New Year's Practice Resolutions

[velvetkevorkian]

Having rather fallen off the musical wagon in recent years, I've decided my 2023 resolution is to work through and apply Gary Willis' Fingerboard Harmony, hopefully without getting distracted after the first chapter as I have in the past.

 

Anyone else going to try and make some new practice habits this year? Post them so we can hold each other accountable/comiserate when life gets in the way.

[Waddo Soqable]

Probably to even practice at all would be a start.. I've always managed to just "wing it" tbh 😉

[Reggaebass]

I normally write out my practice routine depending on what I’m working on for each week or month , but always end up just playing the tunes I like 😁, this year I intend to stick with my practice 

[Guest]

Fingerboard Harmony is an interesting book. It’s a shame all the examples are drum machine and sampled bass instead of being played by him as they’d sound much better (apart from the excerpt of a real track he played on at the end). I gave it a good shot over a few months and it didn’t really do much for my musical sense to be honest. I feel it’s just a bit dry and academic for me.
 

Something as simple as the continuous scale exercise and some of the sequence exercises and examples in the Jazz Theory Book brought my playing on much more. On a side note, The Necessary Blonde by Tribal Tech is a song penned by Willis and it’s a great tune with an excellent bass solo (and even better piano solo) - learning and transcribing/being able to play/solo over that tune might be a good challenge after the fingerboard harmony book!

 

I plan to do more transcription work this year and hence more keyboard playing, I’m hoping my bass playing will keep up but after just coming up to 37 years on bass I’m not sure I have any goals that really want to make me practice - the curse of having “enough” technical ability

 

[Horizontalste]

Not really a resolution as such, more of a long term plan to get my act together.

 

COVID hit my practice hard with all the extra humans in the house during the day, which is the time I like to plant myself in my studio (aka, our kitchen) & lose myself for a couple of hours.

I went from playing pretty much everyday to putting the basses in cases & hiding them away.

 

So the main aim this year is to get the habit back. I'll need to work through the repertoire cuz no doubt I'll have forgotten loads & with that I'd like to broaden the scope of what I learn & play, adding songs from genre's I've overlooked.

 

The other thing I've started working on is making my playing more of a whole body thing, yes it sounds woo woo but until recently my attention was all in my head when I'm playing. I've always played by feel, never counted anything & I've always anchored on the "one". Recently I've been finding anchors on other beats in the bar & even between beats & my time & articulation has already come on loads.

I know it sounds weird but I feel the music in my body more now & that means I'm getting out of my head, as a byproduct I feel more relaxed & enjoy grooving to even the simplest of tracks.

 

It's only took me 30 years 😂