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Hail, Fellow Travelers!

Home › Forums › Active Melody Forum Announcements › Hail, Fellow Travelers!

  • This topic has 3 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 11 months, 2 weeks ago by John H.
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    • September 6, 2024 at 5:40 pm #377162
      Brian D
      Participant

        I joined AM about 2 weeks ago and just stumbled on this here forum. Cool space!

        ME:
        Started on ukulele at age 9, moved to violin at age 11 (classical). By age 14 all my friends were wanting to be rock guitarists or drummers so I took up the bass so I’d be in demand… it worked!

        Self-taught on bass, I learned to hear the tonic and the beat and that’s helped me immensely in many ways. Around age 22 I left the cover band scene and spent the next 40 years strumming acoustic – almost exclusively in open position. Earlier this year (partly to help with recovery from hand surgery) I decided to go electric and finally learn to play leads.

        This is not an easy road to travel but I’m grateful for AM and this forum and glad to have the chance to walk these paths with y’all.

      • September 7, 2024 at 2:16 am #377307
        RIFF DIGGER
        Participant

          I started out on bass as a teen, left it with a busy career only to get back into it decades later. Played professionally in LA and Hollywood, blues and jazz while maintaining a business career. Moved to a small town in Canada where it was saturated with local bass players, and I was shut out. Bass was fun especially going into Jack Bruce, Mingus or Jaco. Fighting off the depression I started playing acoustic and electric blues rock from scratch.

          I started with Premium Active Melody at that time but I was progressing slowly due to my inexperience and I wanted to concentrate on learning covers and arrangements. So I left AM for a few years, practicing hours each day on well known arrangements, mainly to keep myself inspired and interested. I really wanted to play with a solid groove and good time (bass instincts) and not fumble or play sloppy. It’s a work in progress with highs and lows as I’m not a spring chicken anymore in the learning or endurance department. 😏🧐😉 The good news, I came back to AM this month to augment my other studies and it’s working well. I’ve improved enough to appreciate the EP’s I like, especially Brian’s blues lessons. Again my main aim is to play smooth with some spit and polish without fumbling, missing strings or not forming jazz chords properly. I am now really enjoying the full screen SoundSlice tab viewer. I think for me it’s the best feature on the site especially on a large screen desktop computer.

          A long story I know, and it was your post that influenced me to respond as I am a traveler in many ways as well I think Active Melody is a very unique place to learn. Brian puts out quality and interesting lessons, there’s a style composition out there for everyone. Thanks for sharing your story as well! I relate to it!

        • September 7, 2024 at 3:20 pm #377451
          sunjamr
          Participant

            I guess I did the reverse of you guys: I joined AM and became a reasonably skilled guitarist, then just fairly recently I’ve been learning to play bass. In fact my August Monthly challenge post was played on one of my new short-scale bass guitars.

            Sunjamr Steve

          • October 12, 2024 at 6:34 am #380217
            John H
            Participant

              Welcome Brian,
              You landed in the right spot. Welcome and have fun.

              John

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