My *new* journal and playing bass without an amp - 06/10/24
Recently, my mom found a mostly empty journal in some drawer and gave it to me after ripping a couple pages out.
I'm currently taking a more freeform approach to writing this time around, my old journals were really structured with calendars and
habit-tracking systems, I'm not sure that really did much at the time since I was in a rough place and checking squares wasn't enough to
help me.
I would also painstakingly make sure every letter was as clean as humanly possible, and that got incredibly tiring.
Right now I don't care for structure or readability, I'm just scribbling things down.
As of late, I started playing my bass more frequently, but I have a bit of a problem.
I used to have a Vox Amplug, however my nephew accidentally broke it, and I got nothing to repair it with so I'm pretty much screwed until I
buy an actual amp this time around.
At the moment, in order to actually hear myself play a bit, I'm using pick closer to the bridge in order to get more treble, although I gotta
be careful to not play too hard since that would actually mess with my technique.
I want to write down the basslines and stuff that I come up with, so I harvested blank sheet music from my old middle-school music books
because the lines in my journal are way too large, even if I split them horizontally in half.
Transcribing everything in pure staff notation takes a lot of time tho, it takes up a lot of space, and it's not really worth it for parts
that loop or that follow the same structure throughout a song.
So I'm gonna have to figure out ways to make things shorter, but what needs to be done is gonna depend on a case-by-case basis:
- If I'm just chugging 8th notes on the root of each chord, I'm gonna just write "chug 8th notes on root" and the chord progression.
- If it has a slightly more complex rhythm that still loops and I have to play the fifth or the octave, I'll write the rhythm and which interval to play.
- If it's some crazy prog with changing time-signatures and stuff, then it'll make more sense to transcribe it in its entierity.
I want to get back into the habit of journaling and playing/practicing bass everyday. Getting into the habit of writing has always been
fairly simple for me, but it's getting into a bass practice routine that's far more complicated.
In my mind, a good practice routine should be simple and short enough to do everyday (no more than an hour), but still be substantial enough
to make progress and improve at a good pace (Also, it should be actually fun to go through, and not be a chore).
I'm gonna have to look back in my old journals to remember what my old routine used to be, figure out what worked and what didn't.
