Just give me 10 minutes<br>and I will download into your brain<br>the advice that took me<br>the last 10 years to grasp.<br>As you know, I play and teach bass. [duh]<br>I've shredded solo bass in dingy bars,<br>laid it down in big, beautiful theaters,<br>unironically worn a kilt<br>on festival main stages,<br>and I've gotten pretty good.<br>What you probably don't know,<br>I've actually been playing<br>guitar just as long as bass.<br>I always wanted to be a double threat<br>and also shred the guitar,<br>but it has not panned out.<br>I am not a great<br>guitarist. [understatement]<br>So, why did I get THIS good on bass,<br>but only THIS good on guitar?<br>What has kept me mediocre on guitar<br>and what can bust you<br>out of the mediocre zone?<br>From the last 10 years of learning,<br>I can boil it down to six things,<br>and the first step is to master the art<br>of wiggling your fingers<br>around aimlessly - noodling.<br>Wait, but doesn't everyone say<br>noodling is a waste of time?<br>Yes, they do,<br>but Slash wrote the<br>"Sweet Child of Mine" riff<br>off of a random noodle.<br>Jam bands like Phish and The<br>Dead made massive careers<br>noodling entire sets of music.<br>The guitarist for The Offspring<br>literally goes by the name Noodles.<br>Noodling is some of the most fun,<br>liberating s*** you can do with your bass,<br>but with great noodling<br>comes great responsibility.<br>See, on guitar, I made the mistake<br>of noodling kinda carelessly,<br>but on bass, I noodled<br>really strategically,<br>which not only made practice more fun,<br>it actually helped me learn faster.<br>So, how did I do it?<br>Well, you know when a movie<br>is, like, pretty good,<br>but then the ending sucks?<br>How do you feel walking<br>out of the theater?<br>Bad.<br>Or if the movie was a<br>little eh throughout,<br>but then the ending wrapped<br>it all up perfectly?<br>It's not so bad.<br>This is the power of what<br>nerds call the peak-end rule.<br>Yes, psychologists have made<br>a groundbreaking discovery.<br>When thing end good, you like more.<br>So, you should let yourself noodle,<br>but try it at the end of a session.<br>You still get your productive practice in,<br>but then you finish with fun noodles<br>and you leave feeling<br>like, 'wow, that was fun.'<br>And guess what?<br>You'll wanna play your bass more.<br>And to prove this actually works<br>and it's not about talent or magic,<br>for the next two weeks,<br>I'm gonna use the exact<br>advice in this video<br>and apply it to my guitar practice<br>to hopefully sound more like this<br>and less like this.<br>It'll be a tough road,<br>but at least I get to noodle at the end.<br>And the fun of noodling is crucial<br>to nail the next piece of this puzzle,<br>the right amount of practice consistency.<br>But what is the right amount?<br>I've heard so many teachers say,<br>"You should practice for<br>multiple hours every day.<br>The more time you dedicates,<br>the more dope you'll play the bass".<br>It sounds nice, but do<br>you have time for that?<br>Seriously?<br>I really don't have time for that.<br>I'm working full time, I'm gigging,<br>I'm planning my wedding,<br>I gotta mow the lawn.<br>Just, like, where are<br>these hours coming from?<br>Frankly, back when I first<br>built my bass skills,<br>I did put in mega time.<br>And if you're doing quality practice<br>and keeping your life together, then yeah,<br>more time equals more progress, for sure.<br>But when life got busy<br>and I couldn't keep up with mega practice,<br>I kinda just let it slide,<br>especially with guitar.<br>There'd be weeks or even months<br>where I wouldn't pick it up at all.<br>So, obviously, we need<br>some middle ground here<br>between mega practice and<br>just totally giving up.<br>And turns out, there's a lot of science<br>in favor of consistency.<br>Frequent distributed practice<br>wins over infrequent mega sessions.<br>Plus, the rest you take between practice<br>helps you form memories,<br>and sleep helps your brain<br>finish learning new motor skills.<br>And I've seen the power<br>of consistency on bass.<br>It's been rare that I don't pick it up<br>at least a few times a week<br>over all these many years,<br>while my guitar chops<br>have gotten and stayed rusty as hell<br>while it sits in this closet.<br>The trick is to put in the time you have,<br>not the time you wish you had,<br>and just show up as often as you can.