As years goes by...

First it was days between my posts, then a month and now a year...
You may doubt it, but I can promise that I'm much more consistent when it comes to practice bass. I don't practice as regularly as I should all the time, but I have periods when I practice many hours per day.
Somehow two years have passed by since I started this never ending project, and this spring I finally began to feel like I actually know how to play bass. I'm now on DVD 4, lesson 7 of TMBG. Though I far from master all the techniques and songs in these first 7 lessons I'm really happy about how much I have learned so far.
This week I joined a beta test run of an upcoming course named 'Walking Basslines 101' by Paul Wolfe at how-to-play-bass.com. This 9 month long course will hopefully get me to practice daily and develop my bass playing a lot.
And let's see if it gets me to update this blog a bit more often then I have lately...

Year Two

I realized yesterday that it was a year ago since I decided to learn how to play bass. It has been a quick year, but a rather slow progress as for me becoming a pro bass player. Today I picked up the bass for the first time in about 2.5 months! Not because I've been lazy or lost interest, but because I ended up with a 'double mouse arm' in mid April. I have had to rest both of my arms for soon seven weeks. All because I worked too much in front of my PC without taking any breaks. And also because I still have a frozen shoulder which would need to be taken care of with lots of stretching etc.
I'm not fully cured yet, but I have now decided to practice bass each day, no matter what the doctor says...
At least it didn't feel too strange to play again, even though I had forgotten more than I would have wished.

Gettin' on the good foot - My first video

A small step for mankind, but one giant leap for me: I think I've learned to play bass well enough to show it to the world in a video recording :-)
This is how it sounds and looks like when I play the bass line from Roy Vogt's 'Gettin' On the Good foot', from lesson 5 of TMBG.

My body tells me no...

...but I won't quit, cause I want more. (As Young The Giant sings)
I had to stop practicing my bass playing for more than 6 weeks due to a inflammation in my shoulder, but now I'm finally back on track again! I hope to make a lot of progress during the next months, and I'm trying to practice every day. 
I have also invested in an ear training course, Perfect Pitch which then hopefully will make it easier for me to play bass.

(I have during my absence upgraded myself to the age of 49, but I'll still stick to the old Blog name)

Pandoras box

I'm amazed to see that it's one month and one day between my last two posts. Time flies!
As wrote in my last post, I have now moved on the lesson three of TMBG. This was the first time I tried to play with a pick since I started. To my surprise was that much more difficult than to use the fingers. So I need to practise a lot more with that.
The first time I heard “Improv You Play It” I thought it would take me a very long time to learn how to play it, but a couple of weeks later I could, and it was not that difficult (but no, I can not play it as fast as "PatrickOnBass" yet)
A week ago I bought myself a Korg Pandora Mini. I think it will be much more fun to practice with that, but I have not had time to try it properly yet. So I'll stop here and go back to my bass.
Let's see if my next post is on 16th of October...

Hurry up slowly

It's been a while since my last post, but that is mainly because I try to spend my time practizing to play bass rather than to update this blog :-)
I received my Behringer BXL1800 amplifier long ago and I'm so far very pleased with it.
It has taken longer than I would have wanted it to (I've been trying to practice about 30 - 90 minutes to per day), but I finally start to know my way around the the fretboard. And I feel that my fingers begins to be flexible enough to play in a fluent way :-)
I'm already (or maybe some think 'only') on the second lesson of  Teach Me Bass Guitar but in the very near future I will put in the second (out of ten) DVD in the player and see what challanges lesson three will bring.

My new red friend arrived yesterday...

Let me introduce you to my Ibanez SR300 :-)
It looks and feels very nice and it's so much easier to play compared to the Harley Benton I first had. It's also clearly of a much higher quality.
I'm now just waiting for my new amp to arrive, but meanwhile I use my wife's electric piano as a headphone amp and a metronome :-)