The last couple of weeks I’ve been practicing bass a lot. Now that I finished university, I wanted to divert my attention and free time outside of work to music.
I’ve been playing bass on/off for a couple of years now, but never really put much effort into it. I had spurts of motivation that I used to practice songs and write my own music. But whenever that motivation went away, I stopped to play for months. When I came back around to play again, I had re-learn a lot of the things that I previously learned, and so I didn’t make much progress in these spurts of motivation moments.
Now, I’m making a habit of playing bass on a regular basis, practicing it nearly on a daily basis for a few hours. I’ve probably played more bass in the last two weeks than in the last year combined, which is kinda great and sad at the same time. But the biggest step I’ve made towards becoming a better musician is finding myself bandmates to make music with.
Besides having people around me that share the same hobby as myself, I also have something of a deadline with our weekly band practice, where I must learn certain songs that we want to play. It forces me to learn more songs, which I previously struggled with. Also, I get to listen to a lot of songs that I previously either didn’t know at all or never really gave a shot. One of those songs is Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex, which has a great bass line and is a cool song overall.
I feel like the biggest shift in my perspective towards music is that I no longer see myself as someone that does music, but rather that I see myself as a musician. That makes playing music less of a chore that I have to do and more an intrinsic part of my current life.
Ash