Juggahnaught's Non-Zero Days

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-06. Wednesday.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A descending at 110bpm in eighths. I wouldn't say that this felt sloppy today, but it wasn't as smooth as it could have been.
- Bass Fitness, Chapter 6, Part A. "Exercises for skipping frets, alternating direction, with all four fingers moving across the fretboard." This was kind of a mess - not because the exercises were difficult but just because I didn't have the patterns under my fingers. It'd just be a matter of doing this one more often so that I wouldn't inadvertently play the wrong pattern.
- Beast exercise in Bb, Eb, and Ab. This has actually been helping me with fretboard relativity in relation to the circle of fifths, which is actually awesome, so I'm happy about that.
- Perfect Pitch interval training (my app). 94%: 47 of 50 correct. AVERAGE TIME: 7.14. MEDIAN TIME: 6.05s. LONGEST TIME: 20.57s. SHORTEST TIME: 3.25s. My three incorrect answers all had the higher note flat by one semitone. Interesting.
- TonedEar functional ear training, chromatic, simultaneous. 40/50. I just wasn't focused today - definitely had some wrong clicks (like hearing the three and five of a minor chord in the key, but marking the actual interval as minor instead of major). This was a chore.

Miscellaneous:
Jammed a little bit today (only a little), holding a funkish groove while trying to incorporate fills that use three-note chords up in the higher register. So if grooving in A minor around the fifth fret, I might play a C major 7th (C, B, E) up on the 15th fret as part of a fill or something, and then come back into the groove. Fun stuff, if a bit sloppy. But I'd like to be able to do more of this stuff in general.

Just made some bachelor chow (Rice-A-Roni, wild rice, with some sardines added, I'm out of veggies so need to shop) and I'm probably going to do a bit of modal spelling quizzes with the app I'm building, and also do a little bit of key study/mode study/circle of fifths study.

Tomorrow's another day.

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-07. Thursday (!).

Man....days are flying by. Not good.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 5, Part A at 110 bpm in eighths. Started with this one to work my ring and pinky fingers.
- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A alternating at 110 bpm in eighths. Tomorrow, 114bpm for the full set.
- Perfect pitch ear training (my app). 100%: 50 of 50 correct. AVERAGE TIME: 6.55s. MEDIAN TIME: 5.52s. LONGEST TIME: 16.11s (D, G#/Ab). SHORTEST TIME: 3.01s. (Shortest time is a little misleading - I got a duplicate random question. It takes about three seconds to click two notes and hit enter. Keyboard support might be better.)
- Toned Ear Functional Training, chromatic, simultaneous notes. 43/50 - 86.00%.

Last night I did a bit of quiz study for the ionian mode of the flat keys. My speller app is able to ask and answer questions (in the console - it's an MVP), but I don't have scoring or timing set up yet. Hoping to set up more question types ("is degree X of mode Y major, minor, or diminished", "is note X of key Y major, minor or diminished", etc) and eventually more complex questions ("name the common notes between A dorian and C ionian"), stuff like that. I should work on it tonight.....but I'm lazy and I just don't want to. Sigh.

Jammed around a bit today, didn't feel bad. Again, more groove/chord stuff, with some harmonics. Came up with a groove that I think is kind of cool, using the G and C string fifth-fret harmonics to fill out a groove in G minor that ends with a Bbmaj7 -> Fmaj7 chord turnaround. Hard to keep the G and C string harmonics ringing while playing up higher on the neck to arpeggiate the groove.

The functional ear training exercise (not the perfect pitch stuff) is tedious and I find myself simply not looking forward to it. I think this is actually due to the mental gymnastics to think of a flat 7th as a raised 6th - it causes me to second-guess myself because what I'm hearing is right but the math is wrong. I think it also isn't helping me to memorize intervals between specific notes. It may be time to try to fold that exercise's functionality into my own app, which I think would help me to really hammer intervals into my memory. (Additionally, I think this would help a lot with enharmonics - like, the interval between Eb and Gb is a minor third, but although Eb and F# are enharmonic, the note names clash with the interval. (Although in this case you could argue that Eb -> Gb is actually a diminished third, while Eb -> F# is an augmented second, which is technically correct....but only when you're reading notation or if you're working with pythagorean scales. For ear training purposes....not worth it in my opinion.) I think this is why TonedEar frustrates me. It's not a huge deal, but if I'm finding that I'm wanting to skip chromatic exercises with that tool, I need to find an alternative before I start dropping it entirely.

