Halfway Review

Tuesday

Looking back over the last four weeks, I notice I've not been practicing nearly as much as I had planned. There are several reasons for this, mainly our house hunting adventures. So much of my mental energy has been focused on the process of buying a house that I've neglected the bass. Is this a bad thing? Well, not really. We all have to identify our priorities and do what we think is best.

There is another dynamic at work here as well. In a way, this project has turned what I've thought of as fun, into work. There were times when I made excuses to avoid being cooped up in my tiny music room. So I'm going to loosen my belt a bit over the remaining four weeks and not be so ridged about being in there daily. Maybe that will make it feel less like work, and bring a little fun back into the project. Also, I'm going to really pull back from the house buying process. There is a 50/50 chance we will close on the house we are currently under contract with, so if it doesn't work out we will keep looking, but with less urgency-- my wife and I are both burnt out over the entire process.

At church, I have one weekend in August free-- this coming weekend. The rest of the month I am scheduled to play with our worship team; something I am really excited about. Hopefully September will be full.

Another thing I've been enjoying this summer is following my LA Dodgers via MLB-TV. I even got to watch each of the three games against the SF Giants over this past weekend. We swept our rivals to take over first place in the NL West. The Giants even brought in a ringer from the Red Sox-- Jake Peavy-- for Sunday's game three. Even with him hitting a home run, we still won. Go Blue!!

Halfway!

Sunday, July 27

Softer Sunday
After spending saturday at the Scottish fair, my wife & I got to bed early so I'd be able to get up early for Sunday's rehearsal. My first stop of the morning was to get a coffee from Starbucks, then off to the church. There was four of us who arrived early... and we all waited outside for someone who had a key to the building to arrive.

Our Softer Sunday stage from the perspective of our pianist 

As I wrote last week, all the songs on todays list were new to me, but I wasn't at all nervous about playing them-- Mainly because I had plenty of practice, but also because I knew the band and I were on the same page-- we were there for a greater purpose than to play the songs just like the recording; we were there to worship and lead others in worship. As such, the morning went really well. The drummer and I agreed to just go with the feel rather than try to be true to the recording. It worked like a charm.

I decided the most complementary instrument for the days song list was my G&L LB-100, which is their take on Leo's Precision Bass-- the perfect choice. Honestly, any of my basses would have done fine and probably nobody would have noticed one way or the other, but I think it put me in the right frame of mind to forget about the instrument and just play. Those intangibles can be very tangible for the musician.

Week 4 Review

Monday:
After a weekend spent dealing with the craziness of the sellers agents, we decided to make another offer for the house. Knowing it is the seller's agent, not the seller behaving badly, we gave the seller a second chance at our original offer. The difference being the poor showing at Sunday's open house.

Bass notes:
I have the music for next weekends Softer-Sunday service; a handful of tunes I'm not very familiar with so the practice has been a little more enjoyable. I quite enjoy stretching myself by playing music such as this. They have not posted the MP3s to the planning website, so I'm using Youtube to guess what tunes they are looking for.

Tues:
The seller has countered ten thousand dollars more than we are willing to pay, so we made a counter offer which basically moves around closing costs.

Spent the day in the music room working on the coming weekends setlist. Also worked on improving two that I have down pretty well-- Walking On The Moon (Police), Godzilla (BOC). I need to add more of those classic tunes to my bag. I'm thinking mostly classic R&B stuff...

Wed:
Surprisingly the seller accepted our offer with a few tweaks. Now the deal depends on inspections... have we just bought a house?

Early this week I've been in an email conversation with one of the guys at Bass North West in Seattle about a replacement G&L case. The case I received with my L2000 seems to be a general-fit case and doesn't have the G&L badge anywhere. The owner asked me to bring my bass & its case to their shop so we could try to find something that works better for me. So I made the trip to Seattle's Pioneer Square and we found an older case that I like better. Now I have a case in which the instrument won't slosh about.

Fri-  Thurs:
Two more days in the music room preparing for this Sunday's service.

