Thoughts on B2B for the second time

I promised an After Action Report on finishing B2B for the second time, so here it is, in no particular order.

  • Do it!
  • There are songs and/or snippets of songs that I still practice. Others, I didn’t remember at all, despite completing the fast workout first time around.
  • I did skip the early, “This is a bass, these are strings” lessons.
  • Beginner to Badass is a misnomer. Beginner to moderately competent is more accurate, but sucks as a marketing slogan. Beginner to Bar Band is accurate for the 2nd time through.
  • Billie Jean is now a warmup exercise, but the James Brown stuff — Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag & I Feel Good — kicked my ass, even the second time through. It took a couple of days to nail them down.
  • My timekeeping is much, much better. It makes a difference. The first time is “I want to get through this lesson.” The second time is, “I need to be right on top of the f*cking beat!” This is after 40 years as what I thought was a decent guitar player. At age 54 I finally learned to count to 4 reliably :roll_eyes:.
  • @JoshFossgreen Josh is going to have a hard time with a follow up. I think it’s got to be modular rather than linear.
  • I bought several of TalkingBass’s courses, but I’m having a hard time getting into them. It’s more lecture than “Hey, grab your bass and let’s play some cool sh*t.” I’ll settle into the vibe, I’m sure, but I’m not attacking them with the same fervor. Josh and Mark need to get together and work this out. We need something after B2B.
  • Again, do it! The 2nd time solidifies some concepts and, more importantly, highlights where you still need work. It was eye opening. I was genuinely surprised at how much more I got out of B2B the 2nd time.
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I finished B2B for the first time today. I have gone back for things arbitrarily, and I agree with your view on this.

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I am going through it again myself. I did skip some of the early lessons but am doing the medium and fast workouts. I am getting acquainted with my new Streams, and this helps that, and also trying to get out of bad habits that may have taken root.

There’s stuff there that I didn’t pick up on the first time around

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I agree mostly, but have an opposing viewpoint on going from B2B to Talkingbass. To me B2B is Junior College and you finish with enough competency to move on to the next level of learning. Fun time is over! Time to get serious. Talkingbass is grad school.
Just my $0.02 worth.

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I haven’t taken a talking bass course so take this with a grain of salt, but Scott talks so fast on YT that I’m afraid I would be constantly rewinding him. He’s hard to follow at times

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Talking bass is Mark Smith, not Some Boring Londoner.

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My mistake.

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And FWIW, I find Marks free stuff really useful, but I haven’t done his paid lessons.

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I agree with @PamPurrs on this. I’ve started on Mark’s courses and they’re different in style but really good content, well presented.
The difference is that it’s not as spoon fed (which is good for a beginner course imho) there’s a lot more homework required. Which works for me.
I’m doing his Bassic Fundamentals course which overlaps with B2B but already there are things in it that have improved my playing. Then onto his chord tones next.

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Congratulations! :+1:

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Nooooo… :sob:

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I’m not disparaging Mark’s courses in the least. I did send the man several hundred dollars, after all. It’s just a very different feel. And I know a I’ll get a lot out of them, but it’s a bit more of a slog.

My point was mainly that I got a lot more out of B2B the second time than I expected. I was thinking refresher, and what I got was a much better understanding of the concepts and techniques and a wake-up call on where I was lacking.

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Yes, totally agree. Talking Bass and Ari Cap are both more serious (but not too serious) and there is def more homework. Having said that, it would be great to have @JoshFossgreen make an appearance - that really cool teacher we all had in Uni who made us want to know more about the subject.

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I think Josh is a better overall teacher than Mark. But I do think Mark is great and definitely my next choice for online bass instructors.

I got around a third through Chord Tones and got a bit bored, to be honest. I’ll probably finish it eventually. I already knew nearly everything in the course up to that point, though, so I might be a bad example - if it were new info for me I probably would have been more enthused. For most people whose primary exposure to music theory is B2B, there’s a lot of good info in it and it would definitely be worthwhile. And I did learn one fundamental bit I had somehow missed all along, and it was important, so I am glad I bought it.

I like Mark’s free content a lot.

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1000%.
It’s great to be able to play songs you like and get better at doing that little by little but @PamPurrs is spot on here. B2B is a perfect jump start but then the real work to learn the bass begins.

There is a spot in every instrument’s learning cycle where you can play things that make you happy to be able to play. It almost gives you a false sense, but in reality, you are still at the beginning of the journey. An instrument is a lifelong learning process to master. Some may be happy jamming to songs and slogging through harder and harder ones slowly, but the continued skill and knowledge accumulation is what really makes you a great musician.

I am not knocking B2B in any way, I think it is da bomb. But I liken it to the first 10lbs on a diet, it helps you lose it fast, but to really get to your goal you have to put in the time and the work (of not eating the Twinkie’s).

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I agree there 100%. I hope my comment didn’t come across as knocking B2B in any manner. However, it is what it is, and I think @JoshFossgreen knows that.

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I do think Josh is much more effective at delivering fundamentals than Mark, though that is likely because Mark’s content I have been most interested in was of an intermediate and not beginner nature.

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I usually watch him on 1.25 or 1.5x :slight_smile:

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one too many clickbaits and I just stopped altogether

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That’s funny, i love listening to Scott’s stories; he has a huge amount of experience that i find very useful and he thinks about the fretboard visually the same way I do. Arianne Cap and Phil Mann i have trouble listening to, they’re soooo sloooow. Ian Allison and Rich Brown are awesome!

I might do B2B for a second time on fretless but right now i’m working on finishing up the last level of yousician and doing the SBL technique and Jazz Accelerator courses.

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