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Category: School, College, Greek
Bass Performance Summer Course
So I'm two weeks into this music course at LCCM and having a great time so far - good bunch of peeps of varying ability and some great tutors.
It's more performance-focused than I thought it would be and we're spending a day and a half (of two and a half days) per week in Performance & Improvisation workshops and Jam sessions. As I say, I wasn't expecting quite so much group playing (it's not the main reason I signed up, though obviously I knew it would be a large chunk of a 'performance' course!), but it's pushing me outside my comfort zone with the material we're working on and with trying to map the theory we've been learning to the practical stuff in real-time.
The theory side is good - for me, it's mainly tying together a lot of things I already half-knew and trying to build a map of everything. Joining the dots between harmony and scale theory, guitar chord shapes and the map of shapes and shortcuts I've built up around the bass fingerboard over the past *cough* years, and spending some time on ear-training.
It's probably all stuff I would have realised and taught myself over the next few years, but I think there's some serious value in the 'accelerated learning' thing. I'm beginning to think of everything more in terms of music as a language now - if you're learning French and have regular trips to France immersing yourself in the language, it's a great way of learning by trial and error, but there's a lot to be said for having a teacher explain grammar and direct your vocab learning.
The notation side is slow-going. I don't really read at all and this is the element I expected to struggle with the most, and equally is one of the main reasons I wanted to do a formal course - to learn how to read and write the language. At the basic level, I'm not struggling with it as much as I thought I would, though I'm painfully slow at processing and interpreting it's become obvious to me that my brain can handle it and just needs lots of practice to function at a speed that is any kind of use at all!
So all in all at the 1/4 mark (it's an eight week course) I'm pleased with myself for making the leap. It's cost me a chunk of my savings that I'm quite possesive of now I'm not working regularly, but it's going toward a good experience so I'm happy in that regard. I do have some concerns that some of the tutors in particular are not pushing us hard enough, but I think I need to take some ownership of that - I'm not finding it easy to volunteer myself to step outside of my comfort zone, and if they're not going to direct that, I need to find a way to direct myself.
There have been a few discoveries over the years that have focused my musical education and changed the way I listen to music or changed my thought processes when the guitar is in my hand. Within days of starting this course, I was at a couple of gigs and found myself hearing things the bass players were doing in brand new ways. I think that can only be a good thing.
What's going on with you guys? (Is anyone still here??)
ps: using Last FM a lot lately for new and familiar music - feel free to add me over there and stalk my record collection. LASTFM
11:34 AM
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