s the best time to learn how little effort it takes to fret a note.
I bled for the LowEnd goddess on two of my basses’ fingerboards and was granted the rite of passage a couple of decades ago and now most of get is a little sore after a few extended hours of playing.
I was watching videos about some of the bass greats and how they super glued thumbs back together and developed 3 or 4 plucking techniques so they could keep playing. Right now I’m alternating between:
-B2BA
Learning riffs from hard songs slowly
Playing super easy songs at full speed
trying to understand music theory
Teaching my son guitar and playing along with him
I’m hoping to start the 2 week challenge soon but I want to get recording myself down first and I haven’t taken the time to get fully set up.
I know what you mean about feeling driven to keep playing, even after discomfort or fatigue has set in. However, breaking up the amount of time played into various sessions, rather than one long one, is always a better, more productive approach.
You are not only training your body to do something foreign to it, you’re training your brain to learn new concepts AND to process the flood of tactile feedback from your fingers, hands, shoulder, back, legs, etc. Playing bass is both a mental and physical activity, and overdoing it most often leads to mental and physical overload for beginners.
In short, to get the absolute most benefit from practice sessions, shorten the overall time per session and give your mind and body breaks. Learning a musical instrument is a marathon, not a sprint. Slow and steady wins the race.
It’s a temporary fix but not great ad the aftermath can be quite painful. Unlike guitar players we don’t have to develop a thick callous to avoid pain of fretting. That said, I have a fresh bottle of NuSkin in my gig bag because you’ll never know.
I say keep doing what you’re doing. You’re not going to do any real damage and if you’re having fun that’s all that matters. This coming from a guy who decided to sign up for his first ever triathlon three months before the race without owning a bike or knowing how to swim. I also chose the most difficult 70.3 ironman in the continental US. (that was the rumor I heard anyway, then I just did a quick google search that confirmed this) Was that smart, no. Have I ever done it again? also no. I want to, but when I started playing bass all other hobbies took a back seat.
It’s covered somewhere, but I can’t remember where. In essence, your thumb really shouldn’t be doing any work behind the neck, i.e. it shouldn’t be exerting any force and you should be able to lift it off, without affecting your fretting. In terms of your fingers, they should be applying just enough pressure, just behind the fret, so create a clean, buzz-free note. Any more pressure than that is wasted effort. The simple exercise to do here is play a note, gradually increasing and decreasing pressure, you will hear, and feel, the sweet spot where there is just enough pressure.
Of course the difficulty is maintaining this as you play a baseline!!! I was playing one last night and ended up really tense, holding the neck like a baseball bat. Needless to say, my playing was cr@p. Relax, ease off and bingo, I could hit the notes cleanly and play absolutely in time.
I can’t remember in the course, but if you check his video in the 2 week technique challenge, he discusses in more detail there and shows a practice exercise, pretty much what @sunDOG describes above.
That’s one of the exercise I did when I started playing fretless bass, you can’t really do the Vibrato with full or even half pressure on your left thumb. I practice doing vibrato with each of the finger and no thumb.
@sunDOG , thanks for the tip… just wrapped up module 2 and concentrating on little to no thumb pressure and all I can say is, WOW what a difference!! Towards the end of Mod 2, Josh had me fretting on the D and G strings and i tried it there. Word of difference. Thanks Brother!
