What's your motivation?

a big one i failed to mention. I miss, hard, the ability to just reach over and grab my bass to play for a few minutes while working from home. At the office I have to just suffer through my troubles more or less :upside_down_face:

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I got about 50% through the course and then I stopped. Life and work got in the way. Now I don’t really have any motivation to start again.
Back in the day I wanted to start a band with some friends, but now, just thinking about it gives me anxiety. Hanging out with other people willingly? Ugh. I’m not a fan of people.

At the moment I just can’t find a reason to keep playing and practicing.

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It’s hard to stay motivated at ANYTHING without an objective, a plan and visualization . Without those three ingredients, practice can become drudgery. The B2B course gave you the objective and plan, but now that you’ve achieved your goal of going from beginner to Badass, you need a new plateau onto which to climb.
For the 3 1/2 years I’ve been learning and playing bass, I have continuously added more and more challenges to my routine to keep me motivated. Granted, I have had my days of unmotivation, lethargy, and distractions, but always get myself back on track eventually.
May I suggest you take some more challenging courses after B2B? TalkingBass has a passel of great courses that wiil surely help with your motivation and keep your mind busy for years. Not to mention they’ll elevate your bass playing skill.

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So, if playing with others is not motivating for you, how about learning to play because it’s fun to hang with Josh, at least virtually?

No one can speak for you, but I sure had a blast going through B2B, curious to see what ingenious way Josh was going to use a familiar song snippet to present a new technique and chunk of theory.

If that doesn’t appeal to you, then OK: having fun learning bass might not be for you. But you might just find it is if you take your time and approach it again with an open mind and a smile. Good luck.

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For the fun aspect of playing I use the Rocksmith Game. There are thousands of no $$ songs you can download at (ignition4 (dot) customsforge (dot)com). I don’t use it exclusively for learning, but it does allow me to play songs I really enjoy and try out some I would have NEVER thought of trying.

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Welcome, @astridsumpter!

Can you play it using a PC or a Mac? Or console only? I think I need a cable adapter, right?

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Planning certainly works for some people. Myself included. Inspiration goes a long way. Lacking both…
A looper and a crazy multi effect pedal. Take the things you already know how to play, and make them synthy. Take a classic Motown groove, and put an auto filter on it! The fun thing with some of these genre defining tones is, they make you play… different. And all the sudden, you’re not only playing different, you’re playing SOMETHING different altogether. Maybe venturing into styles and genres of music or even techniques you’ve never tried!
Dean Town… fuzz and a filter. Just sayin’. My 2 cents for what it’s worth. Just. Don’t. Stop.

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It works on PC, Mac, and PS and XBox, although I find it easiest on PC
You don’t need a cable adapter…you can use a microphone instead if you have a speaker for your bass. That’s what I do. Top of the customsforge site there are links to an executable that allows the game to use the extra song files (CLDC Enabler). I believe the only caviat is that you have to purchase a song from the Smashing Pumpkins-Cherub Rock as it uses the code from that song.

I started out playing with Dynamic Difficulty on (started playing Bass 3 months ago) so I could get used to how to play. Since then I have changed it to no DD full speed so I can see what I’m working towards. Just got my first 100% last night!

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You don’t need any special cable or microphone. I have this game and use a regular guitar cable through the audio interface. But as far as I remember you have to download a mod to it, but it’s not a big deal,
I found the instructions on Reddit and it works for me.

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Same here. Played during my high school years but 30 years later I’m in another country, married, with kids. The idea of jamming in this situation seems impossible and that makes really focused practice hard for me.

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For me, ultimately, I’ve always wanted to be able to play music with people, for people. My journey was long and arduous, but that’s what it comes down to. Because that’s what I want to do, and it’s a “bucket list” goal before the grim reaper comes knocking on my door, I just keep playing and practicing.

Plus… of all the instruments I’ve mucked around with, bass guitar is far and away my favorite. I’ve experimented with accordion, bagpipes, didgeridoo, harmonica, native American flute, recorder, bowed psaltery, ukulele, and… I think that’s all, but bass is just… what I want to play. I love hearing it, and I love playing it. So that… love, that passion for the instrument, really helps as well. :slight_smile:

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I was hanging with your list until this. Had to look it up. New old one on me.

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I was a renaissance faire worker for years. Had to have something “period correct”, and I wasn’t playing a Scot so it couldn’t be bagpipes. :smiley:

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Yeah, but does it djent?

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

No, it definitely does NOT djent.

(I actually really LOLed at that.)

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Yet…. :disguised_face::sunglasses:

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Rehearsing with the band has taken nearly all my personal practice time, but it forces me to work on other aspects of playing like timing, locking in with the drummer, and listening to to what everyone else is doing. The motivation is still there, the time to focus and practice is what’s missing and I hear it when in my ear things start to sound similar and stale. Makes me wonder how guys like Tommy Shannon stood there night after night playing variations of 12 bar blues and did he finish practicing with SRV and just go home and deep dive into modes, slap, tapping, and three finger gallops.

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Nope, Tommy partied down with Chris, Stevie and Clifford Antone after gigs. With complete commitment. :relieved:

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Bagpipes are btw, not a Scottish instrument. Here’s a brief example of traditional Latvian pipers

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Of course. Almost every culture has had a version of the bagpipes. There are Egyptian bagpipes, German bagpipes, Irish Uliean bagpipes, Turkish bagpipes, Latvian bagpipes as you mention, and so on and so forth. Historically, I think the first recorded use of bagpipes was from Egypt or Turkey, hundreds of years BCE, and long before the Scots.

However, within the context of renaissance faires, which are typically English-themed, “bagpipes” usually refers to the Scottish Highland bagpipe, or to a lesser degree the Irish Uliean bagpipe. At a country faire in renaissance England, other culture’s bagpipes would have been rare indeed.

EDIT:

Here’s one of my favorite non-Scottish/Irish bagpipes, the German bagpipe (“dudelsack”) played by a medieval recreation group called Wolgemut:

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