The Bassist and Guitarist thread

[Drago]

Now I'm a man of leisure I do between 30 mins and an hour of practice day without fail, I've found my brain has quickly learned the notes on the bass fretboard.

I can read music, a benefit of enforced piano lessons as a kid. However, I'm not brilliant and struggle even now with the timing. I cant pick up a sheet of music and churn out a tune that I've never heard before, but I can pick up a sheet for a song I know and with a bit of persistence can work through it satisfactorily. Learning the notes on the wood from practicing scales is good practice to help fill in the odd gap that I can't get my head around by looking at the page.

Btw, I'm hopeless with tab - to my eye it looms like the footprints of a one legged cat burying a turd on a frozen pond.

 

[DCBassman]

Btw, I'm hopeless with tab - to my eye it looms like the footprints of a one legged cat burying a turd on a frozen pond.

I find tab ok if it's accurate, when learning something I can also listen to. It's often not accurate. If you've the dosh, get a Tascam GB-10 trainer. Makes keeping up with your set list easy, too, as you can arrange it all in a folder and just play through it. Needs reasonable phones, though.

 

[Oxford Dave]

I just listen and pick it by ear. Sometimes that's easy, sometimes it's not...

 

[Drago]

An hour of nothing but motorhead bass practice today. Damage Case is great fun to play.

 

[Oxford Dave]

An hour of nothing but motorhead bass practice today. Damage Case is great fun to play.

I haven't picked up an instrument since I got in from Saturday's gig. Hopefully, my basses are still in the cases I hope I put them in when we were packing up!

 

[ColinJ]

I have hit a very unexpected problem! Well, it wouldn't have been unexpected if I had thought about it, but I hadn't until just now when I picked up the guitar and the issue made itself obvious. Yes, it is that damn DVT again (sorry! )...

I was just mentioning the same problem in another context elsewhere. My leg gets swollen unless I am either moving around or lying about in major slob mode.

Practising the guitar while walking about doesn't sound like a sensible idea. It is one thing for performers on stage to play 'on the hoof' but I am not going to be able to concentrate doing that at home! As for slobbing around... it is difficult to play a guitar that is almost horizontal!

I did a little diagram the other day which illustrated what I can do for an extended period of time and what I can't...

I am going to have to adopt a compromise posture somewhere between those extremes and only sit in it for 10 minutes at a time before getting up to move about. (My leg has been getting more swollen recently so I don't want to risk causing even more damage!)

Apart from that, it is nice having my guitar set up again. The strings haven't quite settled down yet but they are not going as far out of tune now so I could get my 10 minutes worth in and then quickly tweak the tuning before the next 10 minutes worth.

I was having a hunt around on YouTube and was amazed at how many people are doing free guitar lessons! I am most interested in fingerstyle acoustic... any recommended free online tutors/videos for that? (I found the popular JustinGuitar site. I'm not sure how good the lessons are?)

 

[delb0y]

Justin is justifiably one of the most popular - he's very good, and would be an ideal place to start.

Fingerstyle is a broad church. I play a lot of, what I call, country-fingerstyle - think Chet Atkins / Merle Travis / Jerry Reed, and imagine a really poor version! First step is to get some basic chords under your fingers.

 

[ColinJ]

I found him Justin time then!

 

[ColinJ]

Starting at 64... Do you think I will ever be able to play like this?

I agree!

Oh well, I could always take up something less demanding like, er, being the first person to learn how to sing the British alphabet backwards...

Curses - foiled again!

 

[icowden]

Practising the guitar while walking about doesn't sound like a sensible idea. It is one thing for performers on stage to play 'on the hoof' but I am not going to be able to concentrate doing that at home! As for slobbing around... it is difficult to play a guitar that is almost horizontal!

You could use a guitar strap and just stand when you practice. You don't have to walk about...

 

[Oxford Dave]

You could use a guitar strap and just stand when you practice. You don't have to walk about...

I almost always use a strap and stand when I practice at home, otherwise the muscle memory is all wrong when I gig.

 

[ColinJ]

You could use a guitar strap and just stand when you practice. You don't have to walk about...

You obviously missed this important information...

My leg gets swollen unless I am either moving around or lying about in major slob mode.

I can't stand still for long or my left leg becomes very uncomfortable. (The non-return valves in my veins are damaged so the blood starts to pool in my left calf.) I suppose I could try walking about slowly!

I think I may get away with my compromise posture...

I used to adopt the classical guitarist posture of slightly raised left leg supporting the guitar, with the neck at about 45 degrees to vertical/horizontal. That is now a very big no go for me because my DVT was in my upper left thigh and the vein has a lot of 'scar tissue' in it which causes the circulation to be cut off if I sit in that posture.

What I think I may be able to get away with for 10-15 minutes at a time is to stretch the left leg out straight about 15 degrees to the left, and then sit reasonably upright with the guitar resting on my right leg.

I have given up any notion of playing classical guitar now so not being able to use the 'proper' posture for that shouldn't be a big deal.

++++

I have watched some interesting tutorial videos today. One piece of advice that I liked was to aim every day to do...




... just 5 minutes of practice! It sounds a bit pathetic but I like the psychology of it. If you aim for an hour but are busy and only manage 25 minutes then you feel discouraged that you are not sticking to the plan. If you start your 5 minutes but get into it and end up doing the 25 minutes then it is encouraging to feel that you are getting stuck in.

Can't hang about here much longer because I have my 5(+) minutes of practice to get in!

 

[Drago]

For the first time in a long time I missed my practice today, just too busy. I'll make up for it tomorrow with 2 hours practice instead.

 

[Drago]

This is the correct posture for playing guitar or bass...

 

[ColinJ]

For the first time in a long time I missed my practice today, just too busy. I'll make up for it tomorrow with 2 hours practice instead.

I have missed over 40 years at 1 hour a day, but if I live to 84 I can catch up by practising for an average of about 3 hours a day!

Left-handed guitars... what are they all about?

(I am being serious, actually!) Left handed players of most other instruments just learn them as they are. A left-handed friend of mine insisted on turning his first guitar round (and swapping the strings over) even though he had never played one before but that meant he could never get on with my guitars or those of our other friends. I'm sure that I wouldn't have had a problem if guitars had all been 'left-handed' when I got my first one, though obviously it would feel incredibly odd to me now.