Practice vs Performance

How not to get fired

Today’s “Could I play bass with” is definitely more on the practice side than it is performance.

Although there are things in this video that I might use if I played with the band live, I think even Louis (someone who isn’t a stranger to the busier side of playing) might say “hey brother, you wanna dial that back a few thousand notches tonight..?”.

This is what I want the series to expose though. On one hand it’s tough because you want to put out your best performance and make it sound super slick and polished. Almost like an audition tape for a band if you had the chance to send one in. But the reality is that this process has been a part of my practice routine since the beginning, and it is full of experimenting. I’ve always jammed to records for hours on end, and it’s been the most important aspect of working on time and sound when I’m not on a stage or in a studio.

I try and find the most amount of material I can for a song, and then slowly dial it back to where it’s serving the song and not just an ego trip of what I CAN do over a track. The Knower song is probably about 27.847% too much, but that’s what was happening in my practice session so that’s what I’m sharing with you.

I’m going to be adding all of these videos to the transcription vault tomorrow on my site, and will start to do break down videos to explain my process in more depth. That’s especially interesting to me on a song by song basis as every song gives me something a little different to work on.

It’ll be a part of the last phase of our sale, so stay tuned for what “Cyber Monday” has to bring in terms of videos, transcriptions, and lessons!

Thank you for all the messages about what to tackle next BTW! There have been some things I’d never heard before, and some good calls on tracks I love but had forgotten about. So far I haven’t had to stray too far from stuff that’s been in my practice routine for years. There’s some DMB, John Mayer, Foo Fighters, and some more prog/djent things too. I’ve also been listening to tons of pop music lately so maybe Charlie Puth, Dua Lipa, The Weekend? Always interesting to listen to that music and figure out what I would have done in the studio if I was the bass player on the session.

More soon,

Janek

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