Friday 13th Jan 2017

Hello.

Practice notes for today are as follows.

Piano

C Major scale over 2 octaves.

Triad chords and arpeggios in root, 1st and 2nd inversions, harmonized in C major

7th chords and arpeggios in root, 1st, 2nd and 3rd inversions, harmonized in C major

‘essence’ of chords (root in bass, 3rd and 7th)

chords over a chord progression in inversions.

 

Bass Practice (double bass)

5 mins bowing open strings (whole, half, quarter & 8th notes)

5 mins F major scale

5 min F major etude (Simandl)

10 mins Walking bass in F blues

 

Bass practice (6 string)

walking bass in F blues

I’m not really covering much ground at the moment on the electric bass

Every time I try practice the electric bass the cat comes and sits on my laptop and messes with my bass and cables so it’s really putting me off my practice. I think I need to start kicking him out of my practice room

 

Anyway.

That’s another day done. I’ll probably post more of my other practices on here as I’m sure it will make me into a more rounded musician.

 

Cheers

Wed 11/1/17

Hello

 

Bass Practice (6 string)

Maj, min & dom scales and arpeggios through 12 keys

 

That’s it.

I couldn’t get out of bed

 

 

Thursday 5th Jan 2017

Hello

 

Here you go

Bass Practice (6 string bass)

 

15 mins Maj, min & dom scales and arpeggios in 12 keys 141 bpm

5 min rest

15 mins random modes on all 6 strings Ab major

5 min break

15 mins random pentatonics on 6 strings and Texas on B, E & A strings Ab major

10 min break

15 min walking bass F blues (135a-135b) + (135b- 135a) with variations on the last four bars

5 min break

Repertoire (classical bass, currently slowly making my way through this book by Mike Cornelison)

Started on hall of the mountain king

 

Total time around 1hr 40ish mins

 

Cheers

 

 

Oh and the cat made a huge pounce onto my thigh with his claws out. OOOOWWWWWWWW!
Damn Arthur

Wednesday 4th Jan 2017

Morning.

 

Went to the gym last night so I slept through my alarm and the cat is a machine at keeping me awake. I will maybe pay someone top play with him whole I’m at work

Bass practice (6 string bass)

Walking bass over F blues (1353 – 135a) & (135a – 1353)

Major, Minor & Dom scales and arpeggios in 12 keys

total time 30 mins

 

 

Happy New Year (3 days late)

Happy New Year.

I didn’t practice on New Years Day as I had a gig with my covers band in a different town and I didn’t get in until 3.30 am (after unloading), so New Years day was effectively my New Years Eve. I got drunk with the Arthur the cat (he didn’t drink, although he had a good go at trying to drink my beer).

 

Anyway. Back to it.

I bought a big yearly wall planner so I can do the Jerry Seinfeld chain thing. Just to see if it works.

I started on the 2nd Jan.

2/1/17 Bass practice (6 string bass)

15 mins major, minor, dom scales and arpeggios  on D & C string.

Walking basslines on F blues (1351 – 1353)

I also did some keyboard stuff. I may post about that on here as I’m trying to learn to play jazz piano and I’m taking weekly beginner classes at a local music college. Classes start tomorrow (4/1/17)

3/1/17 bass practice (6 string bass)

Walking bass on F blues (135a – 1353) on B and E string.

Random Modes in key of A major

Random Pentatonics in Key of A major.

 

End

The cat is a pain in the backside when trying to practice. I can’t wait till he grows a little and calms the hell down.

 

So far I have 2 big black crosses on my calendar. Yeah!
I’ll probably start posting pictures of it when it (hopefully)  gets bigger.

 

Cheers for popping by

 

See you tomorrow

 

 

Saturday 31st Dec 2016

It’s New Years Eve.

it was a struggle to get up this morning. Arthur let me sleep for most of the night. My alarm went off at six am. I attempted to meditate but I fell asleep until about 6.50am. I then ended up staying in bed till about 7.40 though.

Anyway. Yes. Practice on New Years Eve morning.

15 mins

walking bass in F Blues — 1353- 151b

5 min break

15 min

minor, major & dominant scales and arpeggios in 12 keys 145 bpm

walking bass in C blues basic modules

5 min break

15 min

walking bass in F blues – 1352 135a

play on the looper with walking basslines and some chordal playing over the top (need to do more of this)

 

Total practice time was about 1hr

 

2 years away

Well.

