The Bassist and Guitarist thread

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icowden

Veteran
Location
Surrey
You obviously missed this important information...
... just 5 minutes of practice! It sounds a bit pathetic but I like the psychology of it.

Yep - I did miss that important bit of information. Sorry. It's just going to be awkward.
As for the 5 minutes of practice it's also about building muscle memory and developing your brain. Interestingly you can practice your instrument fingering mentally and still continue to improve (according to studies). As you say though - it's also that you are likely to keep going for longer than 5 minutes.

There is also a learning hump. There is a point at which you appear to make little progress and want to give up. At some point you get over the hump and realise you can play what you want to play.

Another interesting article I read a while back was about the fact that instrumental learning practices are still heavily rooted in the Victorian period. We still teach people to read the notes on a page and work out the tune from the notes. There is no particularly good reason that this is a good way to learn an instrument. The Victorians did this because it was the *only* way to learn an instrument and to hear music. We now have music everywhere thanks to technology. So listening and playing along is an equally valid way of learning an instrument. If you want to go professional then you will need to learn the dots and how pitches relate to them, but it doesn't have to be the primary focus of learning.
 

ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
I am not sure if this has been mentioned, but I found both variations useful today when watching YouTube videos...

Some people may not be aware that if you go into the YT settings you can speed up or slow down videos without changing the pitch of the audio. I found some people who were quite interesting but speaking slowly and speeding them up saved a lot of time. When watching someone doing something complicated, the video can be slowed down to make it easier to see what they are doing.

There is also a learning hump. There is a point at which you appear to make little progress and want to give up. At some point you get over the hump and realise you can play what you want to play.
That's what happened when I tried learning half a century ago and I did give up! :laugh:

I was trying to play things that were way too complicated and ended up taking too many shortcuts. I didn't master one thing before moving on to something even harder. After a few months I was not enjoying it at all so I put the guitar away and concentrated on my schoolwork.
 
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Drago

Drago

Legendary Member
Some left handed folk play a regular guitar with the strings in the normal order, but simply held the other way. Some play a left handed guitar with the striings in reverse order Some right handed folk, like Paul McCartney, play left handed for some reason.
 

ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
What gets me is that I can't see that either hand has to do anything vastly more complicated than the other and dominant side strength isn't a factor so it shouldn't matter which hand you use on the fretboard as long as you stick to what you are familiar with. Since beginners are NOT familiar with either orientation, why not just stick to the conventional way when learning?

I just found this elsewhere and it echoes my thoughts... Someone named Lloyd Floyd said in the comments HERE:
"Left-handed" guitars and basses are a scam. If you start to play left-handed you'll be stuck with it, then for the rest of your life you'll have a limited choice of instruments, AND pay more for them. Regular guitars and basses are just GUITARS and BASSES - they are not "right-handed". Look at a symphony orchestra: there are no "left-handed" violins, violas, cellos, double-basses, oboes, flutes, clarinets, bassoons, etc etc. and yet there are many left-handed players of a very high standard of musicianship. Also: all keyboard instruments go from low to high as they go from left to right. There are no "left-handed" keyboards! If you are starting out, it's tricky at first, for everybody, left or right handed. Just learn on the regular instrument, or you'll be cursing yourself for life.

If Paul McCartney does that, then that illustrates what I am saying, except that he chose to do it the other way round for some obscure reason!
 

ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
I had been wondering why guitars are (normally) tuned the way that they are (EADGBE). Fender explain why HERE. Ah!

I have watched several tutorial videos where there was something clipped to the end of the headstock. I thought it was either a small video camera to film along the strings OR the guitarist was storing a capo when not in use. I'm now wondering if they were actually clip on guitar tuners like THIS?
 
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ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
Yep, clip on-tuners. Long gone are the days of tuning up noisily between songs whilst the singer give you dirty looks!
I have an old digital tuner which my niece gave me. It has a jack socket to plug electrics into, plus a built-in mic. It works but those clip-on ones look handy! (But I'm not going to chuck out something that works. I'll buy a new one if the old one ever packs up.)

I bought a cheapo drum machine from the local flea market a couple of years ago. It has drum pads on it so I thought that I would be able to record my own drum patterns, but no - I can drum along to whatever IT is playing but it has no recording function. In disgust I dumped it a box of stuff in the attic. Some of the drum patterns would be quite nice to practice to (or I could just use its metronome) so I will go up there later and retrieve it.
 
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Drago

Drago

Legendary Member
Did an hour of Motorhead today. I think people underestimate how good a bassist Lemmy really was.
 

Oxford Dave

Senior Member
Location
West Oxfordshire
Played a little local gig last night with a good friend of mine.
504766
 

ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
Did an hour of Motorhead today. I think people underestimate how good a bassist Lemmy really was.
I've always rated Lemmy's bass playing - ever since 'Down through the Night' on Space Ritual - beautiful melodic rolling bass that just pushes everything along.
Music to have teeth pulled to...





Actually, I really DO use Hawkwind's music to have teeth pulled out (or drilled) to! I hate going to the dentist so I blast myself with Doremi Fasol Latido as a distraction from the horrors that are being done to me... :smile:
 
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