For me it's surfing. I've been surfing intermittently since my dad taught me how at age seven. I've always owned my own boards, but never really got out on the water enough to get good at it. Every time I do get out there though, I love it. I love the peacefulness, the thrill, being on the water. And every time I do it I think, "I should do this more. This is something I want to get good at." But for whatever reason it falls by the wayside. Anyway, one of these days I'm gonna take the time to improve my surfing while I still have my health and fitness. I think it would be one of life's great regrets if I didn't.
Gitter-fiddle. I have tried to learn that instrument for 22 years. It might as well be the Holophonor. And life. At this point my once-six-figure-salary career is dead; my peer group has all but disintegrated; I am estranged from my family; my knees and ankles are not working enough to label them "knees and ankles"; and I am a de facto alien parent that gets told "you aren't my parent" (like no shit you 12-year-old-pissant ... took four years of me in your life to figure that out?) None of that was in my plan(s) A through J. I have since given up on making so much of my plans. All of the above things are still true, and I am still a grump. But I am having fun being an curmudgeon. You get to use canes and "hurmmphh" at youths, and soon enough I'll be rolling in senior citizen discounts. Maybe I'll get a fake ID so that I can start that ball rolling. and just to be straight: my career is dead but my partner's is taking off so I am a househusband at my partner's request. Peers get married and move, but I still have one or two close compatriots. My family and I ... well yeah that kinda sucks. The pain is taken care of via the dispensary system in my home state. And the 12 year old can be cool at most times. Life is something that I am so ugly at that perhaps it is my version of some outsider folk performance art. So ugly that is has wrapped all the way round to beautiful.
I enjoy golf with the right people. They have to suck proportionately to me. When I play with someone good, it's frustrating. I know that they're annoyed that I hit the ball twice for their every one time. Also, the "can you help me find my ball" thing gets pretty old. Much easier to find them when they're smacked down the center of the fairway. That said, I think I could be good if I did it more often, but who has the time? Golf takes forever.
Yeah it really does take too long. Me and my buddies used to go out to a little 9-hole par 3 course nestled right in on downtown Austin, half a city block. Really neat course, mostly an unofficial homeless shelter now, like most places downtown. You Austinites -- it's at Barton Springs, the little green area next to the giant dinosaur and the McDonalds. I guess it's probably been sold by now, though.
I enjoy golfing with my father. He's a decent golfer, but he's patient. In fact, I get so impatient golfing that I tend to run to my ball from the cart. On more than one occasion my father has quipped, "Steven, there is no running in golf!" On a sidenote, my dad has been golfing for about 20 years and a few weeks ago he got his first hole in one. Pretty cool!
I enjoy being on the golf course a lot. Always loved driving the carts around. Private courses are very peaceful places to be on drugs. But the game itself drives me nuts 92 percent of the time. I do like the idea of going your whole life waiting for that hole in one and finally nailing it. Not too many other hobbyist sports have that holey grail.
Playing the bass. I really enjoy playing, but I'm not very good. I tend to play it like it's a 6-string guitar, and well... it's not. I really admire actual bass players like T-Dog, coffeesp00ns and BLOB_CASTLE. There are so many posers out there pretending to be bassists, when in actuality they're just guys that weren't good enough to be the guitarist. Real bass players study their instrument, learn how to play in the pocket etc. -I have a ways to go. I played tonight and the result was pretty weak. I probably enjoy playing the bass as much or more than any other instrument. I think this is because I'm noticeably getting better at it still. It's familiar enough that I can quickly learn, but challenging enough that I still have a LONG way to go.
It's only since I've graduated that I'v been paying more attention to HOW I play be bass. When I was in school (getting a jazz studies degree on upright bass) I focused so much on harmony and not so much the other elements of music (to get a good grasp of them, I HIGHLY recommend The Music Lesson. Bass is a lot of fun. One of my favorite ways to conceptualize playing bass is as follows:
You don't walk into a building and say "my what a nice foundation this building has." But if the foundation is off, everyone notices. Bass playing is setting up that foundations. Really getting into that groove. As quoted in Dance to the Music, "I'm gunna add some bottom so there's a dancer that just can't hide."
Have you been playing a lot these days? If so, are you playing upright or do you tend to play electric bass these days?
Living in rural Oregon doesn't provide too many opportunities to play. But I play at the (singular) bar in town with my roommate on guitar the third Thursdays of the month, and occasionally at the Elk's Lodge in the neighboring town. Primarily upright. The only time I played electric recently was when I was under the weather and didn't have the energy for upright.
Dude, you should get in on our original music club now that you have time! We have a backlog of songs that could use some base. Check them out #hubskioriginalmusicclub
Is there a way to see which songs need which instrumentation?
Here, check this one out. The lyrics are by Humanodon, it has drums and no bass. Might be a good place to start: What do you think?
I can't get this one to play for whatever reason. Can I get the link again?
Oh sweet. Yeah I already recorded bass for it however SoundCloud isn't allowing me to upload it. Maybe pm me your email and I can send it your way?
Not really, I can go real quickly and take a glance and find one that I know needs bass. Give me a bit
No, but I play it melodically, like I would a guitar for accent parts. Need to learn some bass chops
Bass chops are a good thing to have, I think every musician should learn bass the same way everyone should learn a little piano, a little guitar, etc. The thing about bass is that we have a lot more to be mindful of than most other instruments. Playing like you would play a guitar is a really common issue for guitarists that take up bass, but that's not to say it's totally out of place as a technique. One thing I've been working on internalizing lately is knowing when to be rhythmic, when to be melodic, when to stand out, and when to blend in. They all have their place, and practically every song should be a combination of all four. think about someone like a horn player - they spend all their time learning scales and fancy licks so they can solo and generally sound cool. Bassists are mostly concerned with harmony, but also have to be constantly thinking about those same "flashy" elements so we can move from one chord to the next in a way that both makes sense and is interesting. I started off thinking purely rhythmically, so things like solos are still really hard for me and I'm not great at adding flair a lot of the time. So don't abandon your instinct to accent! It'll definitely come in handy once you're able to do that while still keeping the music grounded.
Yeah, that's what I'm going with. I like the sound of that. You know, I always forget that you're a bass player. You should get some recording gear, a simple set-up to record bass and get in on these hubski collaborations. I remember "jamming" with you in my basement. I may have recorded that....
Art. That profile picture, or that thing I did of a friend and I, or that apple that I posted like my first week on Hubski? Weeks. WEEKS of work. I can't produce high quality shit in a short amount of time, but that's okay. I'm cool with doodling and painting shitty shit 90% of the time and then that last 10% pulling off something people can look at and not immedietly vomit.
Golf, soccer I like a lot too and I'm bad at both of those. Golf I think I could be good at if I played it more, just don't have the time, money, and climate to do so. Can I go with woodworking, even though it's something I don't do very often? Thinking about taking a woodworking elective course with a friend, but I would have to drop my Engineering Management elective to take it.