Post your achievements!

Counterpoint to “what are you struggling with” for some positive vibes. Post your accomplishments big or small.

Mine today: After nearly a month, I finally made it through Jeff Berlin Lesson Twenty Etude A.

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It’s objectively a small thing, but I’m very proud of myself.
I can learn new songs by ear!
A lot of the songs I like have not been written down anywhere, and now I can do it myself :slight_smile:

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That’s not a small thing at all!

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It’s indeed not, as Howard pointed out!

Being able to “transcribe” (even without committing it to paper) is a super power!!

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I made it through the Black Friday/Cyber Monday unscathed

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I had the a-ha moment that if you ever miss a note you can just play the next higher fret and have a cool walk-up that you totally intended the whole time :sunglasses:

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on the sax side, been working on scales around the circle of 4ths…one up, next one down, then up then down… all around.
Started with one scale at a time at 80bpm (1/8th notes) until they were all clean, now up to 130bpm, goal is to hit 150 clean, which should take 11 seconds in all.
I am not a fast player, so this is a big push for me.
130 is even a breakthrough.

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on the bass side, I had a really hard time after covid with memorizing a song and playing it.
The True Colors tune was a very easy song, but the Peddlers On A Clear Day I just did was a bit trickier and I think broke the covid fog spell I had on covers.

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I can relate. I prided myself on having almost perfect recall my whole life. Hell, in 9th grade I memorized most of the Declaration of Independence just because and can recite it today. However, when I got Covid it really messed up my ability to remember things that I try to learn today. I can still recall things in detail from 45-50 years ago. But I cannot keep track of things that may have happened yesterday. My Doctor told me that the fog could last for a really long time.

However, I am really proud of the fact that I played all the songs on Level One Players Path at SBL and am three songs deep into Level Two (which is enough to move to Level Three. However, I choose to learn all songs on whatever Level I am working on) SBL has one called Steel Maiden that is really fast chugging 8th notes but with transitions in the passage. It took me some steady work but I finally can play it at 100% speed with no errors. He has another called Sledgehammer that has a tricky pinky roll that gave me fits at first. But by using the looper I was able to execute it cleanly and now my pinky is very strong and independent and can do things that I could not do 6 months ago. Another accomplishment I am proud of is that I can set-up my own basses to my playing preference. I am not scared of the truss rod, adjust each string to optimal height without buzzing, and generally have a good ear for differences in pickups, strings and what I want to sound like.

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I changed my strings for the first time yesterday!

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At the end of last year I made an 8 string bass, pairs of strings tuned one octave apart. Very cool sound, partly due to hot lipstick-tube pickups.
Until the middle of summer it just has four bass strings (not being a guitarist, I didn’t realise how short guitar strings are) until I found out that baritone guitar strings are for a 30" scale. So, it finally got 8 strings last week and I started the B2B course again. Things went fine until I hit Billy Jean.
This week I started running through fingering exercises again because my pinky finger is fine holding down one bass string but no good at also trapping the weedy guitar string hidden behind the bass string.
This evening I have passable skills on strings E, A and D. Insert your own G string joke here.

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