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What You Need To Make Constant and Consistent Progress: 1 Bass Guitar + 1 Good Teacher + Daily PracticeSo you’ve got yourself a shiny new bass and decided you want to learn to play the bass guitar. But not only that, you want to become GOOD at the bass guitar. So now you’ve watched a few YouTube tutorials, hung out at TalkBass, and you've worked out that the quickest way of getting better is to find a good teacher. And even though good teachers are hard to find (because they’re as rare as rocking horse crap) you think you’ve gone and found one. So you’re set you think. You’re going to take your new bass to lessons with your new teacher, and he’s going to teach you how to play that bass guitar. Except that if you want to maximize what you learn with your teacher there’s an important part of the equation missing. And the missing part of the equation is Daily Practice. Why Is Daily Practice So Important? The scientific reason is that it’s to do with how the brain learns. I’ve covered this at greater length in another article, but when the brain learns a new task different parts of the brain have to communicate with each other via electrical pulses. And the first time you try and do something, these electrical pulses have to be sent via unfamiliar pathways. But the more you do something, the more these neural pathways solidify and the easier it gets. And there’s even a name for this process: it’s called the Learning Curve. Think of anything you’ve ever learned ever since you were a baby and it’s been this way: walking, talking, learning to ride a bike, learning things at school, learning to drive. Learning the bass guitar is no different. The more you practice the bass, the better you will get. Committing to practicing each day is a more important step in making progress towards being a better player than just about anything you can do. OK, I Can Practice Each Day. How Much Should I Practice? How much you should practice depends primarily on 2 factors: what your goals are and how much time you actually have available. If you desire to be a world class bass player then you’re going to have to put some serious work in. If you want to get to a reasonable level of competency then the time demands will not be so much. Remember there’s a direct correlation between how much you practice and how ‘talented’ you will become. Talent simply equates to hard work over time. If you study for an hour a day, and your friend studies for two hours every day, he’s going to get better than you pretty quickly. And if there’s a mutual friend who studies for THREE hours every day, well he’s going to be streets ahead very soon. I’m A Busy Guy – What’s The Minimum Amount You Recommend For Daily Practice? I’m a busy guy too, I’ve got a wife and two young kids, plus two businesses to run, students to teach, I swim a mile around 4 times a week, and I’m constantly reading to further my education in various fields. Yet I still manage to practice my bass for an hour a day. But an hour a day for some people is just too much. Therefore the absolute minimum you need to practice to make consistent progress is 45 minutes a day. In 45 minutes a day – provided you approach that 45 minutes in a disciplined and focused way – you can still make consistent progress. Can I Do 45 Minutes Every Other Day? Once a potential student starts trying to negotiate practice time with me then I start losing interest. Because in my opinion what they really want is to be able to play the bass WITHOUT the hard work that’s needed. And that’s just impossible. In any field, not just learning the bass guitar. If you don’t believe me ask yourself this question: who would learn a foreign language quicker? Student A who has a daily 60 minute lesson or Student B who has a 45 minute lesson every other day (and often skips a day without really meaning to, it just sort of happens). Or who would learn to drive quickest? Student A who has a driving lesson every day or Student B who has a driving lesson once a week? Learning how to play the bass is not rocket science, but it is a science. And an exact science too. If you want to learn how to play the bass you need a bass guitar, a good teacher, and you need to practice what you’ve been taught as often as possible. Next Step If you are a beginner on the bass and are looking for a teacher, my online bass lessons reopen this Friday (the 28th August). Full details will be available on the website then - or you could register your interest by sending me an email.
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