Hi everyone! Hoping to get some thoughts and advice here from your collected wisdom.
For a bit of background first, I bought a guitar during the first lockdowns in mid-2020 and I’ve been through a few different courses… started with Fender Play, then moved to GuitarZero2Hero, and am now with Justin Guitar. In April of last year I bought a bass thanks to a friend playing one, and I signed up for BassBazz and have been thoroughly enjoying that (though I have enough hobbies that I’m still only about half-way through, currently on Module 10 Lesson 3 ).
I saw Josh’s latest video, “Top 5 Technique Fails”, and was very interested to see the bit about trying to learn another motor skill within six hours of learning a new one, and how it can set you slow your progress or even set you back completely. Despite owning three guitars now and having played for nearly four and a half years, I really feel like I’m just not making much progress with it, and I’ve come a LOT further in the much shorter time that I’ve owned my bass—though granted I haven’t had to deal with chords on bass, haha.
That bit about the motor skills made me think that maybe I’m being too ambitious… am I screwing up my progress by trying to learn two similar but different things at once? And if so, any recommendations for attempting to do this, like maybe do guitar one week and bass another, or alternating each day but not trying to do both in the one day? Something else entirely?
Hi there!
I took lessons for bass way back then and to me that helps with the online courses. It means I can watch myself a bit from the teacher’s point of view.
Regarding guitar playing, I find that it just goes through stagnation a bit more than bass, at least in the beginning. Chords can take months to get really good.
My advice is to challenge yourself more. As in, try to do exercises that are too hard, then slow down afterwards.
And there’s many people learning both guitar and bass at the same time successfully. The only thing is that the day only has 24 hours.
It’s been a very long time since I was just a “Learner” but I can’t see how working to master both would be an issue from a mechanical point of view. Both hands are doing much the same thing with some slight variations.
The mental aspects my be more of a challenge though since the two have different parts to play. Over the years I always felt my guitar playing helped my bass playing. But I’ve never had a student want to try both simultaneously.
I can see how learning a mechanical skill should be done one at a time. Makes sense. When I was taught mechanics in sports or fighting, it was always get one down before you try the next one. I would focus on one and build the foundation.
I played guitar for 3 years, I never really loved it that much and when a great deal came up on a bass I decided I’d give it a try and I loved it! I played other bass clef instruments before so I guess bass is just my thing
If you want to make the best progress you can at bass, play bass… nothing else is going to help you progress better than playing more bass.
Now if you want to have fun and do something different when you get a bit bored of playing bass then sure, play some guitar.
If you want to learn theory then play keyboard/piano.
I mostly play bass during the week, 30 mins 3 or 4 nights playing songs and then I play a bit of guitar on the weekend. Sometimes I’ll play guitar for 15 mins before playing bass. If I was working on improving my skills I’d play more but I have a lot of other stuff going on and I can only concentrate on 3 things at a time… and I have zero time right now for drums
I have a 4 and a 5 but only ever tried to get serious with the 5, revisiting it now after a long break and finally learning chords properly after just learning songs Scruggs style.
I hear you on that. I was into bluegrass back in the early 70’s and had a nice Alvarez 5 string that I put Scruggs tuners on and took weekly lessons at the local music store to learn “Scruggs style” for over a year. My teacher was a Cajun, nice man, but he never mentioned that my rhythm sucked or there was a thing called a metronome or even played guitar along with me to help find the rhythm. Every week it was a mimeographed page of tablature for songs like 'Bile them cabbage down, Foggy Mountain breakdown, and Red winged Blackbird ( not to be confused with ZZ-Top’s Mexican Blackbird). In the end I still sucked and gave up on it. 40 years later I tried to learn claw hammer style and my rhythm still sucked and I gave up on it. Now, if I can learn rhythm while learning b2b, 2 finger style is on my bucket list if I live long enough.
Yeah, this is what I’m leaning towards I think (looks awkwardly at the third guitar he bought just last month >_>).
Hah, this is sort of similar for me, I’m finding bass just seems to… I dunno, click better with me?
I actually bought an electronic drum kit during the second and harsher lockdowns we had in mid-2021, haha! Of all three instruments I’d actually say I’m by far best at them, and I feel like bass and drums are quite complementary in their roles.
If you’re happy to accept that you will not learn as fast as your individual capability will allow, you can spend your time learning more than one thing, regardless of what they are. If they can benefit from transferable skillsets, you’ll not be spreading yourself as thinly as if they have none.
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Yeah, this is what I’m leaning towards I think (looks awkwardly at the third guitar he bought just last month >_>).