I’m halfway through the course now, and I’ve had several little ah-hah moments throughout. One I remember is when I learned how to play the bass line to “With or without you” by U2. As a life-long U2 fan, this was kind of a big deal for me. Not only was I able to play an actual song, it was also a song by one of my favorite artists. After feeling confident enough, I looked up the song in my music collection and played along to it from beginning to end. Major feeling of accomplishment.
My biggest epiphany so far is all about scales. Having played some classic guitar and also some piano in my youth, I was already familiar with the concept. I had, however, no idea what scales were for. I always thought of playing scales as a boring but necessary tool to learn where the notes were on the fretboard (or on the keyboard), and I treated them as such: as a practice tool with no practical application.
Until! Until I reached Module 7 in the B2B course. Of course I knew I would eventually need to learn how to play scales on the bass, and again I thought of this as something I’d just have to go through in order to progress through the course. So OK, yeah yeah, this is the C Major scale, alright, let’s move on… Wait a minute, so now that I know how to play this scale, I can actually play any major scale, using the same shape, by just starting on a different note? OK, that’s pretty cool. Hold on, so by finding out what key a song is in, you can immediately play along to it by just choosing notes in the corresponding scale? Now that is really cool!
I eventually found myself enjoying the improvisation lessons immensely, something I would have never expected. Forty years after having been introduced to scales, in a matter of minutes, I suddenly understood what scales are for, what their purpose is. Not one of my music teachers had ever bothered to explain that to me, at least, not that I can remember.
I liked the improv lessons so much that I didn’t want them to stop, and I found the workouts just too short. Then I realized the backing track is not much more than a drum beat and Josh playing a very basic bass line. So, wait a minute, I have a Zoom B1Xon that has a drum machine and a looper… I ended up recording myself over a drum pattern, just playing a root note on the first beat for four bars, and then playing that back. Instant and infinite backing track for endless improvisation. Needless to say, I felt like a true musician 