<br>I've had to learn this much<br>more in the last 10 years<br>of pretending to be an adult<br>than I did when I was<br>younger and had nothing to do<br>but practice and write<br>songs about bananas.<br>♪ Bananas and dates ♪<br>And this is part of how my<br>Beginner to Badass course<br>actually gets you results on bass.<br>It makes consistency easy,<br>'cause all you have to do is show up<br>and watch the next bite-sized lesson<br>on a schedule that fits<br>the time you actually have.<br>Just click the link in the description<br>or head to BassBuzz.com to check it out.<br>But to up the stakes<br>on my guitar challenge,<br>I'm only allowed to<br>practice 20 minutes a day<br>for the two-week period<br>to show it's about<br>consistency, not mega time.<br>And to mark my progress,<br>I'm learning "Back in Black" by AC/DC.<br>AC/DC basslines are mostly pretty easy,<br>but this guitar part is<br>actually quite hard for me.<br>It'll force me to clean<br>up my string crossing<br>and picking, and as you can hear,<br>I sound like s*** on it.<br>But just showing up<br>consistently isn't gonna cut it.<br>None of this works<br>unless you focus on the<br>right stuff in your practice.<br>This aspect of how I got good on bass<br>is where a lot of people<br>flounder for years.<br>I would regularly set goals,<br>like everyone tells you<br>to, including me just now.<br>Like, I wanna increase<br>my slap speed enough<br>to play along with this<br>Victor Wooten track,<br>and then I'd work to achieve that goal.<br>But this didn't seem to work<br>as well for me on guitar.<br>Take my rendition of the<br>classic Bach "Bourree",<br>one of my main guitar goals.<br>It doesn't all sound<br>terrible, but the problem is,<br>this is exactly how it sounded a year ago,<br>and I've made no real progress.<br>And compare this to a<br>legit classical guitarist,<br>it's just not very good playing.<br>So on guitar, my habit is<br>to try to play a piece,<br>stumble my way through it,<br>think about how bad it sounded,<br>and then half-assedly try again.<br>It's not great.<br>So, focusing on the right stuff<br>doesn't just mean picking<br>a song you wanna learn<br>and then smashing your head against it.<br>It takes identifying<br>and fixing the weak points in your playing<br>that are keeping you from that goal.<br>So, I know my goal is<br>to not embarrass myself<br>when I play you "Back in<br>Black" at the end of the video,<br>but just playing it over and over<br>probably isn't gonna get me there.<br>Because if you practice playing crappily<br>like I have for many years with a guitar,<br>you just get better at playing crappily.<br>And to solve that, you need<br>this next piece of advice,<br>and to give you that, I<br>need to tell you a story.<br>When I started on electric bass,<br>I was also learning upright bass,<br>working weekly with Karen Zimmerman<br>of the Santa Rosa Symphony.<br>She was an amazing and supportive teacher<br>who taught me a lot as<br>a player and a teacher,<br>especially about technique.<br>See, on upright bass,<br>it's really important<br>to not let your elbow drop.<br>It screws with your strength<br>and your intonation.<br>And I kept dropping my elbow.<br>So, Karen would lovingly<br>place a very sharp pencil<br>right below where my elbow should be.<br>So she didn't stab me at all.<br>It's just if I chose to drop my elbow<br>below where it should go,<br>then I would stab myself.<br>And guess what?<br>I never drop my elbow anymore, ever.<br>What I learned from this<br>very legal teaching method,<br>which is definitely not<br>corporal punishment,<br>was that bad technique has consequences.<br>Sometimes that's your<br>teacher stabbing you,<br>but most of the time,<br>it's that you have to struggle<br>way harder to play anything.<br>So, at some point, you have to face it<br>and fix your bad technique.<br>Because I never took guitar<br>as seriously as bass,<br>I've been pretty careless<br>with my technique.<br>I'm certain I'm still<br>holding a pick wrong.<br>I never drilled my string crossing,<br>so I'm always picking the wrong string<br>and I was very annoying.<br>And I still don't know what to<br>do with these extra strings.<br>So, I'm here, I'm doing<br>this guitar challenge.<br>I'm ready to stab myself with the pencil,<br>figuratively speaking.<br>But how do you know what<br>bad technique actually is?