Hi there, After todays practice session I noticed that I have problems with small details when playing along in the workouts. Could be muting, could be fret buzz or one note not loud enough etc.
Are we expected to get everything close to perfect at least in the slow workout? Depending on the excercise, sometimes this has worked in the past (I am working on module 5 right now) but I find that I run into small problems here and there and I always notice small things that are not 100% correct.
Now, if I would practice a lesson until I got it almost perfect, each new lesson would take me probably somewhere between a week or a month to finish. But we are told to move on to the next lesson, to keep the momentum going (which makes sense to me).
Are small mistakes and imperfections acceptable and is it ok to move on to the next lesson as long as you don´t make any crass mistakes? Were you able to nail every lesson with absolute perfection before you moved on? Or am I just crazy and too critical with myself? (I guess that a lot of the problems I have right now will sort themself out as I continue in the course…)
Right now I have decided, not to worry too much about little imperfections, as it probably takes many years to perfect your technique. Is that the right approach? Any thoughts and comments are highly welcome.
Muting, fret buzz, and plucking the notes consistently will work out over time, with the caveat that fret buzz could be due to setup, in which case the bass needs a setup.
None of these should hold you back, keep moving forward and work on technique as you do.
I always tried to complete every workout (slow, medium, fast) and make them sound as good as possible, and sometimes spent more time on them than I thought I would, but I always moved on as soon as they stopped being fun. As a beginner you won’t be able to make anything sound perfect anyway, there’s no point getting stuck.
Move along. The beauty of online courses is the ability to have another crack at it, and another, and another.
If you spend too much time in a rut, it just gets deeper and deeper until it becomes a grave.
I just had my ass kicked by the free jazz chromatic bass line in module 6. I think I got it about 60% right but was getting frustrated so I moved on to module 7 and will revisit it later.
It gave me a great string to string work-out. I didn’t mind it, it just confused my fingers and honestly made no musical sense. I guess my future is not in free-jazz
@Snoopy
There is no target date to complete the lessons. Take your time, practice muting and reduce fret buzz. It doesn’t make sense to cut short and finish the course with the same problems you started it.
Just my 0.02 pesos
It is good that you notice those. It’s entirely possible that you had those problems even in the easier workouts but did not have the mental capicity to acknowledge them at the time. I personally like the idea of timeboxing stuff that’s tiresome to work on. I would not completely stop the course but have a rule that goes something like: “Okay, with this fretting here I have problems to avoid fretbuzz, because it’s further apart than I’m used to and I have to use my pinky. So I will take 10 minutes of my training session to practice that as good as I can and then continue on with the course.”
I guarantee that this will have a higher effort/result ratio than forcing yourself to get it perfect and trying it for 3 or more hours at once.
Yes.
In my opinion it is.
A lot of these problems will solve themselves to a degree. To get hung up on fret buzz when fretting and timing is not on point yet is simply a waste of your time to be frank. You’ll notice what I’m talking about if you go back to easier lessons after a while.
If you notice a consistend and recurring problem there’s still the learning method I mentioned above. As Josh would say: bite-sized learning in combination with “It’s more effective to learn 5 minutes everyday than an hour once a week.”
I try to pick a song that will take me 3 months to learn, a song that will take a month to learn and songs I can play in 2 to 3 days. That way I have something to work towards and still have some instant gratification along the way. When I go back to songs that I struggled with previously when I revisit then I play them much better
That’s a very good way to learn songs. And then you should keep going back to the song or songs you first learn trying to get them better sounding then you did it last time. And then before you know it your playing sounds better the buzzing goes away your notes get to where each is just as good and clear as the last one. And you don’t have to think about it anymore. And by that point that really hard song isn’t near as hard as it was. Now you can replace that song with the next hard song you are wanting to learn. And the next thing you know it’s been a year since you picked up the bass for the first time. Now stop and look back at how far you have came in that year. And then keep reaching for the stars.