Sat:
Seattle Highland Games! Again, we've got to have some time off and just enjoy the day-- today was this day for us. It is a yearly gathering of all things Scottish. Bands fore the day were; The Wicked Tinkers followed by The Rouges. It was a good day. I got to recharge my batteries for the week ahead...

Pushing Through

Sunday:
That upset feeling in my stomach yesterday afternoon ended up being a stomach flu. Didn't get much sleep, and seriously debated whether or not to stay home. I decided to go to rehearsal and see if I could play or not. It was rough at first-- I was tired, dehydrated, weak, and not very together, but I hung in there.

Having such a bad time trying to hear myself in the headset, our guitarist mentioned I should try a better set of headphones. So I used one of the church's. I forget the make and model, but they were a $300 set... vs. my $50 Carvin set. The difference was amazing. Playing my G&L Jazz bass I could hear myself just fine... maybe slightly less than I would have liked. All the white noise I was hearing through the system last night was canceled out through this pair of headphones. I really was amazed at the difference.

My G&L Jazz bass

We have two services in our main room each Sunday. Amazingly my playing in the first service was some of the best I've played. The uber-quality headphones is one of the reasons I believe it went so well. The second service went well, but I was having a difficult time concentrating and was feeling the effects of dehydration, but again, I got through it.

On a side note, I was super happy with the tone I was getting from my bass. The signal path was my G&L Jazz bass into a direct box, to the board and through the PA. Still, I was happy when the service was over and I could go home and catch up on a bit of sleep.

Still no sleep for me however-- shortly after getting home my wife and I were scrambling to find, scan, and email a handful of documents to our real-estate agent concerning Fridays offer. A l..o..n..g story short, the sellers agents were doing everything in their power to delay-- then kill-- our offer in favor of a Sunday open house through which they expected multiple offers. We are going to sleep on it and decide how to proceed in the morning.

Week 3: Part 2

Thurs:

Spent the day working on this weekends set list.  Five songs, all but one in the key of G. By the end of the day I had them all down—even the last minute addition.

Fri:

In the evening, I found that the house we made an offer on last week had dropped $20k—right where our offer was, yet nobody contacted us. In the process of finding out was going on, my wife discovered the house across the street just came on the market, so after taking a look at it we made an offer.

Sat:

Ran through the set list for the last time, just to make sure I’ve got everything covered. Last night I learned that one of our team members birthday is today, so I learned Happy Birthday for her. I thought of learning the Beatles song but I didn’t have enough time to do it right so…

This is what our Aviom looked like-- many, many years ago

I took a few hours to relax before our rehearsal and service. My stomach was feeling upset, but I didn’t thing anything of it and moved on. I played my anniversary bass thinking the preamp would help me hear myself in my headset through the Aviom system. Didn’t work. I can hear everything just fine when I am the only one playing, but when the band is all in I can’t hear a thing. Our sound guys tell me the reason for this is our analog soundboard and the crummy Aviom system that gets overloaded by the signal. 

Still waiting on the reply to our house offer… but we should know something by the end of the night.

My Gig Bag

After five months of searching the web, visiting music stores, etc. I finally purchased a new gig bag for my bass. The winning company is... iGig

My criteria was:
- Ample storage (Boss TU-2 tuner, SansAmp Bass Driver DI, cables, notebooks, etc.)
- Neck protection
- End-pin protection
- Decent straps

The contenders were:
- Carvin soft case
- Reunion Blues Continental
- Mono Case M80
- Mono Case Vertigo
- Gig Glade (soon to be released)

The iGig bag I chose was the model G515. It has a ton of storage capacity, and ticks off all the items on my criteria list. AND its end-pin protection is as good-- or better than the Mono-case Vertigo ;)

A pet-peve of mine is most companies have a nylon section intended to cover the guitars bridge that comes nowhere near the bridge. Not an issue with this one. iGig uses what they call the saddle that is basically a large pocket where the bass body slides into. The saddle also includes padding that suspends the instruments body away from the bottom of the bag-- to protect the endpin from taking a blow.