<br>This is where you need expert<br>input on your technique,<br>like I had with my upright bass teacher.<br>Then you can learn to<br>apply it on your own.<br>So, to dial in my guitar practice,<br>I got some technique<br>guidance from my buddy<br>and favorite guitar teacher, Alex Leach.<br>Okay, Alex, why do I suck at guitar?<br>ALEX: Oh, buddy, you don't suck at guitar.<br>JOSH: Thanks, okay, we're done.<br>ALEX: Whenever you grip a chord,<br>you should always be thinking<br>about that next chord.<br>With your picking hand,<br>you need to tighten up your<br>movements a little bit.<br>Find a place on the guitar<br>to anchor your picking hand.<br>Having direct feedback from<br>a good teacher is great,<br>but most people don't have access to one<br>or the time or the money.<br>Personally, I've just been lazy,<br>and I wanna learn guitar without<br>having to talk to anybody.<br>So, how can you learn<br>to give yourself teacher-level feedback?<br>I see a lot of bad advice on this<br>floating around the music education space.<br>The word on the street basically goes,<br>YouTube is okay, courses are better,<br>but a private teacher<br>is the gold standard,<br>'cause you get feedback on your playing.<br>And there's some truth to that.<br>I've taught thousands<br>of one-on-one lessons,<br>and I've definitely seen the value<br>of people getting direct feedback.<br>Otherwise, I owe a lot of<br>people their money back.<br>But what about legendary musicians<br>who didn't have a teacher?<br>Billy Sheehan, king of all shredders,<br>learned on his own,<br>playing in bars and clubs.<br>Paul McCartney taught himself to play bass<br>when no one else wanted to play it.<br>Tina Weymouth taught herself<br>in just a few months.<br>These folks must have had some<br>kind of self-feedback method<br>or they'd still<br>be struggling with bad<br>technique and rhythm.<br>Whether you have a teacher or not,<br>ultimately, you have<br>to learn the same skill<br>to assess your own playing<br>critically and improve it.<br>A good teacher<br>can help you build your<br>self-assessment skills<br>and give you criteria to assess with,<br>but they can't fix your playing for you.<br>As someone who developed<br>way above average technique<br>on electric bass without<br>any formal instruction,<br>I'm a big believer in how<br>much we can teach ourselves.<br>And to shamelessly plug my course again,<br>this is something I'm really proud of<br>about Beginner to Badass.<br>It doesn't just give you<br>fish, it teaches you how fish<br>by testing yourself feedback skills.<br>There's definitely a fish bass<br>bass joke in there somewhere,<br>but I couldn't find it.<br>So to level up my guitar challenge again,<br>I'm gonna record my practice,<br>then watch the videos<br>back and assess myself<br>using what I learned<br>from my lesson with Alex.<br>And before I show you how much<br>progress I was able to make,<br>I've got one last piece of advice,<br>which is maybe the most missed<br>in traditional music education.<br>It's gonna sound obvious,<br>but it's something you must do<br>to develop real skills on any instrument.<br>Because when it feels like the world<br>is just throwing you theory<br>and scales and exercises,<br>don't forget to actually learn songs.<br>Because yes, part of how I learned bass<br>was learning my scales and<br>doing finger exercises,<br>but I also know<br>and have played in real<br>life thousands of songs.<br>I don't even know how to count how many.<br>And when I really think<br>about my guitar playing,<br>I don't know if I've ever<br>actually played a full song<br>all the way through the<br>way it goes on the record.<br>Oops.<br>So yeah, do what every musician you admire<br>has done for time immemorial.<br>Learn songs, whole real songs.<br>Songs teach you more than<br>just your instrument,<br>they teach you how music works.<br>And speaking of songs, my time is up.<br>Let's see if I suck any less at guitar.<br>Okay, I think I suck a little less.<br>So if you want a free seven-day method<br>that'll help you learn<br>good technique habits<br>and how to play a real song by the end,<br>click here to watch Seven<br>Days to Learning Bass.<br>According to this guy and<br>everyone who up voted the comment,<br>it's like four months of<br>education in one video.<br>I don't even need to brag.