Trudging onward. Tomorrow's yet another day!

 

[Flamingo21]

Hoping to set up more question types ("is degree X of mode Y major, minor, or diminished", "is note X of key Y major, minor or diminished", etc)

You may want to add "augmented" to the list. The fourth degree of Lydian is augmented.

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-08. Friday.

Small day today, didn't really do much.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A ascending at 114bpm in eighths.

Attempted to work on the chord speller app but that didn't really go anywhere.

Onward.

You may want to add "augmented" to the list. The fourth degree of Lydian is augmented.

In this case I was thinking more along the lines of the note within the key and the triad it would create instead of the scale degree of the mode (essentially, mapping modes to a standard diatonic key). The first, fourth, and fifth of every key are major, while the second, third, and sixth are minor - and the seventh is diminished. But the degree of the modal scale maps over this - so D Dorian is in the key of C, meaning that the first degree of D Dorian (D) would build a minor triad in the diatonic key of C and is thus minor. Meanwhile, the first degree of B Locrian is diminished. (It's visualized here: Interactive Circle of Fifths.) Since augmented triads don't fit into the standard diatonic palette, they wouldn't apply here (although you are correct that the Lydian fourth is an augmented fourth within that scale pattern).

Talking about this, I realize that a better way to quiz myself may actually be to use the standard Nashville notation for this, which combines the degree with the tonality - e.g. I (major 1) vs i (minor 1) vs 1º (diminished). In fact, this could actually be extended to work for chord extensions within a key or mode as a future quiz option (but with more notational annoyances) - for example, C mixolydian implies a I7, iim7, iii half diminished, and VImaj7 chords within that mode. But I might be getting ahead of myself - I'd have to code all of that.

 

[Flamingo21]

You don't need to succeed every day. You only need to try every day.

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-09.

Not a lot of productivity today.

- Bass Fitness, Part A descending at 114bpm in eighths. Just kind of going through the motions. Got a quarter of the way through the second exercise when I realized I was doing the ascending line for that exercise instead of the descending line - oops.
- Perfect pitch (my app) - 100%: 50 of 50 correct. Average time: 5.81s. Median time: 5.81s. Longest time: 12.14s. Shortest time: 2.41s.

As I'm writing this, I've decided to slog through TonedEar interval training.

- TonedEar functional ear training: 47/50 (94%). (Wasn't that painful today. Possibly because I did the perfect pitch training first? Not sure.)

I've been messing around with this bass harmonic riff I came up with in 7/8, and I'm thinking I should turn it into a loop and play something over it. Might be cool.

I can't seem to motivate myself to work on my app codebases, even though I should. There's just no code productivity at the moment. Although....thinking about it, I have kind of been wanting to do some visualization work with the chromatic circle, and it could maybe tie in with what I'm currently doing. Maybe I'll hack around on that a bit.

Tomorrow's another day.

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-10. Sunday.

Last night I did work on my app and I created a new UI for choosing notes based on the chromatic circle, which should help to internalize intervals between notes. Screenshot:



I also ended up watching Allan Holdsworth Talking about Scales, which was linked in another thread here on Talkbass. While many love him for his solo work, I've always really like the chords he builds - it's a unique sound and I think there's a lot to learn from that. One major takeaway was him talking about what people do when asked to play a chord - they play the root inversion of that chord, no special voicings or anything, while Allan himself will not only play a completely different voicing, but will play multiple chords within the scale. That's a cool way of thinking about "playing a chord" that I never really utilized, and I think there's something to be learned there.

Today - slow day today. Fell into a really bad pattern today and wasn't really productive at all.

