Juggahnaught's Non-Zero Days

#41
Two logs in one today, since I didn't post yesterday.

2020-04-21. Tuesday.

Not the biggest day overall in terms of practice, but I did do:

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A ascending at 106 bpm in eighths.

I decided to use the ear training app that I'd been building and did 50 questions, and got them all right! ...only to realize that some of my code was faulty, so I couldn't actually get questions wrong. I also had an issue with my octave logic, so the scoring was off. I've since fixed those issues, though. It's coming along!

I also kept experimenting with fingerings for the one band song I was shedding. There are a lot of different ways to play it across all six strings and I realize that different fingering/positional/string choices all have different pros and cons. Other than that, though, just noodling....which I've been trying to go beyond during this period.

2020-04-22. Wednesday.

I haven't actually done any bass practice today. A big part of my musical focus has gone into the app that I'm building; the functionality is there and it's actually working correctly now. But for me, I know that it's easy to go down into a rabbit hole....so I think I'm going to try simply practicing perfect pitch with intervals for a week or two, and then triads for a week or two, and then tetrads. I think that using it every day will not only speed up the build process, but it'll keep me focused on the actual goal instead of getting mired down in the technology.

I think I'm going to at least run through Bass Fitness Chapter 1 descending, and then maybe do some ear training. I'll either edit or repost.

viking power said:
Sup from Seattle! Your practice log is inspiring me. I appreciate the honesty you’re laying down here. I’m thinking of jumping back on the bass from guitar and reading your log is helping me understand that some days are good and some days aren’t and that is how it is for everybody.
Click to expand...

Hey, fellow Seattleite! Hope quarantine's treating you well.

Yeah...it's true. I felt as though although I had some rough days, at least I was doing it, but lately I feel like I'm losing my motivation to actually even play my bass, which isn't ideal. Practice has become kind of rote and while I know that discipline is good, right now it all feels a bit aimless, so it's harder for me to stay on track. But as you said, this is how it is for everybody....so we should just try to continue on the right path.

I appreciate you going through all of this! While this is a public log, I didn't really expect it to influence anyone (it's basically just my ramblings) but it's awesome that it's a small source of inspiration for you. I feel like that's what a music community should be about, especially during these times.

Definitely come back to bass! I actually need to restring my Telecaster and play around with it a bit. I haven't played a guitar in ages and now might be the time to start noodling around with it again.

Onward!
 
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#42
2020-04-23. Thursday. Holy poopie, it's Thursday. ...I though it was Tuesday. shag.

Good day today!

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A alternating at 106bpm in eighths. Felt a lot better today than it did the other day.
- Bass Fitness, Chapter 7, Part A alternating at 94bpm in eighths. This one's getting smoother as I've internalized the fingerings.
- Scale practice - not rigorous, but ran through a little bit of the "beast" exercise in C major today.
- Functional ear training on TonedEar - diatonic, with simultaneous intervals. 97/100. Marked two major 7th intervals as minor 2nds by accident - heard it right, marked it wrong. (Just one of those stupid mistakes.) One time, I clicked "raised 4th" instead of 4th and got it wrong. (So weird that they're raised intervals and not flatted intervals.) Felt really good about this one, though, and kept a lot of healthy streaks, enough to level up to four notes outside of the diatonic.
- Perfect Pitch ear training with my app in progress! Single note: 50 of 50 correct. Average time per question: 3.49 seconds. (Gotta click the buttons.)
- Perfect Pitch ear training with my app in progress! Single interval (two notes in unison): 49 of 50 correct. Average time per question: 10.05 seconds.
- Also jammed a bit with Petti's Backing Tracks on Youtube - he's got some new guitar tracks up that are really fun to play along with for bass solo and melody improv. (Adam Neely mentioned something about being able to sing what you play - I generally try to think melodically, but it's easy to fall into the fingerpattern trap, so I sang the notes as I played improv, which is great for phrasing (and thinking ahead).

Notes:
- Glad I did more Bass Fitness today. It happened because I didn't cook dinner tonight - I've been cooking a little more, which takes more time than I'd like. It is what it us.
- I'm really happy that the perfect pitch app is usable! And it gives me stats like my average time per question, my max time taken to answer a question, my minimum time, along with the ability to review my mistakes and listen to the notes. (I should maybe add a way to listen to the notes in isolation as well as chordal, actually.) I'm going to continue with it as it's a great tool for me and I'd like to actually save my data somewhere and start charting my progress.