 

I totally stuck to this. It’s been two years and I only remembered this because I opened up my wordpress.

I think I’ll take it easy and attempt to just (at first) use this blog to write down my (if possible) daily practice routine and what I did. Maybe I’ll try and post other stuff as well (gigs/recordings/band stuff etc.).

 

Also. I just got a kitten. His name as Arthur Baker (after the 80’s electro/early hip hop producer). I forgot how demanding kittens are so whilst I’ve been practicing he’s either chewing at my audio cables, climbing up the table to where my laptop is or attacking my feet. This makes concentrating pretty tough, but If I can concentrate through this in practice any gigs should be a total doddle 😉 Also now because of him I realise that my usual 2hr early morning practice block (7am-9am) is kinda out of the window. I now have to become a master at practicing in the cracks of time, at least until he’s a little older.

 

Anyway. Here goes.

Friday 30th December  2016. 8.45am

Major, Minor and Dominant scales and arpeggios in 12 keys

Walking bass through a Blues in F (1353)

Total time 15 mins

 

Hello (bass playing) world

Hello there.

This is a blog about myself as a beginner bass player.

Today is a new day. It’s the first day of 2015 and I though I should start a blog to document my progress as a beginner bass player.

To be honest, I’m not actually a beginner at all. I’ve been playing since 2010 (I originally started playing when I was 18 in 199something but sacked it off again to take up the more meaningful pursuit of drinking and chasing women). I started playing bass again after an almost 15 year hiatus due to starting a music degree at a local university. I actually did a degree in fine arts and music but was more interested in experimental composition but they offered us free music lessons in our first year of study. Obviously I picked the bass and piano. The bass stuck. So not really knowing what I was doing and taking a few lessons i didn’t really have time for (or make time to practice for) I hopped off on my merry way with a garbage 15 year old £100 unplayed encore bass that had followed me around since I bought it.

Throughout my university career I faked my way through a few uni bands with some root note warrior stuff, never really getting past that point. I completed uni 2 years ago but carried on playing, buying lots of study, groove, instructional books, trying out different methods and never really sticking to any one thing. A case of the information junkie blues. In the modern web world we are shown so much information that it’s hard to actually stick to one thing before jumping off to the next, without fully learning what we wanted to learn in the first place. It turns out I’m as much of a culprit of this as the next person.

Now having said that the next bit of irony isn’t lost on me. Whilst surfing the web for bass related stuff I came along a really nice little seminar/workshop/masterclass by German bassist Kai  Eckhardt. It really struck a chord ( boom tsk) with me as I was doing this on a daily basis.  I tried this method on an exercise for a week or two and my word, it worked. I looked more into this guy and came across his website  (I had already heard about him cos I had already bought his TrueFire bass lessons but not actually got past the first lesson before moving on to something else. *facepalm central*). I saw he had some kind of mentorship program and that seemed to be the thing I was looking for (I’m the kind of person who needs to go somewhere to do something), so I signed up. I’m not going to go into the full nuts and bolts of the program it as I would be taking away from this teachers ability to earn with other prospective students so I’ll try keep that side to a minimum.  Anyway. I’ve been on the program now for around 20 days and I think I may be making progress. This blog will document my progress as a bass player/musician who plays bass/performing musician.

Hopefully I can stick to it as I’m attempting to stick to this program.

I’m already playing and gigging in a couple or 4 bands, playing electric and upright bass and I will try to document my ongoings with playing, rehearsing and gigging with these bands/ensembles. These comprise of
1 originals band playing repetitive German rock music (gigging)
1 covers band playing songs from the 60’s to current day hits (gigging)
1 adult learners/improvers big band (very occasional gigging)
and
1 jazz quartet (not gigging)

But as for new years day i’m gonna drink all the booze there is in the house to try and get rid then I can start the *new year* fresh and try give that up (but that’s for a different blog 😉 )

This blog may occasionally turn into a a rant about working and attempting to scratch together a living playing music as this is my part time job (i have a full time job in retail ) and turn it into more of a full time job.

Anyway
Happy new year readers/bass players/lovers/