Anyway, it seems to be a really good gig bag. I'll keep y'all updated as I use it ;)

Three handles: one on the top, in the middle, and at the bottom. Should make it easier to load in & out of my cars passenger seat when parked in a sung parking lot.

Dig those straps! Very comfortable, and the top of the bag extends above my head far less than the others I've tried.

The long padded neck piece is called the "pillow" and is moveable (velcro)

The bag is slightly longer than the G&G case that came with my G&L bass

Slightly wider than the case as well...

This pocket protects the case & instrument, and the additional padding positions between the bottom of the bass & the bag...

You can see how the pads fit below the bass when the instrument is being carried in the bag...

There are some pretty good videos out there both from the designers, and players:
Designers
The Bass Hang
James Ross & Bassist Jahmal Nichols

Hope this helps someone else who may be searching for a worthy gig bag-- BTW, they make them for guitars as well ;)

Week 3; Part 1

Sunday:
     7:00am. Picked up a large mocha on the way to 7:30 rehearsal; service began at 9am. Not being a morning person, it takes me a long time for my mind to begin firing on all cylinders. Coffee helps though! 

     Loading and unloading my gear is much nicer than when I'm playing guitar. On guitar, I have the guitar, an effects processor, headset, surge protector, finding somewhere to plug in... But when on bass, it's just the instrument. I get to plug straight into an amp which has its signal fed through the PA as well. For the regular services I don't get to play though the amp-- just a simple direct box. It does require me to carry along a set of headphones, but they fit easily into my gig-bag.

     The morning went well. I played my anniversary bass (10-year wedding) a G&L L2000 into the church's Ampeg 15" combo amp. I ran the bass in passive mode, with the pickup coils split and in the middle position. It sounded great! Especially during the Revelation Song.

     That afternoon was filled with more house hunting and a long story short, we made an offer. The house is out in the country and listed at the top of our price range. We met with our agent later in the evening and made an offer we were comfortable paying. They have 24hrs to reply.

Monday:
     Temps in the 90s, so I couldn't begin practicing until the evening; our back room just gets too hot. I get to play with our regular service band this coming weekend which is Saturday night and two services on Sunday morning. Two of the three songs I've never heard before so I had to spend more time working with the chord sheets.

      The offer we made on the house was rejected. One of the things we are looking for in a new place is a music room-- an area where I can have all my gear & practice and still have the ability to turn around without tripping on something. The current room I am using is 9" x 9" which makes it terribly cramped. 

     I sure hope our next place has air conditioning...

Tuesday:
     1:00 - 5:00pm Practiced this weekends songs. I spent most of the time working on the two difficult tunes and that effort paid off. I made a few notations on the chord sheets... hopefully with a little more practice I'll have these two down.

Wed:
     After learning that bank outsources it's mortgages to Quicken Loans, we decided to go with our credit union about obtaining a mortgage, and met with them today.  It's another hot day, so I took some time to catch up with the blog entries, and took a break from practicing. 

It's easy to get burnt out, and for practice to become a chore rather than something fun. I decided that I needed to take a rest, and not even go into the practice room for the day. 

Week 2; Part 2

Thursday:
     6-9pm. Practiced for our Sundays Softer Sunday service at church. This is a weekly service designed for those who prefer lower volume and more traditional songs than those of our regular service. 

     I was already familiar with the five songs so I didn't need to re-learn them, but I did want to learn different places on the neck to play them. By playing the same progression in different octaves I was able to give the song more depth, and enhance the overall feel. I think this has more effect when played on the bass than when on guitar. 

Friday:
     6-10pm. Learned to play the classic rock tune, Godzilla. I found the notation online and ran through it a few times. The most difficult part was the solo, but I got it down pretty quick. So now I've been using it for warmups. I think I'll add learning at least one new tune each week to my practice schedule. Next one?... Funk 49 I think.

     Ran through the songs for this weekend and made sure I had everything down. Two of the three are really upbeat contemporary tunes, the others are more traditional but still fun to play on bass.

Saturday:
     Spent the day house hunting with my wife, we didn't find anything that would work for us, but we did have a great lunch at the San Francisco Street Bakery. 