- Perfect pitch ear training (my app). 100%: 50 of 50 correct. Average time: 7.94s. Median time: 7.94s. Longest time: 24.72s. Shortest time: 3.33s.
- (Writing this is keeping me accountable....so I'm doing the functional training right now, before finishing this post.) TonedEar functional ear training: managed 45/50 correctly - 90%. Going through the motions here at the last minute but it still helps.

Didn't really play my bass today. I picked it up but ended up not really playing at all.

Somewhat music related - I watched a documentary on Netflix this morningabout Miles Davis (Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool) and I'm a bit interested in really listening to him more. Just listening to his melodic approach to lines makes me try to play a little differently than I do.

I think that if I try to take some notes from Holdsworth's approach to the fretboard and chords, alongside Miles Davis' approach to melody, I might be able to unlock something new. If I stick with it and make that a target with the appropriate everyday habits.

A little disorganized today, but tomorrow's another day.

 

[Flamingo21]

Screenshot:

It reminds me of telephones from 40 years ago.

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-11. Monday.

- Perfect Pitch Interval Training (my app) - 100%: 50 of 50 correct. Average time: 6.86s. Median time: 6.86s. Longest time: 17.63s. Shortest time: 2.74s.
- TonedEar functional interval training: 46/50 - 92.00%.
- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A alternating at 114bpm in eighths.
- Beast exercise in C major. Ran scales, triad arpeggios, and tetrad (seventh) arpeggios.

I have never really been very organized about doing the beast exercise - it's kind of taken the place of scale and modal study as it accomplishes much of the same stuff with less time. I ran arpeggios through the beast pattern today and I think that running scales and arpeggios is a more structured way to use the exercise. I can do scales, then work in triad arpeggios and their inversions, and then tetrad inversions and their arpeggios - I can split this across days or something, like maybe one day I do triads and their inversions, and then another day tetrads, and switch back and forth. Maybe I can work on a different key per week (mainly the boundary conditions) or something.

I guess this is interesting because I'm really finding my own strategy for organizing exercises - some stuff has stuck, and some hasn't. I didn't really feel motivated today, but I got through it and maybe formalizing this exercise I've been doing will help. I dunno.

Onward!

 

[Flamingo21]

I guess this is interesting because I'm really finding my own strategy for organizing exercises - some stuff has stuck, and some hasn't. I didn't really feel motivated today, but I got through it and maybe formalizing this exercise I've been doing will help.

In my mind, that's always been key to making progress.

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-12. Tuesday.

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A ascending at 114 bpm in eighths. Did a bit of this with my fretting hand thumb not anchored to the back of the neck. It's harder on the fingers but not bad practice. I realize that I'm not really relaxed when I'm playing these exercises due to stretching my finger span - less so when the thumb isn't on the neck - but maybe that's a way to build strength, especially with weaker exercises.
- Beast exercise in C major. Ran the scale up and down (to the 12th fret and then back down), then did triad arpeggios and their inversions. Kind of did some sevenths but not really.
- Perfect pitch ear training (my app): 98%: 49 of 50 correct. Average time: 6.82s. Median time: 6.82s. Longest time: 13.37s. Shortest time: 2.83s. I think the new layout is actually slower in some ways, but I also think it's more functional. (That said, it's easier to cheat by using relative pitch to choose notes by interval. That may be a bad thing.)
- Functional ear training, TonedEar, simultaneous chromatics. 49/50 - 98.00%.

So the beast exercise is already paying off a little bit. While I know my arpeggios, there are certain patterns that I just don't use, and this exercise forces me to use them. Consequently, I'm actually pretty bad at going through the exercise. (The scalar one has been much better, and there are certain scale patterns and arpeggio patterns that are part of my everyday playing that end up in my fills a lot - those are quick and easy for me. The others will take work to become natural, like working unused words into your active vocabulary.) While I do use some arpeggio inversions in my playing, I've never really sat down and run through permutations with them in a specific scale, so this is a learning area for me. It's a little frustrating and humbling, but it's worth it to play outside of my comfort zone in order to expand that zone accordingly.