Miscellaneous:
I'm feeling more inspired today because I've been watching some of Adam Neely's videos on Youtube. There's a lot of cool stuff and it actually makes me want to pick up my bass, experiment, and noodle. His videos make me think, which makes me practice, so that's awesome.

I'm also feeling really good about my app - there's a lot of work to be done to continue working on it (time to refactor stuff...sigh) but I'm super-stoked that it's a usable tool that currently fits my needs.

Finally - my digital piano items are finally in and it's ready to ship, so that's exciting! I'm looking forward to being able to have a piano again, to practice theory and play with extended chords and voicings.

Onward!
 
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#44
2020-04-25. Saturday.

Yesterday wasn't quite a zero day, but I didn't really do much. I worked on my perfect pitch app but didn't really do any dedicated bass practice or ear training. (Found out that some of the statistics logic in my app was wrong - fixed, that and added more stats, so that's good.) I think I did 50 questions in my app and got 49 right, but that might have been a different day.

Today - small day.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A at 106 bpm in eighths.
- Beast exercise in C major up to the 12th fret.

instrumentalist said:
Maybe you explained this elsewhere & I missed it, but what's the "beast" exercise?
Click to expand...

The beast exercise is a three-note-per-string scale exercise that moves up the entire fretboard. There's a PDF here that explains the concept: https://joshfossgreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/the-beast-advanced-scale-exercise-bass-tab.pdf. I'm just applying it to six strings. I find that it's a better process if I sing/say the note names as I play it - this means that instead of running through fingering patterns (which I already know), I can know for sure that in C major, starting on a G anywhere on the fretboard with my index finger means a five-fret span on the same string. It's a good exercise for internalizing three-note groupings.
 
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#45
2020-04-26. Sunday.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A descending at 106 bpm in eighths. Basically just going through the motions.
- Beast exercise to twelfth fret in the key of F major, saying the notes as I played them. Gonna do this one more time before I go to bed so it's the last thing I think about.
- Functional Ear training, starting with diatonics, simultaneous intervals. 96/100. Leveled up to add the first three "black keys".
- Perfect Pitch Ear Training personal app, with two-note intervals sounding simultaneously. 100% - 50/50 correct. AVERAGE TIME: 7.63s. MEDIAN TIME: 7.04s. LONGEST TIME: 19.46s. SHORTEST TIME: 3.46s.

Definitely a "going through the motions" day.

Spent most of the day working on the perfect pitch app. There's more I'd like to do with it configuration-wise. While it's really just a tool for me right now....I guess my medium-term "dream" for this is something that's actively online - an app that allows you to log in, run a session, view your stats, and track your progress based on past stats. (Longer term - I know that I personally am looking for theory study tools that emphasize ear training and thought instead of just music notation, and so it'd be cool to build more tools into a suite. But I don't want to get ahead of myself.) I really just want something where I can log in every day, do a session or two, chart my progress, and analyze my sessions with user-defined filters and views (maybe with some pretty statistical graphs). People have charged money for less, so hey. Y'never know.

Unfortunately, just ten minutes ago, I'm feeling a weird upper-chest pain that I haven't really felt before (and a bit of a fatigue headache), and so I'm wondering if I've somehow caught something. Usually it'd be nothing, but I guess in these times you never know. Hoping that sleeping it off will work.

Tomorrow's another day.

Edit: Forgot to mention - I've been watching a lot of Drumeo videos, and they're actually really good and a lot of it can actually apply to bass (any instrument or musician, really). There's good technique and musicianship on display and the talks are pretty inspiring, and some of the things they talk about make me think about my approach on bass. It's good stuff.
 
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#47
2020-04-27. Monday.

Definitely phoned it in today. Didn't sleep at all last night, I'm burned out on coding (yet oddly manic) and I just can't get into it right now.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A alternating at 106bpm in eighths.
- Beast exercise in F major.
- Functional Ear training, diatonic intervals, simultaneous. 90/100. Slogged through this one day.

I guess at least I did something, even if it doesn't feel that way.

instrumentalist said:
Does it give you dreams? :confused::laugh:
Click to expand...

I find that if I'm studying something before I go to sleep and it's the last thing on my mind, it "cements" better as I guess I'm sleeping on the problem or patterns or whatever I'm working on. Unfortunately, that did not happen this time - I didn't actually sleep last night at all. But when it does happen, it's good.
 