      Practice this evening was good, but short. Spending the day driving around looking at houses just wore me out. While working on the next days songs I found I couldn't concentrate what I was doing. Initially, I didn't realize how totally and completely tired I was, so I shut everything down and went to bed.

Life Can Pass By Pretty Quickly; Catching Up

Wed, July 9th

Monday came and went so fast

Barely noticed Tuesday pass

Wednesday just couldn't stick around

Thursday Friday Saturday

What happened to them I can't say

I'm losing time and losing ground

~Town Pants, Bottle of Rain

Man, where does the time go?!

Whats been happening since last Tuesday?

Tired of renting, my wife and I have been house hunting. It is amazing how much time can be spent in this venture-- especially when you have a  rather limited budget and have specific criteria the house must meet. Which ever house we choose is likely to be the house we grow old & die in-- so we know what we want and are not going to settle for less. All that to say, this is likely going to take a while.

Add to that, our 10th wedding anniversary was last week, so we took some time off and visited Snoqualmie Falls. If you've ever seen the 1990's TV show, Twin Peaks, this is where it was filmed. This year also happens to mark the 25th anniversary of Twin Peaks.

More house hunting, late nights and finally yesterday-- our weekly date night. Dinner then Transformers 4. A great night.

Snoqualmie Falls; i.e. The Great Northern

Additionally I'e been trying to sell some guitar gear via the online classifieds, Craigslist in order to fund some new bass gear. My experience doing so has revealed a sad commentary on the psychological state of our country-- it seems every expects something for nothing. Quantity over quality... instant gratification. Dealing with this situation has also consumed a good deal of my time.

But in the end, the answer is simple-- I failed to make time for my bass practice. Call it life getting in the way, or simple procrastination-- a full week has passed without a moment of bass practice.

This all ends tonight. Taking a break from house hunting, my wife and I went out for a nice dinner. Fish tacos for her, mac & cheese with a Cesar salad for me. Now she is catching up on the TV show Falling Sky's, and here I am in the woodshed catching you up on the past week.

So here I am-- ready to practice before calling it a day & hitting the sack.

Tune in tomorrow to see how it goes~

Stay tuned & in tune!

Practice Plan & Project Goals

     To get the most out of practice sessions, you have to practice smart. Anders Ericsson, the worlds leading expert on expertise (coined the term "10-years, or 100,000 hours") identifies two key elements of a deliberate practice routine:

A. Constant self evaluation

B. Focus on weakness, not strengths

Sample Practice Log

     With Ericsson's theory of deliberate practice in mind, I combined an article from NoTreble titled Efficient 20 Min Practice, and The Most Important Bass Lesson I Ever Teach, from Scott's Bass Lessons. This will be my starting point, and as the project progresses I may adjust it a bit. 

Here is the basic outline I'll be using during this project:

1.) 5-Min warmup (scales, etc.) using a metronome

2.) Work what I already know focusing on my weakness 
     - Trying different fingerings, or rhythms
     - Log metronome settings

3.) Work on new things
     - Start slow
     - Break things down into small bits, then build upon them
     - Aim for accuracy 

"Noodling = Death. In other words, FOCUS. The time is only as good as you make it, and it should be set up as a challenge. Practice should always be ambitious (yet feasible) and difficult – your goal is to dominate it. There is always something to be said for freely playing and creating new melodies and ideas, if you want to devote 10 minutes of your practice to that it is fine, do not let it bleed in to your other focused sections." ~Evan Kepner, NoTreble  

Goals:
     - Learn something new each day
     - Learn sight reading

     - Improve my timing
     - Become more comfortable with the fretboard

     - Learn different positions to play each song
     - Improve melody/harmony skills

     Lastly, I made this quick reference guide to visualize the fretboard and to help work out lines and such:

Stay tuned & in tune~

Gear Talk

     It is important to keep in mind that these are all tools to help you make music. People must find that which allows them to express themselves—despite what is/isn’t popular on Internet forums, or with friends. 

