Bass Player Competence Study - for my PhD research

[EvilSmile]

Hi Everyone,

I’m running a survey on bass guitar player competencies as part of my PhD research. The aim is to infer the general difficulty of a bass guitar techniques and then use it to automatically assess how difficult a piece of music is to play on the bass guitar.

I’m looking for bass players of any ability or skill to help out by completing the following survey:
[url="https://goo.gl/forms/lBc2F36dr1"]https://goo.gl/forms/lBc2F36dr1[/url]

It should only take ~20-25mins.

Thanks!!

Callum

Edit1:
if you have decided to read the thread before doing the survey i'd like to clarify that this [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]survey is not about sight reading at all. It is about your playing ability.[/font][/color]

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]I am wanting to analyse how challenging a piece of music is given the sum of the things involved in the physical playing of it. The assumptions that other people have made in this thread relating it to sight reading is likely a miss understanding introduced when I mentioned i'd be using notated music in response to ivansc's question related to the purpose of this survey.[/font][/color]

Edited May 13, 2016 by EvilSmile

[FuNkShUi]

Done.
Some things it asks about i havent had to do/go through in a while, so admit the answers may be a little . . Flakey?!

[EvilSmile]

Thats not a problem I appreciate you taking the time to complete it! Thank you!

[TheGreek]

I tried but I wasn't able to get past the first question - nothing to do with my competence - I was able to click into my age or how long have you been playing boxes..

[EvilSmile]

[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1463054971' post='3048122']
I tried but I wasn't able to get past the first question - nothing to do with my competence - I was able to click into my age or how long have you been playing boxes..
[/quote]

Ah yes I can see that being troublesome. You actually need to type in your year of birth and number of years you have been playing. I've added some clarification now - hopefully that allows you to progress!

[TheGreek]

Tried again - still can't click inside the boxes..

[spyder]

All done.

[EvilSmile]

That is strange, tbh i'm not sure why that is happening. All t[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1463055495' post='3048134']
Tried again - still can't click inside the boxes..
[/quote]

Hmmm i'm not sure whats going on in that case. Thank you for trying though!

And thanks spyder!

[Coilte]

[quote name='TheGreek' timestamp='1463054971' post='3048122']
I tried but I wasn't able to get past the first question
[/quote]

I can't even open the link.

[gapiro]

Done - although if I may say, having hte randomised answer order is particularly irritating in some places...

[Coilte]

[quote name='Coilte' timestamp='1463056869' post='3048151']
I can't even open the link.
[/quote]

Managed to open the link after five attempts. Now I can't get past the 1st question, just like TheGreek.

Edited May 12, 2016 by Coilte

[Dad3353]

Done. Quite thoughtful questions; seemed to be aimed more towards those with some formal knowledge (not necessarily a bad thing...). Some ambiguity in my replies, as I forgot that it's aimed only at bass [i]guitar [/i]players, so db answers may not be applicable.

[AndrewJordan]

Done.

[CamdenRob]

At work now, but I'll do this later...

... although my level of competence is debatable

[SpondonBassed]

[quote name='EvilSmile' timestamp='1463053414' post='3048094']
It should only take ~20-25mins.
[/quote]

That should be okay. Talk to my agent. I only charge £65 per minute.

[ivansc]

Got half way through, got bored and started wondering what the object of all this worthy stuff is.

I have zero musical education beyond music GCE "O" level but have taught a bunch of people to play, including the application of theory.
Utterly mystified as to why you think being able to sproing about over a 12 fret interval is relevant to bass playing, to cite one oddness.
If I found myself doing this whilst playing, I would assume I was either showing off in a rather tasteless way or someone had nudged my left elbow.

Please tell us what this is all about - I might go back and do it all if I know there is an actual end to all this.

[ambient]

Done, there's no box for my email for entry into the prize draw 😌.

[lojo]

I started but had to give up with some of the competency questions , as there are things I don't know the names of, normally I'd suggest that means I don't know them, but I've been complimented on teqniques before that I wasn't aware of knowing , my background is 30 years self taught and clearly this survey is for the educated player.

Good luck with it though

[EvilSmile]

Thanks again to all the new people for both giving it a go and also to those who've completed it I really appreciated it!

[quote name='ivansc' timestamp='1463065664' post='3048261']
Got half way through, got bored and started wondering what the object of all this worthy stuff is.

I have zero musical education beyond music GCE "O" level but have taught a bunch of people to play, including the application of theory.
Utterly mystified as to why you think being able to sproing about over a 12 fret interval is relevant to bass playing, to cite one oddness.
If I found myself doing this whilst playing, I would assume I was either showing off in a rather tasteless way or someone had nudged my left elbow.

Please tell us what this is all about - I might go back and do it all if I know there is an actual end to all this.
[/quote]

Thats a fair point. The end goal is to be able to take a piece of music that has been notated, a detailed transcription or some other detailed annotation of the music and have a computer automatically determine how difficult the piece is to play. Some pieces of music might require you to play beyond the 12th fret or any other the other things i'm asking - i'm just trying my best to be thorough!

As for purpose of the study... being able to compare pieces of music based on their difficulty is something I need to be able to do in my PhD, and will likely be useful to other research in music information retrieval and musicological fields It could also help or aid in bass player education contexts, and help in recommending musical pieces that are of a similar difficulty, or are slightly more/less difficult to a given piece/pieces or suitable for someone playing expertise/ability.

If you would like more specific (read: technical) information i'm happy to PM you and to answer any other questions

[toneknob]

Done. Good work doc.

[EssentialTension]

After several tries I got it to work but then eventually gave up trying to decide what counted as competency or not.

I expect it's relevant to someone sometime but almost everything I was being asked I would never do or need to do - so incompetent apparently.

Good luck with your study.

[Roger2611]

I gave it a go, I have no formal musical knowledge so some of the scales I probably can do but I wouldn't know what they were if they smacked me in the face, same with some of the accenting questions, I quite probably know more than I think I do and can certainly play more than my musical knowledge suggests

interesting survey, thanks

[Woodinblack]

Well, no doc yet!
Not sure what sense was meant by accomplishment?

[leftybassman392]

Done - for what it's worth (I've been retired for several years although I still play for myself). Answers to technique-based questions have been given as of the years immediately before my retirement.

[paul h]

Done.

There is more than one time signature? Mind blown.