I’m going to keep this brief because a lot of what I want to say belongs in an introduction post. So lets just jump right to the meat of the dilemma, shall we?
I was a very musical kid. I learned clarinet, then alto sax, moved on to timpani and then finally the drum kit. I love bass deeply and have so far been very fortunate to pick up enough to know that I will possibly add other instruments, but the bass will never leave my life.
I’ve been so impressed with BassBuzz that I started watching the YouTube videos before I even bought my bass. I believe in this program. A lot. Bunches. Just literal tons. All of you that showed your willingness to help a brother in bass yesterday even further elevated my faith in this course, leading me to the problem at hand.
Any natural ability I possess + passion + Beg. To Badass + all of you = success, right?
I believe it does so much that I told…no I’m sorry, I PROMISED my wife last night that for our 5th anniversary, I would compose for her, a song on bass. I think it’s a lovely gift to someone I love with something I love, right?
Our anniversary is in September. I have owned my bass for 3 weeks now.
Only one thing to do. I have to deliver because I made a promise to her but also because I invoked the support of all of you before I even asked.
My friend, thank you. It is so strange…I"ve known her forever. I thought I knew everything there was to know, but it wasn’t until I told her that I was going to play bass that she revealed to me that she had always been smitten by bass and bass players.
WIN!
Thanks so much for your support, my friend. You and I must certainly come back to this conversation.
I didn’t mention this part, but I was able to start playing the same day I bought my bass. I’ve been using Yousician to “noodle around” with my Jackson, but I needed something more substantial than guitar hero with advanced haptic response.
I struggle with some pretty serious health issues that may prevent me from doing the hardcore course, but one of the selling points was 3 months. Even if it took much longer, this is the program I would use and you are the people I would share it with.
With your prior experience this is certainly doable.
Specifically, after you hit Module 9 Lesson 5 where Josh gets into Diatonic Chord Progressions and the Nashville Numbers system. You’ll knock her socks off.
I’ve been playing bass about a month and, like you, also have experience on a few different instruments. From my perspective as a 1-month bass player, I say, you definitely can do this in three months! Piece of cake.
No problems @101
With your previous music experience and your drum/percussion this will be a walk in the park, your wife is gunna love what ever you compose.
I suggest something warm,melodic and smooth.
Have a listen to the eagles
Love will keep us alive, Timothy b schmitt’s bass line fits those categories.
That’s the type of bass line that will melt her like a good quality dark chocolate, and it’s a pretty easy bass to pick add you’re own feel too
Cheers Brian
I just bought it yesterday and even right now, I’m working on the 5 finger exercises. I have the passion to do the hardcore route, but I want to learn everything extremely well as its presented to me. Josh is amazing. This program is amazing.
If it were left to my decision, I would try to come up with something along the lines of an Archspire song…extremely fast, insanely brutal and dauntingly complex. You have been a voice of reason.
Technical death metal does not equate to romance lol.
Since I was encouraged to compose my own song after playing with the thought (for my DnD group) and asking for help here I can just agree with your assessment. I played guitar in the past but never really known anything about music theory.
I still have to figure out the singing melody but so far it is an enjoyable journey.
With the knowledge you already bring in I think you got this! Good luck!
Well… to be honest not at all at this point in time. When I started it has been a long time since I’ve done something creative and it was like a flood gate opened in my mind.
A short summary on the background and motivation behind it. I’ve already written a bit about it in the thread where we post our original creations but to sum it up I have a long running DnD group and one of the party members started singing “I’m fixing my shield clang clang” and in the lore of our gaming world it evolved into a hit song. My bard composed a full song out of it according to lore and after starting B2B I finally felt like I had the tools at hand to do so in real life. I’ve written out lyrics, a chord progression and a drum track. Started recording vocals and… became frustrated after realising I would either have to let someone else do the vocals or well… practice singing. So that’s where I’m at now. I’ve gotten better at singing but haven’t returned to my composition yet.
The main influence while composing were “Joint Venture”/“Götz Widmann” (one of them died, the other one continued touring/publishing) because I think the genre of “Singer songwriter with guitar” fits best for my bard with a lute.
Then there’s Pink Floyd - Money from where I took the basic Idea of using not drums as drum track. Keeping in line with the theme I chose smithy sounds as drum beats. That turned out to be challenging since a lot of sounds are pretty high frequency so they are high in the spectrum and cut pretty hard in the mix. Maybe I’ll rework that part.
Also Gio pointed out that it would be good if one could recreate the drum beat in a tavern setting. So I worked out the drum beat in a way I can recreate it on a table with a clay mug.
All in all I tried to write more of a “hit song” one can sing/shout in a tavern over an ale than I tried to use medieval sounding scales/modes or something like that.
In the future I may be analyzing more of the medieval sounding music of bands I like. There are a lot of German (I am German) medieval rock bands (In Extremo, Schandmaul) or even bands who just try to sound medieval without the rock in it (Corvus Corax). Carmina Burana is always interesting regarding medieval stuff. It’s one tidbid of music history I know of because of the roleplaying background.
Many mistake the Camina Burana for Carl Orffs creation but the Camina Burana is actually a song compilation from an old century (dates are all over the place. Some seem to be as old as the 11th century) and Carl Orff was simply the first one to interpret it in modern times. He also didn’t interpret all of it just some selected songs.
Sorry. I try to keep it short but then it always felt like an incomplete answer. I hope I don’t bore you to death.
Not at all. I’m not really a short answer kinda guy myself.
Medieval tones or arrangements are very interesting to me as well. There is a composition that I’m using for my warm up play that is very lute, flute and hand drum driven and I love playing it.
I hope she didn’t assume that I was going to sing it as well. She and I are both poets, so lyric challenge I feel confident I could do. Singing? You and I are in the same boat there. I would love to almost as much as I want to get good at bass. Might have to look in to some voice practice…but the composition of an instrumental piece I’m sure will be more than enough to make her happy.
I know it isn’t the whole story and like all of those music games it doesn’t measure everything but my UltraStar Deluxe (Singstar Clone) and sing practice app scores have drastically improved since I started.
Someone who probably is also willing to share his experiences with recently started vocal training is @Vik. I assume it would be more helpful for me to actually join a singing community but I just feel kind of connected to the community here. We talked about singing courses here. And since you’re composing you could do it in the range your voice feels most comfortable in.
That said I am sure you are right and she doesn’t expect you to magically serenade her with your voice if you haven’t sung before.
Would love to see her face if you do though.
I’ll make this part of my promise as well. Since I turned to this course and this community for support even before starting the project, I will share the end result.
depends on the audience!