Carvin MB15 amp / G&L LB-100 bass

     I am blessed to have more than one bass to choose from, and for tonight's practice session I chose my G&L LB-100. It is essentially an updated version of the Fender Precision built by Leo Fender's last company in Fullerton, Ca. The finish is reminiscent of Daphne Blue, a 1950's Fender custom color-- G&L calls it Himalayan Blue. The LB-100 is my first bass so there is a lot of sentimental attachment there. Still has its original factory strings which I have not intention of replacing anytime soon as it sounds perfect just the way it is. The neck width is somewhere between a Fender P (1.75") and a Jazz (1.5") and has a fingerboard radius of 12". A rosewood fingerboard, alder body and creme pick guard all come together for one heck of a nice instrument.

Carvin MB15 amp fits nicely in the back of my MINI

     The amplifier is a Carvin MB15 combo. Carvin is a family owned, American company who builds all their guitars and amps (along with PA/sound equipment) in San Diego, California. This amp sounds great and includes among other features a mute switch, and an XLR out. Also, it is small enough to fit in the back of my MINI Cooper-- making it even more accommodating to my needs. 

     That is my basic setup; bass --> amp. When I play at church it's pretty much the same, but I might add a BOSS TU-2 tuner in-between, and run through their Ampeg 15" combo, or just straight into a DI box. I really like the convince of having a simple rig and best of all... it sounds great! Check out the rig rundown for Jesse Reeves, bassist for the Chris Tomlin Band:

     One final note; you don't have to spend a lot of money to have good gear. I bought my new American made G&L for less than the cost of many imported models, and only a few hundred more than most of the other imports. The Carvin instruments and amps are sold direct to the customer which keeps the prices considerably lower than any other American made gear and in the ballpark of imported prices.  

"...make sure you look for an instrument of suitable quality... Avoid poor craftsmanship; it's the sign of a poor spirit. That doesn't mean you have to buy the most expensive equipment... Learn to identify quality and appreciate anything thats well made, wherever you find it. Look deeply into the spirit that goes into making an item of quality-- the care, precision, the attention to detail. Incorporate that spirit into your work...make [it] as well as you can. To do otherwise is spiritless." ~Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen Guitar 

Stay tuned & in tune~

In the Woodshed-- Finally!

Monday; Day 2
     Spent the first hour of practice running through the major scale in a few different locations/positions on the neck. Then played through a few songs I haven't played in a while (Walking On The Moon/ I Can't Turn You Loose). Then found myself noodling around for a few minutes. NO!! I don't want to fall into that trap again. I have a practice plan I found on the No Treble website, and one from a Youtube resource, Scott's Bass Lessons. One of the two (maybe both) stress that mindless noodling is not helpful unless you set aside time to do so. In these practice sessions noodling is not allowed. 

     So to regain focus, I went to Scotts Bass Lessons to focus my second hour of practice. This time, lesson #61 "Walking Bass Lesson #1". I've listened to others talk about walking bass lines before, but I'm not completely sure I know what they are talking about. I figured it was simply an ascending chromatic line of some sort. I've found Scott's method of teaching really helpful, and this lesson is no exception. I made it most of the way through the first video, but my second hour was up and dinner was about ready. I'll have more time tomorrow to work on it and part two.

     Also tomorrow I will post my practice plan, and list a few goals for the project. This is something I should have done earlier, but l get sidetracked easily-- hence one of the main reasons for keeping this blog going during the summer.

So It Begins...

Sunday; Day 1

     Wait, what?! It's Sunday already?!-- I totally forgot my plan was to begin each new week on Sunday. My mind was firmly planted in house-hunting with my wife. After renting for the last few years, we finally decided to take the plunge. So we drove all over town looking at properties and even checked out an open house for a home we are very interested in. Later in the evening, once I settled in I started thinking about my summer project and realized that it was supposed to start today(!). 

     This is brilliant example of life getting in the way of becoming a better musician. As an adult with responsibilities it is very easy to allow the day to slip by. I will just have to be more intentional with my time, and make practicing part of my daily routine.