Weekly Ramble 1/13/12

This past week I have come to a major realization about my bass playing.  As I was feeling stuck, confused, and frustrated I turned to TalkBass and a few other sites looking for others who are having, or may have had similar experiences.  After reading through several posts it became obvious to me that I am what is referred to as a “Recreational” player.  Most of what I know is based on muscle memory, not musical theory.  Thinking about my journey through Teach Me Bass Guitar I have come to realize that I have been breezing through or “glossing over” the theory aspects of the lessons and am now paying the price.  I’ve been more focused on learning the songs in each lesson than on learning the theory behind the songs.  Watching lesson 12 again it hit me that Roy is speaking a different language, the language of music theory, which I barely comprehend.  It is hard for me to fathom that I should have spent more time on these lessons, especially the first 6 where we learned about scales and the foundations of music theory, but there it is, I should have spent more time or at the very least paid more attention.  Part of me wants to put everything on hold and start over, but at the same time I have come so far.  For now my plan is to start concentrating on the basics of theory, reviewing past lessons as well as working through some other books in my library.  I will try to continue working on lesson 12 as well.  Each week I will re-evaluate where I am at to see if I am progressing or if I do indeed need to take a pause in my TMBG advancement in order to, essentially, get up to speed.  I am also toying with the idea of taking lessons in order to get more direct feedback on what I am doing wrong.

Man am I disappointed in myself, this is something that I now realize I have a tendency to do, take shortcuts, failing to achieve my full potential.  This is definitely an eye-opening life lesson for me that I will take into account in other areas of my life as well.  Lesson definitely learned here.  Now to get back to basics and do what I came here to do, take my playing to the next level.