Hopefully as I do this stuff more, I'll be able to incorporate it into my regular playing (mainly fills and runs solo improvisation). Again, some of this stuff I can do now - my fills are typically sixteenth-note variations of seventh arpeggios and scalar runs, generally descending in thirds, like C-A-B-G-A-F-G-E - but a lot of it I don't, which means that the things that I can do, I do a lot. It may not be apparent to people who listen to me play, but I think many musicians know the feeling where you play something and you think "oh, yeah, I'm falling back on that thing again". I never really thought about this, but we are probably our most common listeners. I guess we always sound like ourselves, but that self will never grow and sound different unless we actively push those boundaries.

Also got the piano today, so that's good. No stand yet so I'll have to figure out a playing situation.

Moving forward!

 

[Flamingo21]

I think many musicians know the feeling where you play something and you think "oh, yeah, I'm falling back on that thing again". (...) I guess we always sound like ourselves, but that self will never grow and sound different unless we actively push those boundaries.

Thanks for pointing this out!

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-13 - Wednesday.

Piano arrived yesterday and the paraphernalia arrived today! Stoked to have it.

- Perfect Pitch intervals (my app): 98%: 49 of 50 correct. Average time: 7.06s. Median time: 7.06s. Longest time: 24.53s. Shortest time: 2.62s.
- TonedEar Functional Interval Training, simultaneous chromatic. 41/50 - 82.00%. Wasn't focused for this one.
- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A descending at 114bpm in eighths.
- Beast exercise in C major - scalar exercise and tetrad arpeggios.

Felt okay doing perfect pitch today, but went into interval training and somehow felt like I lost my ear. Couldn't seem to focus.

Went through seventh tetrads in the beast pattern, then started to work on the first inversion sevenths (6th arpeggios). I definitely haven't done all variations of this, so this one's a good workout.

It's awesome to have a piano again - not just for theory, but just for playing. It's just nice. I sat and played around a little bit today after setting it up and it just felt wonderful - I was smiling the entire time! Looking forward to even just noodling around on it. I'm no piano player by any means (my mother was a pianist, but I never developed the physical and technical acuity on the instrument) but it's a great tool for musical expression. Playing it makes me wish that I had put in the practice time early on so that I had better hands (my left hand, while strong on a fretted instrument, is atrocious on piano - such a weak pinky! and my right hand is better, but untrained) to be able to better express my ideas as they come. There's simply a lot of music in my mind that I can hear, but I can't play. Maybe it's time to start composing and really put Dorico to work.

Onward!

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-14 - Thursday.

Unorthodox day today. Didn't do any actual practice like I usually do. Spent some time with the piano and the bass - the piano has a way of recording what you play, so I thought I could do something cool with it. The recording, however, doesn't loop. So instead, I Recorded MIDI into Ableton using the keyboard and was able to play it back through the piano (to use its voices - electric piano and vibraphone, nice sounds) and was able to make some loops with suspended chords to play with. It was kind of fun.

I'm also reworking my music space (again) now that I've got the piano in place. The electric drumkit has been moved a bit to optimize space - unfortunately my QSC K12.2 is still at my band practice space, or I'd pipe the drums through it. Because one of my studio monitors is borked at the moment, I haven't been using that setup nearly as much, so it's nice to be able to rely on the piano speakers for piano sound and it'd be cool to also send MIDI to the drum set and get synced audio that way as well.

It's too bad that it's almost impossible to play bass and keys at the same time. I was able to do it a little bit by playing chords and making liberal use fo the sustain pedal (and some patches that infinitely sustain) but it's not easy to do anything complex without multitracking it. If I can figure out a good drum situation, though, I can basically have a virtual in-home three-piece band at home, which would be pretty awesome. Time will tell. We'll see.

Tomorrow's another day.

 

[adudenamedruby]

Hey! I'm trying to spend as little time on the internet as possible (between being a software dev and playing video games, I stare at screens a lot and I'm trying to reduce that) so I'm in other forums fairly rarely. But I've been checking in and reading up an all the stuff you're working on pretty regularly, and it's really great to see different approaches you're taking and the things you're working on! I also really enjoy the very reflexive nature of what you put down, which makes me think I should probably do that some more so I can reference back to it the next day and be able to hone in on areas I need to work on.

Super jealous that you have a drumkit! I wish I had room for one becasue drums are fun as all heck, and probably a great way to practice tempo.

