How much do you practice

Gotta say… I was overconfident with my statement!

I am taking a break today because I overdid my Billy Jean training and my pinky is still protesting after a good nights sleep so I don’t want to cause any damage to my wrist/tendons and decided to rest for today. (On bass playing and powerlifting)

My vocal chords on the other hand don’t deserve the rest. When I got to the end of B2B I got so excited that I kept playing bass instead of switching to vocal training later and missed two days of training. Most vocal trainers tell you to sing every day. Just has to be five minutes but I am inclined to trust them after my performance dropped with a 2 day break :unamused:

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I try to practice every day, and when I do it’s at least 30 minutes and often lasts 1 hour, sometimes more. I just don’t have more time that that. I picked up the bass for the first time 5 months ago, and now the experience is beginning to be more satisfying in that I can catch a groove more easily. I can hear a song where ever I am, and I’ll want to pick up the bass and chug with it, or try to figure it out. I have a long, long way to go though.

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I’m just gonna move it here so you have to get into the thread and @Jazzbass19 doesn’t have to worry about us filling up the welcome thread :wink:

It’s all a balance thing. There’s no time someone else can tell you. But practicing for a long time puts more strain on your hand, tendons and everything and I don’t know how far you got into techniques. For me it was impossible to play the octaves with my pinky for longer than 5 minutes at first. Now I can do half an hour of that.
So practice as long as you feel comfortable with. A little bit uncomfort might be okay for new things but never pain.
2) when do I practice, after each lesson or each module?
Probably after each lesson. You can either replay the workouts as often as you want to until you are satisfied and can play it in a relaxed state or have a look here: BassBuzz YouTube Video Guide
It connects the B2B course to the Bassbuzz youtube videos. So when you learn something in the course you can go to youtube for additonal training resources for a lot of lessons.
It is also fun to use the playalongs in the course extras. Joshs explanations are welcome but I don’t need a chord progression explained the Xth time.
That said if you feel comfortable playing the workouts to the lessons and are nailing it - move on in the course! You can decide on your practice routine after you finished the course. You will probably also have more of an idea what things you want to learn and what things you are struggling with.

Since I started talking about practice I can’t hold back: In order to play fast you have to learn to play slow and get faster. It can’t be said often enough. Nothing is gained if you tigthen up and fumble the coordination. Rather go slow and right than fast and messy.

Also it’s sometimes worth it to move on with the course instead of fixating on nailing the fast workout. Especially Module 4 Lesson 6 - most, maybe all people can’t do that on fast after going through the whole course. All of us are working on it though.

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@juli0r
Very nicely written piece you’ve put together with some very wise words :+1:

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I learn bass only 1 month and I practice about 1 hour everyday,i don’t want to let teacher and me get disappointed about myself.

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Welcome @Eric37!
If you do it every day I think one hour is plenty.

If you want to check out this thread and tell us a little about yourself in Introduce Yourself! (2018-2022)

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@juli0r that’s some really great advice, I taken a few of your practice ideas and incorporated them into my mish mash practice routine. I’ve had a bad bout of pancreatitis for the past few weeks, so my practice has just been a few scales, just making sure that I pick up my bass several times a day and hopefully I’ll get back to a better practice regime in a few day’s.
Thank’s Juli for all your work.
Jamie
:guitar: :slight_smile: :guitar:

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Thanks. It’s not work for me. I just try to fill my day with somethin productive/constructive. And my fingers and vocal chords won’t let me work out indefinitely as I described. Honestly sometimes I hold back in order to not flood the forum :wink: And that’s probably barely or maybe not at all noticable.

Also as someone who apparently reads all my posts you probably notice that I’m just saying the same things over and over. With less time on my hands I would probably also just refer to an existing thread and let them read through it but I like the direct communication and surely he would have found the answers to his questions in those threads but he’d have to navigate thorugh a lot of fluff that’s not interesting to him.

Hope you get better soon. It’s always frustrating to be held back from practice. My back pain is finally gone. In the morning it was still some left but by now everything is fine. Now I just have to get into the habit of doing my workout regularly so it will stay that way.

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This is very helpful, thank you! I’ll just try to squeeze in as much time as I can right now, and see how things go later. I need to familiarize myself with the site too. Do you do both lessons and BassBuzz’s YouTube channel?

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Yes! We are all thankful to @eric.kiser for taking the time to create it and keeping it up to date. It is a really useful resource.

I personally did those rarely. There are a few topics in which I did - Slap for example. Slap is a bit better explained in the youtube video compared to the course to be honest. But all things that came relatively easy to me I just did the workout and moved on with the course.
I already started doing the finger exercises (5 Levels of Bass Finger Exercise (Beginner to Advanced)) before starting the course but to be honest I am not very disciplined with it. I just sometimes throw it in my practice.

Overall I just recommend focusing on finishing the course. You can create a workout/practice schedule afterwards. If you have time to play try to progress in the course. You can always have a look at the youtube guide but I would not get hung up on trying to nail the things Josh talks about in his youtube videos. Some of them are also more of a long term practice thing to make you gradually better. Not to “learn it” and then nail it.

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So it’s actually more than one thing going on when we’re going through the course. I like the bit-size approach, and I’m already at it. Little practice here and there as we go down the course. You’ve been very helpful, thank you. I have bookmarked your posts for future reference!

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The short answer: not enough!
The long answer: I’m pretty nooby, and I’m still getting into the whole bass thing. My teacher is still teaching me basics so he’s not really assigning me any actual songs to learn. Right now, I practice probably 20 minutes five times a week. I aim to be doing at least 30 minutes 6 days a week once I have actual songs to practice.

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I play daily, I practice 3-4 times a week sometimes 30 min sometimes 5 hrs.

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At least an hour a day preferably more but not a strict structured plan. I get my bass out maybe do a scale or too and then hit the tunes I enjoy playing. It’s really got to be fun or I can’t see the point

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Every day from as little as 15 minutes to up to 2 hours. I take a break every twenty minutes or so.

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I never practice traditionally. I just play music.

(I am not advising this, it works for me but probably not everyone, and it is not my goal to become the next Charles Berthoud-level bass virtuoso).

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I practice between 1-2 hours every week night, don’t do much on the weekends unless I’m recording a cover.
I only practice songs I want to cover, although I should spend more time doing theory, but I find theory a bit boring🤔.
Again everyone is different with their practice routine, this works for me👍
Cheers Brian

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Just finished up another 68 hour week. Got the next three days off.

Probably will spend 1-2 hours a day for the next three days.

On my working days when I get home, I try to put at least 15 minutes in before I go to bed.

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I am a bit of a weirdo when it comes to practice. I sit down and intently practice about 1.5-2 hours a day with short breaks in between maybe 5 -10 minutes of breaks. Then if I sit down and watch a movie with my family at night I will work on right hand technique with the bass in my hands and no amp for however long I feel like it. I break my practice time up in scales and chord tones/arpeggios, chords, rhythm, timing, and learning new songs. I should add that I have the time to practice like this as well otherwise it might be a lot less

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You’re a bass player. We’re ALL weirdos. xD

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