Self taught?

[diskwave]

Violin at school then Punk happened...'bye bye violin' (my biggest ever regret). Found a Columbus Jazz in a junk shop and started playing along to Bad Company/Chic albums...Kinda got good pretty quick, Pubs, Clubs, Festivals...Managed to transpose fiddle music so cool but was never what I would consider to be an accomplished bassist. It's only in the last ten yrs that my playing has really developed but now my ears are shot so Ive pretty much packed it in....and, started learning cello. Should have done it years ago.

[dmccombe7]

Lessons for approx 18mths if i remember right and from there self taught with a combination of music books that we had back in 70's and listening to albums like Brand X, Jeff Berlin,  Camel, Mahavishnu, Colloseum II, 

Dave

[Reggaebass]

Had lessons from about 15 years old from a blues teacher, so was playing blues and reggae, no YouTube then was just books ,and used to record songs on my cassette 😁 and just keep rewinding them until I got the Bassline 

[dmccombe7]

35 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

Had lessons from about 15 years old from a blues teacher, so was playing blues and reggae, no YouTube then was just books ,and used to record songs on my cassette 😁 and just keep rewinding them until I got the Bassline 

I had forgotten all about the cassette tape thing  

So many memories coming back since you mentioned it where tapes stretched or got caught and ruined because i kept rewinding one song. They were fine if you played a side all the way thru like an album.

Dave

[BigRedX]

I went to "folk guitar" evening classes for 3 years when I started playing at the age of 13. The first year was pretty much useless as my £10 catalogue guitar was virtually unplayable and I didn't really find the songs we were learning very inspirational. However during the summer I got hold of The Beatles Complete songbook and something clicked and I went almost overnight from being unable to play anything to being able to competently strum my way through all the songs in the book that I knew. The following two years of evening classes were also pretty much a waste of time from a learning PoV since I found I was now by far the best player in the class (that's not saying much), but I went with a couple of school friends who would end up being my first band so for me it was mostly a social thing.

 

Since that first year I have taught myself everything I have needed in order to be able to play guitar, bass and synth, by reading about it, by watching and asking others in the various bands I've been in, or simply by figuring it out myself by trial and error. I'm still pretty average technically, but I'm good enough to be able to play the sort of music I want to play, and most things I want to do that aren't within immediate technical reach can be achieved by practice.

 

I have enough "theory" in order to know what notes ought to work best in a given place in a piece of music, and know what most of the dots mean on a score even if I can't decipher it fast enough to be able to sight read.

[Reggaebass]

14 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

So many memories coming back since you mentioned it where tapes stretched or got caught and ruined because i kept rewinding one song

Definitely Dave , it was, stop rewind stop rewind, and I used to use the tape counter number thing 😁

[Jay2U]

Way back in time my father taught me how to play keyboard (organ). I must have been about six years old. Dad played organ, piano, violin, accordion, trumpet and harmonica. Much later, at the age of fifty, my 13 year old son wanted to play guitar, so we went to a music store and bought a decent electric guitar and a combo. Being there I looked at the basses. In my late teens/early twenties I ran a youth bar, where I organised gigs. Watching them play, I always thought, I'd like to play that mighty bass. One week later I returned to the store and bought me a nice four string. With my keyboard knowledge I managed to translate keys to frets. So I'm kinda self taught.

[dmccombe7]

1 hour ago, Reggaebass said:

Definitely Dave , it was, stop rewind stop rewind, and I used to use the tape counter number thing 😁

yes that's 100% the tape counter was great for finding that difficult part of the songs.

Dave

[Nicko]

I was a self taught (self deluded?) guitarist from aged around 13. I never really progressed much but ended up taking lessons in my late 20s.  The local council ran group lessons and it's tre best thing I ever did.  I learnt more theory than anything else but that's probably what I needed - I already knew how to play quite a few chords and a few scales but never really understood how to put them together.  I got to grade 5 before giving up - mainly because it was all going a bit jazzy which isn't something I'm interested in.

 

Picked up a bass to fill in in my early 40s.  Technically I'm a self taught bassist but although the approach to bass is different to guitar the mechanics and theory are all identical IMO. 

[dmccombe7]

51 minutes ago, Nicko said:

I was a self taught (self deluded?) guitarist from aged around 13. I never really progressed much but ended up taking lessons in my late 20s.  The local council ran group lessons and it's tre best thing I ever did.  I learnt more theory than anything else but that's probably what I needed - I already knew how to play quite a few chords and a few scales but never really understood how to put them together.  I got to grade 5 before giving up - mainly because it was all going a bit jazzy which isn't something I'm interested in.

 

Picked up a bass to fill in in my early 40s.  Technically I'm a self taught bassist but although the approach to bass is different to guitar the mechanics and theory are all identical IMO. 

So basically you had brain improvement therapy to become a bassist. 

Dave

[Nicko]

19 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

So basically you had brain improvement therapy to become a bassist. 

Dave

It was a very low starting point.

[Nicko]

19 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

So basically you had brain improvement therapy to become a bassist. 

Dave

It was a very low starting point.

[T-Bay]

A bit like Ferris Bueller - never had a lesson

[dmccombe7]

41 minutes ago, Nicko said:

It was a very low starting point.

You seem to have posted this twice or is it just me that's seeing it twice ?

Dave

[Jay2U]

1 hour ago, Nicko said:

It was a very low starting point.

Which is pretty normal for a bass guitar.

[fretmeister]

No lessons for guitar or bass, but several years of piano and sax lessons and exams.

 

I didn't really use it for playing rock covers pre internet as it was just about impossible to buy the parts anyway, but since I've been playing big band jazz and it's all proper manuscript it's been rather useful.