@John_E, I doubt you’re alone, and I know that many of us in here are in the same age group as you; I am exactly the same age. Yay 1967!!
It is a bit difficult trying to remember this stuff but I’m really enjoying it. I use almost all my spare time practicing. I have a regular job, a wife, and three adult “kids.” So I can’t spend the entire day and evening practicing but I do practice quite a bit. I do it as much as I can and obviously many people here may have different circumstances but I’m not expecting too much too quickly, I’m just hoping that in possibly a year or so I MIGHT be able to play with a small band in my area.
Oh, and Ari Cap’s book - Music Theory for the Bass Player is sooooo f’ing great!!! I ordered it after seeing another member mention it. It is an excellent book.
I’m actually in the 1966 camp, missed '67 by a few days, but close enough.
What I have found since my first post here 1 year ago is this…(spolier alert)…
The more you practice the easier it gets.
It gets easier much slower than I want it too.
But I thought about this recently.
Let’s say you nab a bass at say, 15.
If you were like me you had nothing but a lot of free time that was wasted, well, being wasted for many years to come after that, or sitting in my room listening to music and brooding about not having a girlfriend.
But if you nabbed a bass and sat in your room and played/practiced/learned bass in all those endless hours, say even 4-5 a day, you are damn good by say even 18, maybe later, maybe sooner.
So take 3 years, double or triple it cause it’s harder to learn when you are older, then divide by the 30-120 min maybe we can practice, then divide that by say 4 or 5/7ths cause we don’t have the time to practice every day, and you get a trajectory that starts making sense for our age group with family, work and other distractions.
I challanged myself to learn and record one of the 50 Song Challenge songs in one day, to see if I got any faster learning songs.
And I did it…
