Jumping into this thread a couple years late, but I’m right in the middle of Simple Steps to Sight Reading Vol 1, Level 2 and I can relate to the long hours of practice. The time required to both learn the fretboard and reading music at the same time is big, but I’m amazed at what i can do now that I couldn’t 3 weeks ago. I’ve only been learning bass now for about 7 weeks. The issue I’m having is I’m so hyper focused on completing the Sight Reading curriculum that I have to force myself to stop and do other ‘practice’ things like a B2B module or learn a song, or practice scales, etc and there’s just not enough hours in the day.
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Big congrats on your sight reading course progress, @jefflangford67. But keep in mind that Mark Smith very much emphasizes a blend of practice topics so you feed your fingers and brain a healthy diet of playing practice.
So, yeah, some sight reading, some song learning, definitely doing B2B for technique and theory (plus exposure to lots of tunes and a ton of fun!).
Don’t stress, man. Do what feels good to you and keep practicing. You got this.
This.
Invaluable!
Sounds like the kind of thing a rugby coach would say.
I once got thrown over the shoulder of an ex-rugby player in Australia while on tour. He was a human troll, basically. And drunk.
It was humbling.
I bet he would say things like that too.
Also, he gave the whole band old jersies of his. Weird night.
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Sort of related, I drunkenly jumped on the shoulders of a large Samoan man on our way back to the ship in… Indonesia? I think, it was 26 years ago but we spent the night at a club with a bunch of us sitting in with the house band playing stuff we all knew (Doors, Nirvana, Metallica, Green Day). Kap was drunk also, and didn’t hardly notice the little 160 lb fly that he’d picked up. Weird night, although not as weird as the night in Thailand that I ended up drinking and smoking with a monkey after my friends left me in the bar.
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Good times…
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Best times…
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Only if there were 27 hours everyday. Those won’t be enough too