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#48
Sucks that you didn’t sleep man. That ain’t cool.

so I told you your thread has inspired me. Picked up my bass couple times over the last few days. Grabbed a couple of online courses from TrueFire and did a little work in each. nothing amazing but it’s a start.

Big thing for me is figuring out how to have fun on bass like one can on guitar. Not being in a band, I don’t have folks to jam with and with COVID-19 that’s not really an option right now anyway.
I’m rambling. Anyway, felt good to play some bass.
Onward, as you say!
 
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#49
2020-04-29. Wednesday.

Man, April has flown by. Crazy. Before we know it it'll be the end of the year already.

Mediocre day today. Yesterday was a pure zero day, nothing happened.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A ascending at 110bpm in eighths. I got off track with my last session of six exercises at the target bpm - lost track of where I was and what I did, so I'm just restarting the cycle here.
- Beast exercise - review in F major, doing some work on G major. Trying to say/sing the note names as I play them, which is actually the hardest part of the exercise - I can play scales at speed all day, but ask me to say the alphabet in order and it's like jugging ten eggs. Guess that's why I'm not a lyricist - I sing the right notes, but say the wrong thing. (If I had a dollar for every time I sang C-D-E and said C-E-D or some variant of that, I might be able to buy a new set of strings.)
- Perfect pitch ear training. 94%: 47 of 50 correct. AVERAGE TIME: 9.33s. MEDIAN TIME: 7.88s. LONGEST TIME: 23.02s. SHORTEST TIME: 4.04s. This exercise also benefits if I sing the notes and the enharmonic note names that I'm hearing in order to engrain the notes - specifically F#/Gb and G#/Ab. I realize that in terms of flats and sharps, I think oddly - I've never thought about it enharmonically to the key; I've always thought of the notes as C#, Eb, F#, and Bb....and G#/Ab has always kind of been a no-man's land (I think I prefer G#). I think this is because this is how I learned this as a kid from watching and listening to my mom play piano - that's just what the keys were to me. I guess it's time to pass that and engrain the enharmonics. (Not that I don't know them, but there's not an automatic connection - I hear a pitch, think Bb, then have to translate to A#.)

Notes:

Yesterday was a zero day. I've been slipping into bad habits during quarantine, mainly based on internet and TV (two things that I was actively trying to reduce in my life; I brought them back specifically for quarantine). I was sleeping really well until I lost a night of sleep (possibly due to drinking coffee, which I hadn't done in a while) and now my sleep schedule's kind of borked. I'm continuing, but I'm a little burned out on coding this perfect pitch app (since my actual job is programming) and practicing ear training has been a chore recently. I've been kind of going through the motions with bass, also.

I'd planned to keep moving forward with Bass Fitness, folding in Chapter 7 studies into the routine; I'd also planned on working in stretching exercises in lieu of (or rather, as preparation for) Chapter 2 with it's fingerboard-spanning exercises. I'd hoped to do a lot more, but the truth is, it isn't happening right now. It's not just bass work that I'm not doing - it's also music work in general. It's a combination of laziness, lack of focus, and my personal space not being optimized. (I'd done work on the music space front and I've had some setbacks.) Not yet sure how I'm going to beat that.

viking power said:
Sucks that you didn’t sleep man. That ain’t cool.

so I told you your thread has inspired me. Picked up my bass couple times over the last few days. Grabbed a couple of online courses from TrueFire and did a little work in each. nothing amazing but it’s a start.

Big thing for me is figuring out how to have fun on bass like one can on guitar. Not being in a band, I don’t have folks to jam with and with COVID-19 that’s not really an option right now anyway.
I’m rambling. Anyway, felt good to play some bass.
Onward, as you say!
Click to expand...

There's a quote somewhere - "progress, not perfection". I was never brought up this way (actually, the opposite, completely poopy) and so steering towards this frame of mind is a journey for me. You might say it's nothing amazing - but you're right; it is a start! Something's better than nothing. And yeah, I can totally relate to the "fun on bass" vs fun on guitar - that's partly why I introduced myself to six-string bass early on, and it's partly why I bought a piano to help me through this period (but it'll probably arrive in 2021 or something). But yeah, keep playing!

Tomorrow's another day.
 
#52
2020-04-30. Thursday.