Keep it up man!

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-15. Friday.

Been stoked lately. A lot of it is just having the piano and a better music room setup - before the piano, I wasn't using it that much, and now I'm using it more! I've moved my amp back out of the TV space into the music space, which is good. Now I've got to rebuild the practice habits - instead of vegging out in front of the TV and practicing bass, I've got to be focused on practicing in the music space.

Today:

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A alternating at 114 bpm. Going to kick up to 118 bpm for two sets of each section each, as per the pattern I've established.
- Perfect pitch ear training (my app): 98%: 49 of 50 correct. Average time: 7.55s. Median time: 7.55s. Longest time: 16.81s. Shortest time: 2.68s.
- Toned Ear functional training: You identified 44 of 50 correctly, or 88.00%. Only one really stupid mistake this time (thinking 4th, clicking raised 4th) - the rest were all legit.
- Ran through the scalar exercise of the beat exercise in C major, but neglected the arpeggios - the thing I need to work on! D'oh!

I've been kind of starting to do a thing where as I'm cooking dinner (if I do cook and not order in), I'll use the time while things are cooking to do some ear training practice. I did that today, but before I cooked a meal, so as stuff was cooking I did Bass Fitness. The first chapter is finally at a consistent speed where it doesn't take forever, which is a great thing. I could do it faster, but I'm going to just continue working the way I've been working.

I should have done arpeggio exercises today but I ended up working some keyboard and bass stuff instead, which was fun (but I still have to figure out the drum situation).

My best/most fun part of today was playing along with old videogame tracks! I love old SNES and Genesis music, and so much of that music is burned into my brain from a young age. I ran through the battle theme from Final Fantasy VI (which I've played before, but I don't really have it memorized) and I decided to learn the boss battle theme as well (which I know from memory, but have never played - you hear battle themes all the time and they stick with you). They're both awesome. I also revisited a song that I used to play with my old videogame band before we broke up last year - Aquatic Ruin Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, a bouncy latin-inspired track with great lines and harmony. I don't know how I managed to forget that this is the stuff that really inspires me, but I had.

I think the biggest trap for me right now is that I may neglect drills and shedding in favor of exploring new musical ideas and jamming. They're both good things, but there has to be a balance. Tonight, I skipped arpeggios, which I really shouldn't have done as I've identified a lot of weak areas there that can be improved. However, it's also necessary to be able to use that stuff in context so that I can break out of the pattern's I've come to use over the years. This may require discipline. We'll see what happens.

@She-Ra Yeah, the screen thing - I try to pull away but I always get sucked back in. I actually gave up home internet before the quarantine to try to fix a lot of bad screen habits - I went out more, played more music, was reading more, and now I've got internet and I'm back into the same bad habits. I feel you, man. Thanks for the encouragement!

Moving forward!

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-16. Saturday.

Listened to a bit of Miles Davis (greatest hits) this morning while doing dishes and laundry and a little tidying up. Just background music. I think I should make some time to actively listen to some of his stuff, but background absorption is good too (and it's good for the mood-setting on a rainy morning).

Did some more work on my music space - FINALLY fully moved the bass wall hangers from the other room into the new space. I now have a "bass corner" that isn't half bad.

Also watched Standing in the Shadows of Motown - it'd been on my list to watch for a while and I just never really got around to it. A good watch overall. Man, I wish I could be part of something like that.

Today:

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A ascending at 118 bpm in eighths.
- Beast exercise in C major - did the scalar version, then did a tiny bit of arpeggio practice.
- Perfect pitch interval training (my app): 98%: 49 of 50 correct. Average time: 7.24s. Median time: 7.24s. Longest time: 21.56s. Shortest time: 2.52s. Looks like the one I got wrong was due to a misclick - I double-clicked a note button by accident, so my answer was C#-C#-D# instead of C#-D# (the correct answer). I guess that's a bug I'll have to fix, heh.

