so i've been working with one of my teachers for over a year now on jazz fundamentals, walking basslines and the such. jazz was and is not a dominant genre in my life but when i approached him about lessons and i said i struggled to create basslines of my own he said "great, walking basslines it is". that's fine with me. he's been in the biz for 40 years so he might know what he's talking about and i put some trust in that. so off i went learning the basics.

of the past 365 days i've worked on and with this material 300+ days, easily. i get up every day at 4:15 and i work on it and some other stuff and i get real crabcakes if i don't get to put my time in. it just makes me feel off and i can't ever get right until the next day when i sure as shit will play. i'd say playing bass has gone past habit and become a full-on addiction and if there is an intervention i will cause such a scene, you guys.

so this past week we had our monthly lesson where we went over the latest tune he had me learn, which was all the things you are. i played for him and as i was playing he was making some sounds, "woo!'s" and "yeeeeaaah's!", you know, stuff you hear in the background of classic jazz albums recorded with a single mic in a dank club called "the catfish" or something. afterwards he had some notes, as he always does, and then he was like "i'm gonna get you started on melodic improvisation".

hold up. what.

now, walking basslines are improvised, but that's now what he's talking about. the last thing i ever had any interest in was soloing... in any context. it's not my thing. i just want to hang back and play a functional bassline that nobody comments on because it does it's job transparently... kinda like a compressor. and i know why it's not my thing. it's not because i don't like the sound of a bass solo or had mad crazy respect for people that can do it, it's because in my mind soloing is for people that are talented and know what they're doing and are skilled and likely successful and handsome. not me.

no new song to work on this month, just knock the corners off some stuff i've been working on and start working on this new improv material. harumph. i went to work the next day and drive around for hours thinking about it, "improvisation"... "melodic improvisation"...  i dunno about this. but the more i thought about it the more it did make sense. this is the next logical step in learning the instrument. i've covered many of the basics, i can walk a bassline. i can read a chart. i can handle key changes and and know my way around secondary dominants, tritone substitutions, and other fancy sounding nonsense.

i've put the time in and he thinks i'm ready to start working towards this. he's had hundreds of students both in academia and private lessons, and i'm sure he's happy to take anyone's money that's willing to pay, but i also have to assume he's seen enough students to know what a particular one is in need of. if i wasn't ready he'd be giving me easy tunes to learn instead. but he didn't. i can't say this sort of thing was on my radar but it is now and you can be sure as shit i'm going to be working on it every morning.