<br>People brag for me. Just give me 10 minutes<br>and I will download into your brain<br>the advice that took me<br>the last 10 years to grasp.<br>As you know, I play and teach bass. [duh]<br>I've shredded solo bass in dingy bars,<br>laid it down in big, beautiful theaters,<br>unironically worn a kilt<br>on festival main stages,<br>and I've gotten pretty good.<br>What you probably don't know,<br>I've actually been playing<br>guitar just as long as bass.<br>I always wanted to be a double threat<br>and also shred the guitar,<br>but it has not panned out.<br>I am not a great<br>guitarist. [understatement]<br>So, why did I get THIS good on bass,<br>but only THIS good on guitar?<br>What has kept me mediocre on guitar<br>and what can bust you<br>out of the mediocre zone?<br>From the last 10 years of learning,<br>I can boil it down to six things,<br>and the first step is to master the art<br>of wiggling your fingers<br>around aimlessly - noodling.<br>Wait, but doesn't everyone say<br>noodling is a waste of time?<br>Yes, they do,<br>but Slash wrote the<br>"Sweet Child of Mine" riff<br>off of a random noodle.<br>Jam bands like Phish and The<br>Dead made massive careers<br>noodling entire sets of music.<br>The guitarist for The Offspring<br>literally goes by the name Noodles.<br>Noodling is some of the most fun,<br>liberating s*** you can do with your bass,<br>but with great noodling<br>comes great responsibility.<br>See, on guitar, I made the mistake<br>of noodling kinda carelessly,<br>but on bass, I noodled<br>really strategically,<br>which not only made practice more fun,<br>it actually helped me learn faster.<br>So, how did I do it?<br>Well, you know when a movie<br>is, like, pretty good,<br>but then the ending sucks?<br>How do you feel walking<br>out of the theater?<br>Bad.<br>Or if the movie was a<br>little eh throughout,<br>but then the ending wrapped<br>it all up perfectly?<br>It's not so bad.<br>This is the power of what<br>nerds call the peak-end rule.<br>Yes, psychologists have made<br>a groundbreaking discovery.<br>When thing end good, you like more.<br>So, you should let yourself noodle,<br>but try it at the end of a session.<br>You still get your productive practice in,<br>but then you finish with fun noodles<br>and you leave feeling<br>like, 'wow, that was fun.'<br>And guess what?<br>You'll wanna play your bass more.<br>And to prove this actually works<br>and it's not about talent or magic,<br>for the next two weeks,<br>I'm gonna use the exact<br>advice in this video<br>and apply it to my guitar practice<br>to hopefully sound more like this<br>and less like this.<br>It'll be a tough road,<br>but at least I get to noodle at the end.<br>And the fun of noodling is crucial<br>to nail the next piece of this puzzle,<br>the right amount of practice consistency.<br>But what is the right amount?<br>I've heard so many teachers say,<br>"You should practice for<br>multiple hours every day.<br>The more time you dedicates,<br>the more dope you'll play the bass".<br>It sounds nice, but do<br>you have time for that?<br>Seriously?<br>I really don't have time for that.<br>I'm working full time, I'm gigging,<br>I'm planning my wedding,<br>I gotta mow the lawn.<br>Just, like, where are<br>these hours coming from?<br>Frankly, back when I first<br>built my bass skills,<br>I did put in mega time.<br>And if you're doing quality practice<br>and keeping your life together, then yeah,<br>more time equals more progress, for sure.<br>But when life got busy<br>and I couldn't keep up with mega practice,<br>I kinda just let it slide,<br>especially with guitar.<br>There'd be weeks or even months<br>where I wouldn't pick it up at all.<br>So, obviously, we need<br>some middle ground here<br>between mega practice and<br>just totally giving up.<br>And turns out, there's a lot of science<br>in favor of consistency.<br>Frequent distributed practice<br>wins over infrequent mega sessions.<br>Plus, the rest you take between practice<br>helps you form memories,<br>and sleep helps your brain<br>finish learning new motor skills.<br>And I've seen the power<br>of consistency on bass.<br>It's been rare that I don't pick it up<br>at least a few times a week<br>over all these many years,<br>while my guitar chops<br>have gotten and stayed rusty as hell<br>while it sits in this closet.<br>The trick is to put in the time you have,<br>not the time you wish you had,<br>and just show up as often as you can.