Notes:
I did triad arpeggios (non-inverted) up the fretboard in the Beast pattern in C major, but I decided to do a little bit of focus on the positions today, so instead of doing the regular exercise I went up and down for each positional shift. I'm pretty used to looking at things from the "bottom up" in terms of strings and patterns, and so I'll have to learn to look at top-down patterns. It's an admitted weakness of mine, but I've always managed to play around it by playing to my strengths and avoiding those weaknesses. No more!

This practice portion was kind of rushed as it was getting close to 9pm, so I didn't spend as much time on it as I should have.

Miscellaneous:
Spoke to a friend of mine today, a guitar player - we've played together before, mainly some Latin stuff, and he has some tracks that he wants bass on. He's a working player, and so quarantine has affected his employment situation. So I'll be laying down some bass tracks to collaborate with him remotely. I tracked a bass part today for one of the tracks I was sent, a simple pop-ish guitar song that requires a pretty standard bassline, no frills. Good stuff. (On a somewhat related note - I decided to DI from the Markbass instead of going direct to my interface, and it works well and sounds pretty great to my ears. I never really did this before, but I'll be doing it more often.)

Tomorrow's another day.

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-17. Sunday.

Kind of a weird day today, pretty uninspired overall. Felt like I had to struggle to do anything. (Tried some app work, that fell flat.)

- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1, Part A descending at 118bpm in eighths. This should have been cleaner - I feel like my ring finger is weak in one exercise. My shifting between positions is also a weak spot - I feel like my shifts aren't as clean as they should be, and there's definitely a lot of noise. (Granted - I play an active bass with no tone rolloff with rounds, and I have turned up the highs and mid highs on my amp to emphasize the bad sounds....but even without that, I should be cleaner.)
- Bass Fitness, Chapter 5, Part A at 118 bpm in eighths. Same issues as above.
- Beast exercise, scalar, in C major. Planned to do more later, didn't.
- I also played a little bit, trying to come up with a good bass part for two of the latin songs my friend sent me for me to track bass for.

Last night, I did end up doing a bit more work on arpeggios while sitting in front of the TV. I specifically tried to focus on microshifts for the five-note spans, as that gives me index finger trouble on my fretting hand if I just try to stretch for it.

I feel as though for some reason, trying to learn new stuff or reinforce existing stuff just isn't....well, isn't working. I don't know how much of anything I'm retaining and I don't know if it's actually going to affect my actual playing. Today, I'm simply not feeling good about my playing, I guess. (I know I'm not bad....but I'm definitely not good in my own perception.)

I remember a time when all I wanted to do was play my instrument. When I picked up guitar, there wasn't a day that I wasn't playing the thing (a classical guitar, nylon strings) and learning, until the nut broke and I didn't have it for two weeks. When I got my first bass, it was a little different, but very similar - I played pretty much all the time and could lose an entire day to just playing the instrument. These days, I dunno, I feel like I don't have that drive - or rather, it's not even the drive, but it's just, I don't have that ability to just get lost in it anymore, that need to always be shedding and playing. I used to crave playing and I feel like I don't know how to get that back. These days it feels like I really just have to force it, which might be a factor in why I don't feel like I'm progressing the way that I should be.

I also feel as though I've lost my creativity - while I'll still create sometimes, I'm never really happy with what I make and I feel as though I have to really force myself into doing something creative. I dunno. Today just felt like an uphill battle all around and although I'm still moving forward, it's pretty much the baseline (hah!) for my music right now.

I'm going to make a pizza, watch Netflix, and maybe have the bass in my hands and run through some stuff. Blargh. I know it isn't constructive to focus on feeling poopy about my ability, but I think that maybe listing what I'm annoyed about at this moment might help bring things into focus.

- Myopic fretboard vision. Why can't I seem to see larger patterns on the fretboard as I'm playing? It's not that I don't technically know them, but it's like, I can't see all of the possibilities while I'm playing, so I never play outside of my boxes.
- Muting, string swipes, harmonics. I actually do not know how to fix these problems in complex contexts. I feel as though if I shift and remove my fingers from the strings, I'll get ringing strings and sympathetic ringing. But if I keep my fingers on the strings for muting purposes, I get the swipe. If I'm playing basic lines or playing slowly, or playing something without shifts, it's better, but I don't know how to play quickly without these issues.
- Shifting. If my bass were a car, I think I'd have a blown transmission.
- Thumbstyle. It's a different way of playing, a different sound, and I really need to improve this so it's a technique that I can switch to and from without thinking when necessary. Also, muting with thumbstyle (sigh).
- General improv and fills. poopie, I feel like I simply can't improvise within a bassline anymore - at least not without falling back onto my regular clichés. I played along with my friend's latin stuff today and pretty much missed every fill, just a bunch of wrong/bad notes, missed coming back in correctly, messed up the chord progression, etc. Just awful.

