wrentheseedling

Alright trying something new this week. I'm going to sight read practice the song once a day, ascending in difficulty of the bass.  Why the hell not?

So first night, we are playing on my most familiar bass. My Fender MIM precision bass, using D'addario flats. This is definitely the bass and neck I'm most comfortable with, so best for that starting sight read. 

And out the gate not too bad 96% to start.  Tomorrow I'll be swapping off to a jazz style bass, with the Sire. Still a really comfortable bass for me, and my second jazz bass, but I've played the precision style probably twice as much. 

I know each time I'll become more familiar with the song, but less familiar with the instrument, so we'll see how that affects the score. Then at the end I'll score attack on the precision. Instrument 3 will be my 5 string, I know I'm only using 4 of them but it's definitely not as comfortable and the extra fretboard length should throw off my left hand placement a bit.  And finally the fretless, which I'll probably have to stare at my hands most the time.

--Wren

And no further comment for this week, I've been really busy.  Now Shoo Go worry about your own playing and stop looking at my grammar errors.

--Wren

Well at least I get more time to get the pattern down for this one.

--Wren

Meh,

Meh,

Wren

Barely an improvement, clearly it's my fault I press the strings too hard when I'm in drop D. 

Yeah I'll take that as a sight read.  If I get a chance before work I'll see if I can improve it, I just have to turn the volume way down so it feels like A7x is yelling at me less than usual.

I'm not saying I don't like them.  I just don't like 75% of their songs I hear.  Which honestly isn't that bad of a percentage. I mean I don't like 75% of the people I meet.  Maybe that's generous, I meet way too many people.

And for fun, yes this was without any slaps.

Yeah and sports tape doesn't work for me.  I have a very low platelet count to start with, so my better half gets upset if I allow things to keep breaking open.  Just takes me a little extra time to heal.  But good news, back to practicing and not a bad score.

--Wren

This week in a couple more days I should be able to start practicing again. Time for the excuse for last week!

The reason I had no score last week is I decided to poke a hole in my plucking hand for fun.  I was under the impression that less weight on my hands would make them move faster so I carved a whole through my finger.  By the by, this didn't work.  My wife yelled at me because I would sneak to practice and start bleeding again.  But it seems to be holding together just fine now.

Yeah good stuff, but the way I used a cable tie to do the damage.

Not even time to make excuses this week.

I'll work harder on the excuses next week.

Vacation was cancelled had to go out of town for the week instead, So heres what I played.

I'll be out of town again this week visiting family in humid uncomfortable florida. Yeah the state doesn't even deserve a capital letter.

--Wren

Not much time this past week, but things should calm down for a bit now. Fretless does not like not E standard tunings for me. And I almost can't play it with the drop pedal because I'm playing by ear and it makes it even further off.  Practice and more practice it looks like.

On my good old P-Bass

On the fretless

--Wren

If I haven't said it in a while, thanks goes out to all the mods and the participants for keeping this thing going!

Good thing I have a cheap drop pedal, my basses don't like going under Eb, well except the five string.

Also new strange toy that I'll be attempting  the intermediates and beginner pieces with for a bit.  Ordered a fretless precision bass, ended  up with a Pbass body and a Jbass neck, serial numbers all match up.  Think I'm going to keep it. Everything fits and aligns perfectly on it.

Well I sucked at it, but at least it gives me more practice on the 5 string, even if I only used 4 of them, and poorly at that.  And I really need more practice with picks on a bass . . . but I don't wanna.

And on another note, I like the 5 string version better, but here's the 4 string bass part just because.

I'm shutting up now.

--Wren

And not to complain, but the Dream Theater song is a lot more fun than the Iron Maiden one.  Okay maybe it was to complain. Dream Theater definitely hurt my hand more, but I'd rather practice that any day of the week.

--Wren

Been a while, might as well get started here.  As usual more insanity and complaining to come.

--Wren

Not my kind of song, but acceptable sight read I think

Just can't beat that 1.6Mil mark on hammerfall, guess I'll take whatever place I land in.

Missed a week, then back for an easy side of advance bass song. Life is good?

Someone smash my score's face in so that I can try to get my score higher or meh, maybe I'll practice that thing with 6 strings on it. Or maybe I'll get distracted by . . . hey what's that!

--Wren

Better than the 80% with low dynamic difficulty I started with at least.

--Wren

Now if I could be more consistent, the score would be better . . . oh yeah that's the point of practicing isn't it.

Crap I forgot to save the image from my lead guitar runs.

My pinky still doesn't work right, and maybe with the amount of times I've broken it, it might never work 100%. So I'm slowly figuring out ways to work around it, it's okay for a few notes here and there but lots of use between 3 and 4th finger and my hand locks. End Whining.

17% increase from my sight read, so I don't feel too bad.  On the other hand I scored the same on beginner lead as I did on advanced bass, not sure how I feel about that.

--Wren

Starting up practicing guitar again so I'd like to level back down to beginner.  Test run on this weeks song was a 70 percent. Now let's see if I can get my fat bass fingers to hit those little skinny strings.

--Wren