<br>I've had to learn this much<br>more in the last 10 years<br>of pretending to be an adult<br>than I did when I was<br>younger and had nothing to do<br>but practice and write<br>songs about bananas.<br>♪ Bananas and dates ♪<br>And this is part of how my<br>Beginner to Badass course<br>actually gets you results on bass.<br>It makes consistency easy,<br>'cause all you have to do is show up<br>and watch the next bite-sized lesson<br>on a schedule that fits<br>the time you actually have.<br>Just click the link in the description<br>or head to BassBuzz.com to check it out.<br>But to up the stakes<br>on my guitar challenge,<br>I'm only allowed to<br>practice 20 minutes a day<br>for the two-week period<br>to show it's about<br>consistency, not mega time.<br>And to mark my progress,<br>I'm learning "Back in Black" by AC/DC.<br>AC/DC basslines are mostly pretty easy,<br>but this guitar part is<br>actually quite hard for me.<br>It'll force me to clean<br>up my string crossing<br>and picking, and as you can hear,<br>I sound like s*** on it.<br>But just showing up<br>consistently isn't gonna cut it.<br>None of this works<br>unless you focus on the<br>right stuff in your practice.<br>This aspect of how I got good on bass<br>is where a lot of people<br>flounder for years.<br>I would regularly set goals,<br>like everyone tells you<br>to, including me just now.<br>Like, I wanna increase<br>my slap speed enough<br>to play along with this<br>Victor Wooten track,<br>and then I'd work to achieve that goal.<br>But this didn't seem to work<br>as well for me on guitar.<br>Take my rendition of the<br>classic Bach "Bourree",<br>one of my main guitar goals.<br>It doesn't all sound<br>terrible, but the problem is,<br>this is exactly how it sounded a year ago,<br>and I've made no real progress.<br>And compare this to a<br>legit classical guitarist,<br>it's just not very good playing.<br>So on guitar, my habit is<br>to try to play a piece,<br>stumble my way through it,<br>think about how bad it sounded,<br>and then half-assedly try again.<br>It's not great.<br>So, focusing on the right stuff<br>doesn't just mean picking<br>a song you wanna learn<br>and then smashing your head against it.<br>It takes identifying<br>and fixing the weak points in your playing<br>that are keeping you from that goal.<br>So, I know my goal is<br>to not embarrass myself<br>when I play you "Back in<br>Black" at the end of the video,<br>but just playing it over and over<br>probably isn't gonna get me there.<br>Because if you practice playing crappily<br>like I have for many years with a guitar,<br>you just get better at playing crappily.<br>And to solve that, you need<br>this next piece of advice,<br>and to give you that, I<br>need to tell you a story.<br>When I started on electric bass,<br>I was also learning upright bass,<br>working weekly with Karen Zimmerman<br>of the Santa Rosa Symphony.<br>She was an amazing and supportive teacher<br>who taught me a lot as<br>a player and a teacher,<br>especially about technique.<br>See, on upright bass,<br>it's really important<br>to not let your elbow drop.<br>It screws with your strength<br>and your intonation.<br>And I kept dropping my elbow.<br>So, Karen would lovingly<br>place a very sharp pencil<br>right below where my elbow should be.<br>So she didn't stab me at all.<br>It's just if I chose to drop my elbow<br>below where it should go,<br>then I would stab myself.<br>And guess what?<br>I never drop my elbow anymore, ever.<br>What I learned from this<br>very legal teaching method,<br>which is definitely not<br>corporal punishment,<br>was that bad technique has consequences.<br>Sometimes that's your<br>teacher stabbing you,<br>but most of the time,<br>it's that you have to struggle<br>way harder to play anything.<br>So, at some point, you have to face it<br>and fix your bad technique.<br>Because I never took guitar<br>as seriously as bass,<br>I've been pretty careless<br>with my technique.<br>I'm certain I'm still<br>holding a pick wrong.<br>I never drilled my string crossing,<br>so I'm always picking the wrong string<br>and I was very annoying.<br>And I still don't know what to<br>do with these extra strings.<br>So, I'm here, I'm doing<br>this guitar challenge.<br>I'm ready to stab myself with the pencil,<br>figuratively speaking.<br>But how do you know what<br>bad technique actually is?