I’ve been totally unable to keep up for the past 3-4 lessons & I’m wondering when to say WHEN and back up a few lessons?
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If you are unable to keep up, maybe… now?
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Wow…thanks so much that really cleared things up. I never would’ve thought of that in a million years. You should be teaching & not Josh.
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Well… you had seemed to answer your own question there. Not sure what else you were looking for?
Another option is to just continue working on the current lessons until you nail them.
A third is to move on. But from your description it sounds like you might benefit from retracing your steps a little.
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This. Do it always. Practice your weaknesses to get stronger but more importantly, practice your strengths to be more confident and confident is contagious.
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Yup. Building on fundamentals is the way to progress.
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This is not a race. Nobody wins anything. So you improve by slowly practicing the skill you are working on until it feels easy, boring almost.
Then you move on.
You can also do things outside the course ie find an easy song you like and play along with it on YouTube. There are tens of thousands of options for free.
Then go back to the course and unsurprisingly just playing bass to a song you like for hours on end will probably translate into better playing.
I practiced over 400 hours in my first year. No magic pills, just slow methodical practice.
Or rush through the course and find out what happens.
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If you’re at least not nailing slow & medium speeds it’s time to pump the breaks and focus in. You stated you have struggled the last 3-4 lessons, and @howard’s response was spot on, so not sure why you answered back as you did.
Getting frustrated is part of the journey. Some lessons might take extra days or weeks or maybe skip one and go back later - but 3 or 4 is a flag to slow down IMO. Nothing says you can’t slow a lesson even further and build back up 2bpm at a time, a technique I use a lot.
Which lessons are giving you trouble?
At all speeds?
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From pinky to index my reach is only 2 frets and my pinky finger is too weak to play more than 2-3 good successive notes. Josh has said in a few vids if something giving you trouble just skip it and keep going but I can’t do that. I’ve dropped back to Module 3 Lesson #1 and am just gonna start over. I do wanna say tho that I simply have (0) interest in learning past the basic GAB, CDE FGA notes when all I wanna do is rock, jazz and some funk.
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Ah I think it was you asking about 1FPF in another thread, right? And a short reach?
You might do well with a live lesson or two locally to sort out the best technique to use for you or just take a pause and focus on working out a technique that works well so you can get rockin’.
I can barely eke out 1FPF if a tune really calls for it but rarely do and Smandl and shift all over the place.
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Nice to hear someone else has stubby fingers too. Josh has freakishly loooong fingers. His freakin pink is longer than my middle finger!
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In my best Colombo voice @V-Bass “Just one last thing”
This is a super friendly part of the internet. If you see some people teasing others on here; it’s probably because we’ve known each other for years on this forum and have a measure of what they’re like.
@howard is one of the really good guys. Endlessly helpful, so snapping at him just won’t win you any prizes.
I get that it’s frustrating, but hopefully it should be fun. I can’t read music either and have no musical background starting playing bass at 49 yrs old, but I learned enough basic music theory to be able to play. He’s really not teaching you any more than need to know.
If you get your head down and put in the hours like I did then it’ll all work out. Here’s me after 12 months.
Cheers amigo
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You bring up a good point. Learning music is only confusing me.
Barn you rocked that the Bailey & Collins EASY LOVER. Freakin’ love that tune. Jeez ‘only’ 156 weeks to be pro level…now I don’t feel so bad since I haven’t even been playing a month so far. Thanks alot!
Can you play LAST TRAIN TO LONDON by ELO?
^ As bad as it freakin gets IMO!
This is my short term goal. It doesn’t look too hard.
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Nothing worth doing comes quickly or easily.
Learning a musical instrument naturally takes time and effort. Embrace that concept, or not. But truth is truth.
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I try to do 1FPF but there is a lot of shifting going on. I can’t do 1FPF all at the same time.
If you’re struggling, then slow it down. Get a metronome or beat buddy, slow it down until you can play it, and then speed it up slowly like 5 bpm, and when you can do that speed it up again, rinse and repeat. Your muscles will get it.
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Its the fact my fingers are simply too short to bridge the distance between the E string 7th fret & the A string 5th fret. But I have to temper this w/ stories like Tony Iommi’s & his fingers which makes my dilemma seem so weak its embarrassing to even discuss it.
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I’ve been teaching for a long time.
I think that going back and re-doing lessons should be part of the regular flow of things!
I need to learn things - usually - 2 or 3 different times, 2 or 3 different ways in order to really get them together.
Don’t sweat it at any point if you’re going back to re-do a lesson.
I think there’s a weird perception that when we learn we move forward through a book, or through a video, or through a lesson series.
But that’s only because we teachers have to present information in, what we think is, a good order.
It should be broken up, reviewed, gone over, and there is never a bad time to do that.
If you find yourself really stuck, that’s a very great time to do it.
More going back!
There’s always a new thing to pick up and learn more deeply.
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Do you have a long scale bass (around 34") or a short scale (around 30" or less)? If the former then you might want to go to a music store and try a couple of short scales; they can make a big difference to easy of playing if you have stretch issues. My pinky is virtually unusable (arthritis) so I’m playing a medium scales (32") and using a lot of micro (and not so micro) movements to compensate. Sometimes you have to vary ‘normal’ technique to match physical limitations. Take a look at some old film of Django Rheinhardt playing sometime! Or Keith Richards I really don’t know how he keeps playing!
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This:
I was getting bogged down with a lesson, unable to get my head around it. I took a break, learnt three songs I like - combination of YouTube, online bass tabs and just listening to them - then came back refreshed. I also took a day of work to nail that damn lesson, which I did 
Still playing the songs I learnt, plus learning a new one at present, but also now pressing on through the course.
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Players gonna play - somehow, some way. Simple as that.
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