This is a great topic.

I was at a bass clinic in Hobart bassedinhobart.com and it showcased many of the great teachers here in my home town.

Nick Haywood the conservatorium bass teach said many things but this one really stuck.

1. Decide what you want to practice in any given session.

2. Whatever time you have, split it equally between the tasks.

3. Ask yourself at the end of the session, "Did I achieve what I set out to practice"

This is the big one and it simply is a way of keeping oneself on track. Stops me from just jamming stuff I'm already good at.

Tap long and prosper...

So with everyone's words of encouragement behind me, I decided the best thing for me to do at this point is to start playing a song.

I picked Greg's song "Blue Ridge" for my starting point. It's one of my favorite Stick songs and I figured its a good starting point for me to work on.

Today I tackled just the bass hand. i find that learning each hand separately then combining them together works best for me. This helped me with learning Classical guitar in school (learning the melody, then the bass lines, then together). This style best fits me.

After about an hour of practice, I got the whole grove of the song down and was able to memorize the bass line entirely. It's pretty simple, but is the melody hand that will probably give me the most trouble. But in learning, I can manage my time better and give myself a goal to look forward to---learning this awesome song and playing it in front of friends and family.

Thanks again!
~Evan

Great to hear Evan. I don't know if you recall the Learning pyramid I was teaching last year.

This is not for everyone. This process helped to fast-track my learning potential though through a repeatable process.



CHORDS
Start with chords, you can use just your left hand or supplement with extra voicing in the right hand. The melody will be a component of the chords, so just stretch out with any voicing and in any position.

MELODY
How will you interpret the melody? Generally this is played in the right hand, so start with a simple right hand melody. You can freak out with harmonies in the left hand after you nail the basics of the melody.

NEGOTIATION
This is where you actually play the Stick. When you bring the hands together, you may find that what you originally laid out for yourself is changed - that is the moment you become a Stickist. When you are able to negotiate each part as single part. This path is almost always the long way around, but it is extremely gratifying when you get there. Learning Bach on the Stick has been the ultimate negotiation - very challenging and very gratifying .

TUNING
As in fine-tuning. After negotiating parts in the left and right hand, you will want to fine tune positions, alterations, identify tricky parts (how to recover if you lose your way) and basically do the final preparations for the final stage. I will "tune" up before shows as I am less focused on new material during the summer months. More recently, I am digging deeper into the repertoire so I don't lose the feel for tunes I haven't played in a while.

PERFORMANCE
Play it for someone. Anyone. Let them hear it and ask them what they think of it. You may find yourself back at any phase of this process improving what you have already learned. The performance is the glittering prize and ultimate reward - your opportunity to share what you know - hopefully to bring about a greater awareness for you and the listener of the song, the instrument and yourself.

Excellent, Gene!

Thanks Randy!

This, except substitute the word "Stickist" for "musician".



Stickrad makes a great point, of course. But if you spend 10 hours a day jamming on stuff you're already good at, you might become mind-blowingly good at them. It's a scary thought.

Cheers,
Andy

You can use the term musician, that's probably better. I often forget to make the delineation but it's good to do to so keep from getting too fanboy about the whole thing...

I agree with everyone else here! Good luck with your playing! Don't forget to also lend a critical ear to how you are playing - not just bothering with "what to play". What I'm hinting at here is becoming aware of all different emotional modes you may play in; softly, aggressively, "cartoon-ish", Irish, Arican, jazzy... there are hundreds of ways to play any given melody. What best supports music is to be able to stay in a mode and smoothly morph between modes that benefits the piece you are playing. Myself I think these skills should be learned before learning particular pieces of music - but others might have a different take on that.

All I can say is this has been a great read tonight and a subject I have grappled with a bit lately. I'm now offshore for month with the ALTO and considering how to best spend the two hours or so a day I can devote to the STICK for the next month. Great words from Gene & all of you.

From a different angle , someone sent me this the other day. Its a good read but not everyone can do it the Bryan Baker way for whatever reason. I got some things out of it though, as I really try to ramp up my practice and make every moment of it effective and beneficial. Applies to Stick as much as Guitar I guess.
The link is below.
Cheers People!

https://medium.com/@bbakermusic/the-top-ten-ways-to-improve-your-guitar-playing-now-c8248363f0cf