Plodding on! Thanks @instrumentalist and @viking power. I'll try not to wear out the frets.

Today.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A descending at 110bpm in eighths.
- Bass Fitness, Chapter 7, Part A alternating at 110bpm in eighths. (I'm supposed to do this one much slower....but I lack patience. And it worked.)
- Played along with All The Things You Are today, and I think I've got the head melody down. If I memorized the entire thing earlier, I managed to forget it (I definitely don't know the lyrics).
- Functional Ear Training - I was about 85% of the way through 100 questions when I accidentally clicked a link and lost my progress. But at any rate, I decided that from today I'm starting with chromatics, so the "levelling up" system won't matter anymore as chromatics are the highest level. I think I had 74/94 questions right at one point, so it's probably safe to say that I would have gotten anywhere from 85 to 88 questions correct.

Miscellaneous/Notes:

Found this cool little circle of fifths site (Interactive Circle of Fifths) and found it interesting to play around with. I knew about the relationship between a diatonic (and pentatonic) scale on the circle, but I never really thought about how the modes and the keys map in that type of geometric fashion. (I also never thought to order the modes according to the circle of fourths or fifths - incidentally, ordering them by fourths starting at Lydian yields the "brightest" to "darkest" sound, which is really cool and something I never realized. Additionally, I never really understood why "MILLPAD" was a thing - always seemed random - but it's ordered in fifths (although why would you start at mixolydian, that seems arbitrary).

I also realize why I like the functional interval training; it allows me to train listening to notes within a key context. The perfect pitch app I've been building has shades of this - I can listen to an interval or even a chord, and be asked to identify the notes. However, having to do that within the context of a "home" key would take it to the next level. (This is specific to me - I feel like I have good relative pitch all the time and good perfect pitch out of context (and in certain key contexts, like C major, F major, etc), but I feel like my pitch identification suffers in certain contexts (for example - play a 2-5-1 in F#, then play a random interval outside of the key - stuff goes weird) and I realize that this is due to two things.

1. My key spelling knowledge/scale knowledge isn't as good as it could be.
2. My perfect pitch and relative pitch, in these situations, aren't really working together. (When they do - in contexts like, say, C major, it's awesome, instant identification.)

To this end, I think it's time to start working on the theory side of things again. While I know how to spell scales and I know the sharps and flats of each key, it's not on instant recall; I should be able to not just sing the flat 6 of Bb major instantly, but identify the note name as part of the scale. I should also be able to spell and sing a scale in intervals instantly (example, C major in fifths is CGDAEBF) So this means intervalic practice inside and outside of a key as well as general key/scale memorization drills, all while singing so that I'm able to refurbish these rusty pathways. (I'd been thinking about building a tool for this for a while anyway, so maybe now is the time.)

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I bought the piano - I feel like piano is a great instrument for this type of thing.

Lots of rambling today and I've kind of meandered away from a specific point, but ah well.

Onward!
 
#55
2020-05-02. Saturday.

Yesterday was a zero day. Today wasn't much better.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A descending at 110bpm in eighths. Went through the motions.

Yesterday, i did start working on another webapp for theory/scale spelling practice. If I'm able to get that working like the perfect pitch app, I'll be able to use it to quiz myself on mode spelling in all keys, as well as note identification/degree identification.

Definitely feeling a bit of burnout overall. We'll see what happens.
 
#59
2020-05-04. Monday.

Yesterday was a zero day. Tried to do some work on the tools I'm building to help myself but it was a crapshoot. Think I learned something, though - focus on the value of the tools, not the code. Doesn't need to be something I could ship to an audience, just a tool I can use. If I have two needs, I should just build two tools instead of trying to build one tool that can be extended to fit both needs.

Today -
- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A alternating at 110bpm in eighths. If I don't do bass fitness every day, I definitely feel it when I come back to it.
- Functional Ear Training on TonedEar, chromatic scale, simultaneous. 94/100. Took a bit longer than usual due to the chromatics. This is kind of becoming a chore - thinking about backing down to fifty questions per day. (Also....small pet peeve....I'm used to thinking about intervals in terms of flatted notes, not "raised" notes. So a flat 7th is a "raised 6th" which is just....weird. Augmented and diminished intervals would be preferable to the "raised" syntax. So awkward.)