<br>This is where you need expert<br>input on your technique,<br>like I had with my upright bass teacher.<br>Then you can learn to<br>apply it on your own.<br>So, to dial in my guitar practice,<br>I got some technique<br>guidance from my buddy<br>and favorite guitar teacher, Alex Leach.<br>Okay, Alex, why do I suck at guitar?<br>ALEX: Oh, buddy, you don't suck at guitar.<br>JOSH: Thanks, okay, we're done.<br>ALEX: Whenever you grip a chord,<br>you should always be thinking<br>about that next chord.<br>With your picking hand,<br>you need to tighten up your<br>movements a little bit.<br>Find a place on the guitar<br>to anchor your picking hand.<br>Having direct feedback from<br>a good teacher is great,<br>but most people don't have access to one<br>or the time or the money.<br>Personally, I've just been lazy,<br>and I wanna learn guitar without<br>having to talk to anybody.<br>So, how can you learn<br>to give yourself teacher-level feedback?<br>I see a lot of bad advice on this<br>floating around the music education space.<br>The word on the street basically goes,<br>YouTube is okay, courses are better,<br>but a private teacher<br>is the gold standard,<br>'cause you get feedback on your playing.<br>And there's some truth to that.<br>I've taught thousands<br>of one-on-one lessons,<br>and I've definitely seen the value<br>of people getting direct feedback.<br>Otherwise, I owe a lot of<br>people their money back.<br>But what about legendary musicians<br>who didn't have a teacher?<br>Billy Sheehan, king of all shredders,<br>learned on his own,<br>playing in bars and clubs.<br>Paul McCartney taught himself to play bass<br>when no one else wanted to play it.<br>Tina Weymouth taught herself<br>in just a few months.<br>These folks must have had some<br>kind of self-feedback method<br>or they'd still<br>be struggling with bad<br>technique and rhythm.<br>Whether you have a teacher or not,<br>ultimately, you have<br>to learn the same skill<br>to assess your own playing<br>critically and improve it.<br>A good teacher<br>can help you build your<br>self-assessment skills<br>and give you criteria to assess with,<br>but they can't fix your playing for you.<br>As someone who developed<br>way above average technique<br>on electric bass without<br>any formal instruction,<br>I'm a big believer in how<br>much we can teach ourselves.<br>And to shamelessly plug my course again,<br>this is something I'm really proud of<br>about Beginner to Badass.<br>It doesn't just give you<br>fish, it teaches you how fish<br>by testing yourself feedback skills.<br>There's definitely a fish bass<br>bass joke in there somewhere,<br>but I couldn't find it.<br>So to level up my guitar challenge again,<br>I'm gonna record my practice,<br>then watch the videos<br>back and assess myself<br>using what I learned<br>from my lesson with Alex.<br>And before I show you how much<br>progress I was able to make,<br>I've got one last piece of advice,<br>which is maybe the most missed<br>in traditional music education.<br>It's gonna sound obvious,<br>but it's something you must do<br>to develop real skills on any instrument.<br>Because when it feels like the world<br>is just throwing you theory<br>and scales and exercises,<br>don't forget to actually learn songs.<br>Because yes, part of how I learned bass<br>was learning my scales and<br>doing finger exercises,<br>but I also know<br>and have played in real<br>life thousands of songs.<br>I don't even know how to count how many.<br>And when I really think<br>about my guitar playing,<br>I don't know if I've ever<br>actually played a full song<br>all the way through the<br>way it goes on the record.<br>Oops.<br>So yeah, do what every musician you admire<br>has done for time immemorial.<br>Learn songs, whole real songs.<br>Songs teach you more than<br>just your instrument,<br>they teach you how music works.<br>And speaking of songs, my time is up.<br>Let's see if I suck any less at guitar.<br>Okay, I think I suck a little less.<br>So if you want a free seven-day method<br>that'll help you learn<br>good technique habits<br>and how to play a real song by the end,<br>click here to watch Seven<br>Days to Learning Bass.<br>According to this guy and<br>everyone who up voted the comment,<br>it's like four months of<br>education in one video.<br>I don't even need to brag.<br>People brag for me.