All good. I am persevering. I look at it as an opportunity to retool and improve on my technique. I am sure that bad habits crept in, honestly I understand what Josh is teaching so much better this time around. I just see it as a chance to lay a better foundation.
When I was a complete noob, I did the course, and it got me comfortable with the bass, and I am trusting that if I lean into the course and follow it it will happen again.
In Josh we trust.
Don’t underestimate the joy I have in playing and doing it on my full size bass. My Tele Bass is a dream bass. 70s P Neck, wide, chunky but not too, flattens as you go up the scales, vintage P slab body, string through, Telecaster headstock so I don’t even have the crappy Fender one. This bass checks so many boxes for me I don’t care if I am starting over as long as I can play it.
right now I’m just exercising my fingers doing like a chromatic scale type. I am starting out with the beginner course. Feeling thankful I am starting to learn this instrument
I am still making progress. Last night I played almost pain free in my arm and shoulder.
I am going through the course, I just finished Module 2 last night. I am going through much more deliberate now. Really spending time on the exercises. First time through I would do the lesson, the exercises, and move on. This time every time I practice, I go through all the workouts up to my next lesson as a warm up. I should say all the workouts on the DVD, I bought a DVD set when @JoshFossgreen announced they were going away and jeeze do they make doing the course more pleasant than using the browser.
I skip the lessons but do the workouts, hopefully this will stick in my brain. I am getting a couple hours of practice in each night, moving through the course slowly though a module a week won’t take that long, still feel pretty grounded in fundamentals at this point.
Alternate plucking, still going well. When I am doing the coursework, still doing okay. When I play some bass lines I know, more of a challenge. But in Josh we trust, I will keep going through the course knowing it will all come.
I find I alternate pluck better going middle-index. When I go index-middle I struggle more. I can live giving my bass the middle finger. I don’t remember if I mentioned it but I seem to have some nerve damage in my radial nerve affecting my middle finger.
Gloves, yes and no. I got annoyed with them on my plucking hand, and took it off, switched to middle finger first, and am doing fine. I still use them on my fretting hand and no longer have issues on rounds feeling like a cheese grater. So I’m happy with that
All in all, I am progressing. Retooling my technique and really focusing on that.
Being able to do just little of what you were able to do before, but pain free, is a big improvement. I have a busted shoulder from work and I used to lift weights 5 days a week. Suddenly I could not lift my right arm, surgery ensured and now I can only do bench press with dumbbells at around 25-30 kg, but just to be able to do something with no pain is good. Not perfect but still good.
I CANNOT LEARN THE SLIDE IN SILHOUETTE BY THRICE HELP! I’m brand new at bass and can’t figure out if I slide from 12 to 3 then play the rest or do I play 5th and slide to 12 and back instead. Can any Thrice fan help?
Chugging, I’m great for awhile then 1 finger gets stupid and everything is off for a bar. I wonder if just tapping my fingers on a desk or something with a metronome wonder would help
Julia from Thomann recently shared these warm up exercises. Look at exercise number 2 especially (starts around 2:50). You won’t be able to follow her all the way to the end, but use a similar approach and perhaps change the step size and the duration (most good metronome apps will let you do this) and do this every day. I am pretty sure you will see an improvement soon.
If you’re hearing every fret when you do a slide, you’re very likely applying too much downward pressure on the string.
Lighten up on the string pressure gradually until the slide sounds smooth. You’ll find you don’t really have to press down very much to get the effect you need.