Notes:

This was a slog, but dammit, I'm getting back into gear this week. No zero days for the week, even if it's the smallest day ever. I've been falling into bad habits during the quarantine and I've got to stave them off.

As for my practice tools - my perfect pitch training app isn't complete, but it's good enough. I need to stop the software engineer side of me from trying to make it awesome and optimizable, and not try to make a product - it's just a tool, and it works, very well. I began making a tool to help me with chord spelling, got annoyed with it, and decided to look at using Anki to practice chord/mode spelling and interval identification in all keys. Although Anki's a great app, its interface is old and clunky and I feel like making 20 or so flash cards for all seven modes in all twelve keys will actually take longer than just writing my own app. So I'm going to stay on track with that.

viking power said:
Hang in there man!

Curious- why Bass Fitness? Any other books or courses that you like to use?
Click to expand...

I guess I really wanted to focus on some technique issues that I had in terms of muting (I play a six-string with floating thumb, but I was still getting a lot of ringing harmonics on the lower strings due to the floating thumb mute, so I now tuck my ring and pinky finger in on my plucking hand to have them rest on the lower strings also) and I wanted to get my left-hand dexterity back to where it used to be when I used to practice all the time. It's been helping but I've honestly become lazy about it - I'm doing the exercises from memory, which means that I'm not actively looking through the book to pick up new stuff.

I have a couple of other books that I intended to use, focused on reading music, but they've kind of fallen to the wayside. What I wanted was better command of the fretboard, using absolute positioning instead of relative positioning, if that makes sense. One book that I have is specifically for six-string bass, but it covers a lot of information I already know, and I've been kind of lazy about sticking to it.

I was a bit more motivated originally to work on my music reading, but that's kind of fallen off as well since playing jazz was the major motivator for that. (Additionally, I found that sight-reading felt like "painting by the numbers" - it's definitely a different way of playing, but I feel divorced from the music while I'm doing it, like giving a speech versus reading a speech.) Reading's a good skill to have, though, and I should practice that in my spare time, even if it's just the bass clef app I have on my phone.

Tomorrow is, as always, another day.
 
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#60
2020-05-05. Tuesday.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A ascending at 110 bpm in eighths.
- Bass Fitness, Chapter 5, Part A at 110 bpm in eighths.
- Beast exercise in the key of C, F, Bb, Eb.
- Functional ear training, chromatic, simultaneous intervals - 45/50. Off day.
- Perfect pitch interval training (my app). 100%: 50 of 50 correct. AVERAGE TIME: 8.48s. MEDIAN TIME: 7.51s. LONGEST TIME: 22.39s. (E, C#, sixth.) SHORTEST TIME: 4.06s. (I should console.log this so I don't have to copy it from the results page every time.)

Miscellaneous:
Watched some drum videos today. I don't know why but when it comes to videos about music, I'm a huge fan of drum stuff. Drumeo, the 80/20 drummer, stuff like that. It's really good.

Notes:
Functional ear training feels more like a chore so I'm bringing the number of questions down. I made some dumb mistakes today (misclicks, etc) leading to a low score. Conversely, the perfect pitch training was spot on, but I'm unhappy about the time it takes. (When I was younger I felt like my ear was always on point, but lately, sometimes I hear a note and I feel like I'm just....blank. Like looking at a word that you know but you don't recognize, so you read it over and over again and it just sounds/looks weird. Don't know how to describe it.) But I guess that's what practice is for.

Spent some time last night passively studying the circle of fifths and thinking about it, and I have actually had some new insights, which is great. Stuff I already knew, technically, but making more connections with it, I suppose. Always a good thing.

I realized that I wasn't really working with my books any more - so I decided to do an exercise out of Bass Fitness that I hadn't done. Worked out well. I also should be using my Amplug but I've gotten into the habit of having the Markbass 1x12 on the couch next to me at low volume when I play - it's always hooked up and ready to go - so I'm not going to fight it if it's easier. I also decided to dime the high mids and treble - easier to hear at low volume, and highlights any mistakes I make, so that's a double-win. (I think I've succeeded in being cleaner - at least at the exercises - solely by updating my right-hand muting technique to reduce harmonic ringing from muted strings. That's a plus.)

It'll be a chore, but I'm going to spend some time tonight working on the speller app so that I can start using that on the regular.

Oh and my piano is finally shipping! I had to have it shipped separately from some of the accessories, which aren't in stock yet. That'll be nice to have!

Onward.
 
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