LoopNLearn alpha
Introduction?
Hey guys, just a bit of first words about myself. I'm not a teacher or pro musician, I just love to learn/play different instruments and have been doing this for many years already, I'm working as a web developer, so I've tried to make my practice routine more efficient.
Story
Some time ago, I was inspired by the idea to start learning bass. I already had some guitar experience, so it wasn't completely new for me. My ex-guitar teacher advised me "Classic Funk and R&B Grooves for Bass" book by Josquin Des Pres, with words - "Phrases so simple, but so sweet there". I've checked some bass videos at first how to set fingers in the proper way and started with the book.
Approach
Audio examples were pretty fast there, so I had to loop it and slow down to learn it properly by software. After a couple of months, the progress was really obvious and fast, so at one moment I thought that I'm a natural born bass player. But it seems that this is not about me, but about the learning approach. I was just playing with looped phrases, nothing else. Always trying to be inline with original bass. Here are the benefits which I got this way, but it wasn’t really unobvious before I started:
- Most Important: Playing with other bass player inline aligned my groove. I did not have that funky/groovy touch and feeling initially, but once I started playing inline I did not only learn the notes but the groove/feel also. I think this is the way to go against all these people who told that you can't learn The Groove!
- I started to notice the endings of the notes and feel how it's important to stop the note in proper time.
- I can practice longer. I've checked that. Just playing phrase by ear, I can do it repeatedly for 3 minutes or so. But playing with a looped phrase - 15-20 minutes is easy. I think this is about losing attention. If I'm playing alone I can always fall off and lose that meditative state, but when loop is playing behind it’s always keeps me focused even if I'm making mistakes.
- I started to get phrases by ear. When a short phrase is looped and goes really slow, I can figure out notes by trials and errors. But if I have to press play, stop, rewind - then I will quit after several tries. I think this is some kind of help for my laziness and lack of musical memory ((
- I started to hear my mistakes, and fix them sooner, so I'm not nailing it. You probably had this some times - learning something by tabs, find notes, play it, compare to original and ... you messed up several rhythmic structures, but the phrase is already in your fingers.
But be careful. Drawbacks of this approach still exist. For example - it will not help you to develop your musical memory. Also, I've listened to some examples from books where the bass player was playing off the rhythm in some notes. Probably none of them was expecting that somebody was going to listen this record on repeat for 800 times. So, be careful what you are learning/nailing, these mistakes could go in your fingers really well. Don't try to absorb big piece at once, it's useless. Better to take it by small pieces and connect it in the end. Finally and most importantly - you should make loops perfect with smooth transitions. There is nothing worse than practicing with a glitchy loop.