Learning to play

[solarbird]

I’m learning to play electric bass. I’m playing a 1965 hollow-body Klira, the type known as a “McCartney Bass,” but a different maker; I’ve talked about it before. I’m doing it partly because I wanted to poke around at bass – and it is fun – but mostly I’m doing it right now because I need a bassline on several of these songs, and electronic octave-dropping an octave mandolin isn’t always the right answer.

But it’s another goddamn skill I get to level up before I can finish Dick Tracy Must Die. This is intensely frustrating. I’d built up real studio momentum, and now this new spanner’s been thrown in the works. Sure, I’m still recording other things – “Artefacts” is pretty much finished now, minus some technical clean-up; “Thought You Knew” is not quite there but close – but it’s like an ax got wedged in my brain. It’s divided attention, where the sum is greater than the parts, but you’re going at it the backwards way, from the sum to the parts, a loss rather than a gain.

For a couple of weeks there, I was entirely in make-the-recording mode and out of figure-out-recording mode, and I liked that. I was applying learned skills in a pretty serious way. It’s not that I wasn’t learning, still; I was. But it was different, in the trying-different-things way rather than the learning-basic-things way. That mode is what got Sketchy Characters out the door.

But now I’m back behind that threshold again, and it feels like swimming in molasses. It’s not that I’m not gaining skill at bass; I am. Yesterday, for the first time, I recorded a bassline for “Thought You Knew” that I listened to and thought, “okay, I could edit this into something passable.” It’s not passable as-is – not close – but there are enough proper bits in it that I could probably hack it into something that sounded okay. Today, I recorded a take that was meaningfully better than yesterday’s, tho’ still not in the actually-okay range.

It’s coming, but not quickly enough. Worse, I’m spending so much time on learning electric bass that I’ve been neglecting everything else.

And after Dick Tracy Must Die, I already have two more CDs worth of material. Next comes the instrumental CD Distractions – that one should at least be easy – and the follow-up which doesn’t have a title yet, but does have 10 or 11 songs waiting for it. I write a lot faster than I record, and getting what I hear in my head out so you lot can hear it too is so much work.

I know that eventually I’ll get past this – again – and it’ll still be work but I’ll know what I’m doing, and it’ll be ten times faster, and sound better, and be easier and and and. I look forward to that time a lot. But right now, that feels like it’s two centuries away.

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Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil.

Comments

[403]

It’s divided attention, where the sum is greater than the parts, but you’re going at it the backwards way, from the sum to the parts, a loss rather than a gain.

This is the story of my life in a nutshell.

[solarbird]

I empathise. I fought what I thought of as specialisation like crazy for a long, long time, because I wanted to do all these different things and could do them, all at once, as well as most people could just working on the one. This is the first time I've looked at something and gone, "...yeah. It's worth it, for this."

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

And I still can't play even one instrument.

Sigh.

Would you like to play an instrument, or do you like the idea of playing an instrument?

[solarbird]

Go to an instrument store with a lot of kinds of instruments. Your goal is to find the instrument where just poking at it without knowledge is in and of itself interesting.

Poke around at different ones until you find one you like playing with. Not "playing" in the sense of "making a song come out;" playing with. Maybe it'll be something with strings; maybe it won't be.

For the first month or month and a half after Anna gave me her mandolin, almost all that I did with it was poke at it at funny angles and strum it with all strings open. Then I'd try to play Great Big Sea's "Goin' Up" or the traditional "Lukey" a few times, and generally I'd just go back to making it make noises. For five weeks or so, that was mostly just open strumming, as it worked its way into my brain.

You want to find the instrument where that sounds fun. Forget your ideas about "proper" instruments and for the love of the gods don't let your preferences in musical genre dictate the choice. Maybe it'll be a ukulele! Maybe it'll be bells. Maybe it'll be a theremin. Maybe it'll be a flute. Maybe a whistle. Maybe it'll be a string-plucked washtub bass. Maybe it'll be a beatpad, or a 10x10 sequencer grid. Maybe it'll be a balalaika. Whatever it is, forget everything else and just find the thing with the noise that makes your brain go "....oh!"

Then take it home and play with it. Not "play it" - play with it. Just play with it, without expectation, and let what happens, happen.

If after a while you want to try to play a song, pick one you like a lot, look up some videos on youtube that introduce you to the basic concepts of playing whatever you've got, and try to play the song. Don't start drilling on scales or whatever if you don't want to; that can wait until you're hooked good and proper and actually want to do that.

It's not school. You aren't being graded. You don't have to do it in someone else's order. There is no GPA at stake. Throw all that away and just find the sound toy you want to play with, and play with it however comes to mind. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe something amazing will.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

so my silly question is, why not just find a bassist you like? the world's full of them; paul is hardly alone.

[solarbird]

I don't know anybody, and if I hired someone off audition or something, well, that's time and money too.

Mind you, I like this thing - it's just the time.