i've never been one for new year's resolutions... probably because i'd just be setting myself up for failure. but i am all for taking stock of things periodically and a new calendar year is probably the best time to reflect and plan for the coming months. the last 3 months of 2021 were just trash for me, so, although it's not a resolution, i do plan on 2022 at least starting off in a better way.

bass guitar practice space
when i look back at my practice journals i always look for any entries that have been highlighted as being personally significant whenever i've connected some dots that had remained mysterious for way too long. many times, at least in retrospect, whatever those connection had been may have been relatively basic or obvious, but for whatever reason had remained unknown to me. that is the trouble with being self-taught, it's like taking the longest route possible to your destination, if your get there at all. 

such things were how the fretboard is laid out. figuring out the underlying patterns unlocked the entire fretboard allowing me to confidently access the entire neck and not just relying on the familiar frets i always seemed to play.

another is some basic music theory which opened my eyes to the grammar of music. i had tossed away whatever theory i thought i knew and started from the ground up which allowed me to understand a lot of the why's and how's of music in general. i could now make sense of what i was hearing and playing.

more recently though, one of those things that really became clear to me is rhythm. i know, i know, it seems obvious that it's important, but try looking at it from this point of view. being self-taught that means i have to either hunt down information from various locations (let's be honest, mostly youtube and other online sources), or put the pieces together myself through error and more error. often for me the way it works is i find information online and then chew on it for likely months and then i connect pieces around it. it's slow work but often times me coming to the conclusion on my own is much more impactful than if someone just showed me the way. 

but anyway, if most of my information must be gleaned from various youtube channels, aggregated, and then processed it's no wonder i can be lead astray. if you were to just do a search for guitar or bass lessons on youtube you'd get quite a variety ranging from excellent to utter trash and it can be difficult and time consuming to sift through them all looking for the quality videos. no matter the quality though, one thing i did notice is that the vast majority of them deal with harmonic subjects. look, someone somewhere wants to know how to solo over a ii-V-I using the melodic minor, and that's cool, i suppose. and someone somewhere else wants to know how to comp using the whole-tone scale over a bossa for some reason. but when i'm looking for nuggets of wisdom and the first 5 pages of youtube results all sound like that video the only thing i can conclude is harmony is of utmost importance.

and it is important, i know. but when just about every source (yes, even subscription-based websites, some of which i have subscribed for years) place such an emphasis on content dealing exclusively with harmony i can only conclude that it is so important this is where i need to put all of my effort into learning. yes, the videos have good information in them and the instructors know what they're talking about, but uh... it's very misleading.

i've mentioned it in a past post or 2 but several years ago i tried getting my understanding of rhythm in order and it was actually incredibly difficult trying to find information on it. searching for "guitar rhythm", "bass rhythm" or any other variation you think might yield better results, and you'll be pleasantly disappointed. so few people actually go into this subject in depth it's frustrating. sure, many with gloss over the basics of how to subdivide over the course of a 4:34 video, but that hardly helps anyone. i am shocked that more people, especially bassists, don't talk about this more and more in-depth.

i don't know what it was exactly that flipped the switch in me to get to to look at rhythm in a whole new way and see it for just how important it is, but i'm glad that i finally do. don't get me wrong, knowing my theory is awesome, it gives context to what i'm listening to, learning to play, or writing. it helps me make informed choices on what could work rather than shooting blindly into the dark and hoping i hit something. but, since i've turned my focus onto rhythm i groove harder now than i ever have with just a root and 5th, no theory needed.

i don't know why rhythm has taken a backseat to harmony in the online music-sphere, but it's a shame and it's misguiding a lot of musicians like myself. now that i am aware, though, i can take steps to improve it, and that's my goal for this year. of all the achievements i've made throughout the years, i'd say that learning how feel rhythm and being able to lock in with a drum groove is by far the most satisfying to play. sure, i guess knowing when to play a #/b aug bb sus2 is nice but being able to pocket the bassline for "funky stuff" by kool and the gang is just bad ass.