When writing baselines I love when the baseline has melodic parts that are supported by more simple parts. This is largely the kind of baselines I like to write

I do admire funk music and love to play it, but I think my style as a bassist I don't really want to use many funk tevchniques.

I used to believe I would never enjoy playing with a pic and only thought finger-style and slap were the only real ways to play the bass.

The more I have learned about pic techniques the more I have gained a respect and understanding for it, I think for my sound, I would interchange playing with a plectrum as it produces a tone that is hard to replicate.

S-I would like to leave more rests in my writing, not to fill my part with 16th notes

M-I will be able to see the evidence if I have achieved this in the projects I am working on outside of uni.

A- I know it is attainable as I used to leave more gaps when I started writing baselines, but as I grew and learned more as a bassist, I felt the need to overcomplicate my playing, all I need to do now is find a balance between the two.

R-It is relevant to my sound and my course as it directly relates to my style as a bassist

T-I will give myself this term to start seeing progress.

-Jermaine Jackson, he is the bassist that I grew up listening to and that first got me interested in playing, I think I would find it useful to go back and see if there are any things I could now use in my own baselines.

-Ed Nash, I have always loved Bombay Bicycle Club's bouncy and interesting baselines.

-Duff McKagan, these baselines highlight quite well what I want to achieve for myself as there is a great mix of tasteful complexity as well as well timed simplicity

It'll be interesting to see how it fits into the brief of the week, which is acoustic livelounge.

This lesson refreshed for me the types of scales to use over what different chord progressions.

In this lesson I completed an 8 bar blues solo that I was very happy with.

S- I would like to be able to complete an 8 bar solo in any key comfortably

M-I will be able to measure this by seeing if I can complete a solo that I am happy with

A-I believe it is achievable as I know the steps I am going to need to take in order to become more comfortable. I am going to need to re-familiarise myself with the main scale shapes. The main thing I think I am going to need to do in order to achieve this is simply by practicing.

R-I believe it is relevant as in the future, when I am playing on other peoples songs, or even writing for myself, I will want to be comfortable knowing that if the time arises for me to take a solo; I can do it, confidently.

T- I would like to be able to do this by the end of the term

I do plan on using this skill in my playing in the future as it enables me to play with clearer articulation of faster notes.

This lesson was a good refresher for me to keep an eye on my right hand techniques while playing.

technically speaking, it is a complicated song where knowledge of the structure is important.

This is the type of baseline that I love, lots of space at parts that can leave room for great dynamic moments but also lots of complicated lines that fill the space wonderfully. This might be slightly too pushed for my taste in terms of how full the baseline gets at parts but I think it will be a great tool to help push my playing ass a player.

I want to spend extra care on the long and intricate runs (like the unison line and the bug run in the final chorus) as I have had trouble with articulation when I have been faced with similar parts in other songs.

This was useful as it showed an easy and fast way to come up with a baseline to any song; however, I don't believe ill use it that often as the type of music I want to play and how I want to sound as a bass player, docent include walking baselines.

I found this lesson very useful and I would like to start using modes in my playing in order to give my baselines more interesting sounds as well as helping me out when it comes to soloing.

I this lesson, I realised that I knew more about modes that I initially thought and that I need to stop acting scared of them and start using them in my playing.

In addition to this, I have been songwriting a lot with Luqa recently and we think we are going to use on elf the originals for the coursework as it would show exactly how we both play as musicians and show what our styles and influences are more clearly.

In order to improve this skill, I will practice along to backing tracks and only let myself improvise/play within a certain scale or mode. By restricting the notes I can use, will encourage my creativity and also expand my knowledge and comfortability with certain scales.

Instead we decided to play a mashup of a bunch of different songs in the same key.

This helped me to work on my improvising skills and my ability to lock in with the drummer and change the style of my playing to fit everything else that the other musicians were doing.

I wish I got a video of this as it is a great example of me meeting my goal of being able to restrain my playing and embellish to support the other musical elements going on around me.

I am hoping that once this becomes a part of my daily routine, I will want to carry on with my daily practice after this month and branch out to practicing techniques and scales instead

Jack has said that he thinks the song will be out of his range so if he can't do lead hell still be up for doing bv's.

In order to decide who will do the lead vocal: me, Luqa and Jack will take it in turns singing and decide who it fits best.

Since I have been writing in my case study how I would like to front a band while playing bass, this could be a good opportunity to give this another go, as it would have been sone time since I would have fronted for a song.

This was very useful as I am already trying to improve my pic technique for my sound as a musician. The styles I liked before this lesson were rhythm and alternate style.

After this lesson I learned that there is a place for all the styles depending on the baseline I am playing. Even if it doesn't feel the most natural to start with I should assess the bassline and decide what technique would be the most efficient.

The main thing I like about this weeks track is the tone of the bass, the fact to is in drop D and played with a pic gives the bass a huge sound that I really want to experiment with more and see if I can achieve it with the small amp at the alphabet venue.

The band I will be subbing in for (Trip Hazard), a few of their songs would need me to play with a pic, as I am a mainly finger style bassist, I don't tend to practice with a plectrum and one of the songs they are going to cover (Destroya MCR) has a pretty fast pace chugging. The first time I played this through, I realised that my technique and stamina is not where I would like it to be so this week I will add it to my practice routine to do some pic exercises.

For my sound, I would like to be as versatile as I can and be able to use a pic to get that specific tone in my playing and in order to be fully comfortable playing with one, I need to improve my technique and stamina.

I need to be able to play destroya successfully and in full time by next Wednesday (as that is when the gig is)

In the end I think it ended up being pretty good as it made it so there were some links back to the original and it maintained the funkiness that lives in the chorus.

We have all agreed to look at the track separately and learn it in our own time and we will put the pieces together when we are all in the same room

-I would like to learn the covers for Jack Keane's set swell as run through the whole set to double check I am okay with all the songs as it has been a while since we have looked at them.

Song 2- For my second summative song submission I will be using a song I have written the part to: I'm Not Ready, which is a song I do with Jack Keane. This song covers the other half of the bass playing I like which is more busy baselines sat neatly underneath the other instruments. I am also doing backing vocals on this track.

Some things we want to work on for next time:

-Timing in the verses, I am not happy with how the placement of my notes sound in the verses, I am going to do some more active listening to remedy this

-Solo tone, we all agreed there was a bit too much reverb on Luqa's solo tone and he is going to spend some time perfecting the tone

-Stabs, there is supposed to be more stabs before the final riff that we keep leaving out

-Coming back into the vocals after the solo, me and Jack are still working on the timing of this and will work on it separately, and hopefully it will have improved next time

We would like to try to book in another practice before our performance next Thursday.