New Hobby, Part II, Amended

Thursday, May 22, 2008
As you all know, I've recently taken up the bass guitar.

Tonight I start my lessons. The delay was due to scheduling conflicts between the teacher I wanted and myself. But tonight's the night! At 6:30 p.m., I'll be embarking on my next hobby.

Strangely enough, I'm a bit nervous about it. I've been dinking around with it since I got the instrument, and I surely have nothing to prove, but I'm having the usual over-achiever anxieties.

But that's a topic for another day.

Hmm...Bass Guitar.

Wish me luck!

-----------------------

Amended 8:25 p.m.

Looks like the only luck I'll need is in finding a teacher who can keep track of where he's supposed to be and at what time.

I was stood up for my lesson, as the teacher misremembered my lesson date and time, and then promptly lost my contact information.

We're going to try and start next week, and if blows it off again, I'll be in the market for a new teacher. He appears to be a bit of a ditz, and I sincerely hope he's better equipped to teach music than he is in keeping track of his schedule.

12 comments:

Cindi in CO said...

Luck, and more luck to you!

Not that you'll need it, you rock, remember?

Nathan said...

Luck!

Tania said...

Have fun. I expect to hear about how you're blasting your HOA with your righteous thrashing.

Janiece said...

Tania, once I have enough skill to play with my Smart Man, we're both going to thrash the HOA.

*Goat Horns*

Steve Buchheit said...

Good luck with the lessons. Too loud means you're too old (or you forgot the earplugs).

Random Michelle K said...

Don't forget, we want video and audio!

(runs away)

Anonymous said...

Janiece, I've got some bass-lesson luck here. It's yours if you want it.

Eric said...

Oh, you'll be fine! The tricky part isn't playing it, it's playing it well--and I think you'll manage that just fine when you get over these over-achiever anxieties.

You already play guitar, right? So you already know where the strings are, and there are two fewer, right? :-D

But seriously: you'll play well--I'm not going to wish you luck because I don't think you'll need it. I have faith in you, see. You're going to be jamming out the rhythms in no time.

Janiece said...

Thanks for the well-wishes, Eric, but I don't play guitar - my Smart Man does.

I'm a singer.

Random Michelle K said...

Sorry you got stood up.

Hopefully either next week goes better or you stumble upon the best bass teacher ever by accident.

The Mechanicky Gal said...

You know those zany artistic creative types.
let's hope you got one that can teach you what you want to know. And not one of those airy-fairy ones.......

Eric said...

Sorry you were stood up as well. As for my mistake--I still think you'll be fine.

The hardest part is sticking with it: your fingers are going to hurt. The tips will hurt until they get nicely calloused and your joints may hurt until they get used to holding the strings down. The thing to remember is that all goes away with practice and time. This also seems like a good time to mention that you'll find you don't need as much force as you think you do--you only need to hold the string down with enough pressure to press the string against the fret without buzzing.

Depending on the Smart Man's proficiency on the technical side, you may want to let him look at the action (how high the strings are from the neck) if he hasn't. (This is something I'm not much good with and would pay someone to do at this point, myself.) An instrument that isn't set up right can frustrate a beginning musician, since there's a tendency to think it's you when you're starting out, when it could be the instrument. (E.g. high action or misaligned frets could make playing less pleasant because you're having to use too much force to keep the strings from buzzing.)

That's all the potentially helpful stuff I can think of right now. The number one piece of advice I can give is to keep playing.

And so I'm still not going to wish you luck because you still don't need it and I still think you're going to be fine!

(May The Force be with you.) ;-)