Yes, sorry for not clarifying!
Howard got it, Gio got it… and eventually, even I got it. So I think it’s nothing to apologise for.
Josh I am on my second time through your course. I started out as a raw beginner. The course has helped tremendously and I am seeing even more improvement as I go through it the second time.
I would really like to go on to an intermediate course. Will you notify us when a course is available?
Also, my main interest is playing bass in church. I have observed that country style playing probably will work best with this music and am working at trying to learn how to do it but a course in that style of music would be very beneficial.
I have checked out some other courses online and nothing comes close to your style of teaching. Keep up the good work!
Welcome aboard @drgaylewoods
I’m running through the course for the second time too and I’m amazed how much I actually remembered! I’m also amazed at how much didn’t register in my brain the first time around but I’m blaming my TBI for that
Welcome to the community @drgaylewoods!
Absolutely this - couldn’t agree more on all points.
Definitely! You’ll be the first to know for sure. Glad you’re enjoying the course so much!
I’m SO looking forward to the next course as I reckon a good few others are too
I want a series of lessons on “The Beast”.
Maybe with examples of how and when people have used the different modes in modern music.
Talking to us about what you hear when listening to a particular mode or scale.
How different scales resolve or don’t with examples of what to listen for and how it affects the music as a whole.
Maybe incorporating this, Victor Wooten, and explaining what parts are truly useful to those of us that aren’t Victor Wooten.
This could be a whole course by itself as opposed to just a few modules. It does sound like a pretty massive undertaking though.
@JoshFossgreen I know you are busy but is there an expected date on the release of the next course…I’m sure I’m not the only one standing at the ready credit card in hand.
No ETA yet! Some other stuff coming in the pipeline before that happens. Sorry for being so mysterious!
Based on the previous response, I’ll assume there is still room for suggestions two years after the original post.
I finished the course about a week ago and these are the things I think would be most useful to me right now.
- Music Theory & Ear Training. I’ve found myself to be a music theory nerd since I started the course. I’m probably more enthusiastic than most seeing as I’d be interested in taking several college level courses on the subject if I could afford it - but at least more bass centered, practical music theory would be awesome. I’ve found even in my short time playing that this is incredibly useful in allowing me to become more musically creative.
- More technique lessons and exercise ideas. However, I think it is easy - at least for me - to become overly focused on trying to reach the next level too quickly. I think information on how to do exercises safely and patiently should be emphasized. Better to be slow for a frustratingly long time than to injure your hand and not be able to play at all.
- How to play “musically”. Moving away from technical things: how do we bring feeling into our playing? Especially when jamming or playing songs with a band. How do we assess when to support other players and when to take center stage, so to speak?
- How to approach learning songs. I love the idea of full song lessons that I’ve seen in this thread, but I think these should also emphasize how we go about learning them so that we can copy the method for other songs we want to learn, whether in the 50 song pack or not.
- Definitely more play with the band style lessons. All the other stuff is important to be able to play bass, but I had the most fun in the learning-to-jam lessons.
- Homework! I’m sure this word brings dread to most people However, we all have to learn how to establish our own practice habits if we want to reach intermediate level proficiency. I think directed “homework” assignments could help with that, and would allow you to assume certain base-skills for a given lesson (should that be useful).
As a side note, I think it would be cool to incorporate some tooling into the BassBuzz site to aid in some of these things. I have all sorts of grand ideas but a semi-realistic example might be partnering with the transcribe software people to incorporate the actual songs into the 50 first song pack. Or perhaps on a simpler level, in music theory lessons you could potentially give specific suggestions of activities to complete on musictheory.net, for example. Maybe an online metronome geared towards the Ultimate Groove Workout?
Edit: Forgot one thing. Information on how to find a good local teacher, or assess whether they are right for me would be invaluable. I’m sure it is subjective, but I figure there must be some good tips. Unless of course you can clone yourself Josh and have your clones live all over the country, then the choice would be easy
@JoshFossgreen I want to add to the encouragement to give us the intermediate course! I saw that you said you have other stuff in the pipeline and of course we all respect you’re following the art but know that we’re desperate for an intermediate advanced course because your beginner course is by far far far the best one! I was an elementary school teacher for a while and I can tell you that teaching anything is a skill in itself. Unfortunately many great musicians and various artists are great at their art but not great at teaching. You are the rare artist who is also an amazing teacher! Gushy rant over
Couple of things from me:
- Hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, scoops, etc.
- More playing on higher frets (still feels like a different ball game to me)
- Some tips on how to increase plucking speed (I’m kinda stuck at a certain a tempo, and it limits my song choices)
- Sight reading
- Types of pedals, what they sound like, how to combine them, how to replicate the sound of some famous bassists, etc.
- A bit too late for me, but a crash course on recording basics (DAI, DAW) would probably be useful as well
- Discount for B2B alumni
I’m at a plateau here myself (and have been for months). @Gio gave me some good advice there - start very very softly, barely audibly, and work up from a BPM I am good at. This definitely helped and got me another 10-20 BPM.
But I am not sure what else will work here other than relentless practice. So a course module on this would be awesome.
Forgot one thing - I know this would be a bit of a pain in the arse for you, but anyway:
After finishing the course I would have found really useful an alphabetical index of concepts/techniques/etc and the video(s) you talked about them in. Sometimes when I want to review one specific thing (random things like finger rolling, sliding on one string and landing on another, etc) it’s really hard to find the video again.
@JoshFossgreen Not sure if this has been brought up, but is there a way to maybe get an app made for this content? While it’s cool to AirPlay the content from one device to the television, I have found that it has… issues keeping the Airplay active or not glitching out. I’ll try the android version of streaming to the television, but I feel that there may be more of the same.
Have you tried Chromecast? That’s what I use to cast to my big screen tv and it works brilliantly with no glitches.
@PamPurrs I can see if casting will work better directly to the television, but it’s just a pain in the rear and kills the momentum.
It takes two clicks to cast it to the TV from Chrome if you have a Chromecast. Trust me, I do i all the time, not just in B2B but in the other online courses I’m taking (and have taken).