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Feels so good...


TheGreek
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We've had a few threads recently from people losing their motivation...I'm sure that we've all been there.

At around Xmas I felt myself doing the same, practicing the same stuff with the head turned off, doing it half-hearted on autopilot. So I bought myself a geeetar,  learned some jazz chords along with the stuff that every bad guitarist knows and started to play. It meant that I started to actually think more about what I was doing and how I could relate this to how I play bass and what I could bring from one instrument to the other.

I picked up a bass yesterday for the first time in over a month and, man, it feels soooo good...the strings are the right gauge, the neck the right profile and the gaps between strings far enough apart to play one without bum notes (I bet the filter subs another word).

An absolute joy to be playing the right instrument again. My motivation and bass lust are back - I was playing notes in the scale I rarely use and riffs with different feels.

Though I am loathe to recommend buying a geeeter, playing a different instrument certainly rejuvenated my interest in playing bass again.

 

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I have found the same thing happens when I play different music.I am in two bands that play essentially the same type of jazz/swing music but one is a quartet where we just use a lead sheet for melody and chords and the other band is a seven piece swing band where we play professional arrangements from charts and that demands real concentration and accuracy.Each band requires a different type of playing, in the quartet I can be more creative and in the septet I have to be right on the money or the arrangement doesn't work.One result is that my reading skills have gone up a lot and using some ideas from the arrangements I have started to be more inventive in the quartet.

I also feel better playing bass after a session where I play guitar or banjo, like you, bass is the right instrument.

And we are all so lucky that we have music in our lives!

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I sometimes pick up my housemate's 3/4 sized spanish guitar and try to remember my chords.

I don't like his steel strung acoustic but the spanish guitar is nylon strung and comfortable.  You're right, it's not a bad thing to do at all.  It always helps with the main instrument in some way like you say.  The ukes are okay too as long as I don't go far from first position.

But, bass is so much more suited to my fat fingers.  It's like slipping back into a comfy jock strap after a couple of days of wearing a thong.  (Probably should've just thought that too.)

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