Step by step, I suppose. Let's go.

 

[Flamingo21]

- Myopic fretboard vision. Why can't I seem to see larger patterns on the fretboard as I'm playing? It's not that I don't technically know them, but it's like, I can't see all of the possibilities while I'm playing, so I never play outside of my boxes.

Oh so recognizable.

My experience? This takes time. Lots of it. As in, years of on-and-off doing what you're doing now, putting it away, trying again weeks or months later, putting it away, trying again, ....

In other words: you're doing well. Keep it up, you're doing this the right way.

 

[juggahnaught]

2020-05-18. Tuesday.

I chose for yesterday to be a zero day. I could have done work, but I didn't.

Today:

- TonedEar Functional Ear training, chromatic simultaneous: You identified 46 of 50 correctly, or 92.00%.
- Perfect Pitch Interval Training: 100%: 50 of 50 correct. Average time: 7.11s. Median time: 7.11s. Longest time: 19.56s. Shortest time: 3.01s. (I got a random sequence of intervals that actually made kind of a nice melodic idea. Might run with it.)
- Bass Fitness, Chapter 1 Part A alternating at 118 bpm in eighths. Went through the motions today.
- A bit of arpeggio practice.

I think it's time to start working with perfect pitch training for triads. My app will allow for major, minor, augmented, and diminished triads along with all of their inversions...but it won't do quartal/suspended chords. Perhaps I should write that in. I don't know if it'll be much different than just identifying inversions, but with the chromatic circle wheel, maybe I'll get a bit better at chord spelling as a side benefit (I feel like that stuff should be automatic, like answering 2+2 without calculation).

While I didn't do any real work last night, I did go to bed thinking about the fretboard. I think that my approach to learning notes on the fretboard has been ineffectual for me because I haven't been using a good technique for myself. I realize that I grew up with a piano in the house, and so I definitely tend to identify notes and note names in terms of black and white keys - essentially, "natural" notes, and the sharps and flats. (Consequently, I'm definitely better at identifying natural notes in terms of my hearing.) I never really approached a fretboard this way, though. So I've decided to start - my perfect pitch app display now uses black and white to differentiate between the naturals and non-naturals, and I've been approaching fretboard memorization this way. For the time being, it's been much easier to know with certainty that the 10th fret of a six-string bass in BEADGC tuning has five naturals, the 1st fret has two, etc. They follow a pattern (and thus, the sharps and flats do as well) and I think this will finally help me to actually memorize note names and positions on the fretboard (which I've never really had to do; always played by ear, and used relative fretboard knowledge, never really making jumps over six frets - surprising how far you can get even as a busy, melodic bass player).

My ideal is never to have to hunt for a starting note when I start playing along with something that I hear. (Once I'm oriented, things are fine, and I can usually improvise out of a mistake that I make, but it's still kind of a cop-out - playing around my weaknesses instead of addressing them.) An auxiliary benefit of this is being able to make huge jumps on the fretboard by jumping to an absolute point instead of trying to use relative position in those cases - jumping two or more registers in some cases.

I'd started building a tool a while back that would allow me to correlate aural pitches with a position on the fretboard. Maybe it's time to revisit this.

@instrumentalist Yeah - I've been playing for 10+ years, and I find myself wishing that I'd been more diligent with those years. It's not that I didn't play or practice, but aside from dexterity I definitely played to my strengths and only learned the fun stuff, coasting on my good ear and existing musical/rhythmic sense instead of really focusing and improving these weak areas. It is what it is, I guess - can't move backward, only forward. Thanks for the encouragement!

Tomorrow's another day.