Hi @Pammie_Jo . Yes. Billie Jean is the first of a number of walls you run into in B2B, but it’s the one that EVERYONE runs into. All the others seem to be more individual.
That said, I’m about 80% through the course (had to slow down because reasons), I can now play this riff consistently at the medium tempo with the lower octave on the F# (apparently the way you’re supposed to, although this is intensely debated) and the fast tempo without.
It comes with time, and when you do the slow tempo Billie Jean and move on, the stuff you learn the more advanced lessons will help you go back and succeed at the faster speeds.
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So what I’m gathering from the replies to this thread is that one shouldn’t get hung up on getting things 100%. Do your best, move on and come back later. Correct? I’m still stuck on M1L2 trying to get it perfect.
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YES!!! If it’s not fun, you’ll get frustrated, angry and quit. It’s that simple.
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Absolutely! Josh mentions this several times in the videos: if you can do the slow workout for any lesson, proceed to the next one. You can (and should) always return to it later!
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That is exactly correct! What I did was make marks in the squares in the little booklet for each lesson. An “X” meant I completed it successfully, a “0” meant I completed it, but need improvement, and a circle around the square with no mark inside it, meant I skipped it completely and need to revisited it before I can say I completed the course (Billie Jean).
I started out with a goal of 30 days, and ended up completing it (to my satisfaction) in 96 days.
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Wow, yeah, it’s a definite jump-up from the previous lessons.
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There are a couple of sayings: “play slow to play fast” and “playing fast is just like playing slow, only faster”.
You will come across more songs like that where you struggle and the answer is usually to play it slow. If you can’t play it clean slowly, play even slower. Playing slowly requires more accurate muscle control which can sometimes make it more difficult at first. Playing quickly sometimes allows you to just fly over things masking poor technique. Use a metronome if you need to or a backing track. Once you can play something accurately at a slow tempo, slowly increase the tempo until you’re up to the desired speed. Many people keep practicing at a speed that’s too fast for them and all they’re doing is practicing their mistakes which makes it even more difficult to play cleanly. If you have a particular bar or section that give you difficulty, practice that over and over. Look at your finger movement between strings and be as economical as possible with your motions. Look at your plucking hand, you should always be using the same fingers to pluck the same notes every time you play through eg. if you play through a bar using fingers I,M,M,I, don’t play through it M,I,I,M the next time.
I didnt do that with this song, i couldnt play it cleanly on the fast speed and i didnt care so i just skipped it. I came back a few months later, tried it and could play it fine 
There’s a song on Scott’s Bass Lessons that i worked on almost every day for about 6 weeks before I could play through it with no mistakes.
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Josh didn’t go and throw Billie Jean in there by accident any more than he did because he thought anyone who’d been through his course to that point would nail it, first thing. This is a technique that works well when teaching anything that will take consistent practice – it’s showing you something you are working towards. It’s giving you a goal. And it’s teaching you how to approach something he knows you cannot do.
Put another way – He’s showing you how you learn!
Just give it some time, go slow, and in a few months of bass playing, you’ll find yourself not getting mad at your fingers as much. Instead you’ll be getting mad at your brain trying to work its way around music theory and sight reading and how to compose a really killer solo because you love playing and you want to learn more about things like that!
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Thank you everyone for your input! I am going to move on, despite my OCD (lol) and come back to it. That Ska tune in the next module I will be doing in my sleep…but I did move on! You all are awesome!!!
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@Pammie_Jo , from one Pam to another… ROCK IT!
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Somehow this thing got me. But after a while, I did nail it. It was not hard, in terms of technical things, but I had to focus on not letting my mind wander around, and missing on string chances. Repeating a one thing over and over… it’s something that I am not able to do, without losing concentration. Weird.
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Congratulations @P.Peura on conquering BJ. We’ll add your name to the statue of Billie Jean in the park behind the BassBuzz student lounge. 
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I got past “fast”. It was not clean, and my fretting hand was sore afterwards, but I got past it. Woot, I say. Woot.
Of course that’s going to be one of my warm-up, regular practice lines from now on out.
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Hi Pammie Jo, I can only agree with all the other posters here… please don‘t be too hard on yourself because of BJ, it’s a wall that we all run into. I got my fingers into a knot when I first tried it, and when I finally had memorized the sequence my hand would go sore halfway through it. So, after a lot of frustration, I finally followed Josh’s advice and went on. Then, many lessons later, I went back and lo and behold, suddenly BJ was no longer a problem to play, even at high speed.
Trust in your ability to develop as a bass player. You WILL nail BJ, believe me. Just give yourself some time.
Here are a few things you could try to deal with difficult bass lines (they help me a lot):
- Give your kinetic memory a chance. Your fingers can “memorize” bass lines, too - and the good thing is you won’t have to think about what you’re doing or what you have to do. The funny thing is that I play BJ best when I let my fingers do the job and allow my mind to wander.
- I find that a lot of repetition works great for my kinetic memory: pick up the bass, try to play a bass line for a few minutes, put it away, do something else, come back after an hour, do it again, then do it again the next day and so on. Short bits instead of long units that only frustrate you.
- singing or humming along with the bass line and “dry playing” it on your desk, the steering wheel of your car or wherever else you can
But above all, give yourself time. We are all bass students, and we all have to learn and develop.
All the best, Mike
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Thanks Mike, I will take that to heart! I’m glad I am not the only person who practices on their steering wheel, lol!
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Just keep in mind, Billie Jean is not a road block, it’s merely a speed bump.
I felt the same way. I’ve learned that just practice it slow. The coordination came to me out of nowhere not long after that module. Don’t give up before the miracle happens!
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