After working on Another One Bites the Dust, a lot, I'm kind of getting the hang of the E String. I'm having fun learning bass lines along with songs that I know, and Bass Buzz on YouTube has a great video "3 Beginner Bass Riffs (You can't F*** Up)"....I mean, I can f*** them up, this is a weird thing to be making my fingers do.
Luckily, the first riff on this teaching video is Psycho Killer, which is another great song (my brother played for our wedding, at our request) and it's all on the E string. Every time I start to make my fingers move along the string, my brain goes, this isn't working...then I practice a little more and I know the riff without looking at the tab. It's small changes and practice, like with anything, but I just haven't started at total zero on something in a very very very long time. So it feels silly and strange, but I love how it feels at the same time.
I don't have it down, I'm just beginning this whole process and it's hard to get to even the 15 minutes I'd like to do every day. I have been learning and practicing while my husband is asleep or working. There's something very private to me about trying to learn this, which I don't think that's unusual. It was weird when I showed him where I was at one afternoon.
I was explaining what I had learned on Bass Buzz, how I was struggling lifting the string with my pinky to get a shorter note, and some language I'd learned. It brought back the feeling of standing in my parents living room while I learned to play the tenor saxophone, just honking along without a care. It's strange how much more we take needing to "get something right" as adults. It's nice that this is making me feel a bit more child-like too, like, it feels good, so I don't care. Bryan pointed out that a metallic sound I didn't like the sting making on the fret wasn't heard through the amp, and maybe that's the sound I should be more focused on. It helped to play and talk some riffs through with him since he listens well and gave me better ways of thinking about my progress.
