Hello all and welcome to week 12. We are officially at the end of Genius Hour. As you know, last week I flew to South Dakota and had the incredible opportunity to play a song with Breaking Benjamin. I will not post any pictures until after the final presentation, as I do not want to spoil anything. All I have left to do is prepare the slideshow for the final presentation, which is next week. For once in my life, I am looking forward to presenting. This was an incredible project. that was a ton of fun.
Last year's Genius Hour was a failure for me. I only got to meet with my mentor once, and realized that I was not passionate about what I was doing, and ended up just making stuff up as I went along. This year, I wanted to chose something that I was truly interested in, so I would actually invest time in it. Since I usually play guitar after school when I get home, playing bass did not feel like homework, just a fun activity. I have discovered that bass is truly a great instrument, and something that I will continue after this project. I will say that it was refreshing to play guitar this weekend without having to worry about getting something done with bass. I now have two different instruments that I enjoy. Overall this was the best school project that I have ever done. Well that's about all I've got. I may post the video link to my final presentation next week. Thank you all for following my bass playing journey, it has been a fun one.
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Hello all and welcome to week 11. This week´s post is a little earlier, due to the fact that I will be filming my final presentation. I am flying to Sioux Falls South Dakota tomorrow (Thursday May 10th) and will be playing a song a bass with Breaking Benjamin at sound check. I figured that for the final blog next week, I will reflect on this project as a whole, and go over the process of filming the final presentation. As far as the first part of the week goes, I have just been practicing Aerials as much as possible. Like I have said in previous blogs, it is not a particularly difficult song, but I want to get this right. I cannot believe that we are almost to the final week. This year´s genius hour has definitely blown last year out of the water. I am super thrilled that I got a redemption from last year. I will check in next week as we wrap up this amazing journey.
Hello all and welcome to week 10. I can't believe that there are only two weeks of genius hour left! I have really enjoyed this project so far. On Friday I will be recording a video for my final presentation. I will be flying to Sioux Falls South Dakota, and performing a song with Breaking Benjamin at soundcheck. The song I will be playing is Aerials by System Of A Down. The performance will be recorded, and the video will be used for my final presentation. So my primary focus for this week is to rehearse the song as much as possible. It is not an especially difficult song, but I do not want to mess up. I am not really sure what I will be doing for the last two weeks, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Hope you all have a great week, and I'll see you back here for week 11.
Hello all and welcome to week 9. I did not get much practice time this week, but I was able to meet with my mentor. Breaking Benjamin had a show in Myrtle Beach, so I got to see my mentor. I got to the venue around 3. I talked with Matt Wantland, who is the guitar player for 10 Years for about 15 minutes. After that, Aaron came out and took me into the venue. He grabbed two basses from his vault, and we went upstairs to the greenroom. We went over several Breaking Benjamin songs, talked about their newest album, and also guitars. It was truly an amazing experience, and I can't thank Aaron enough for making it happen. I will post more pictures next week. As far as this week goes, I will try and practice whenever I have free time. We are only three weeks from final presentations, so I have to start thinking about that. I will probably play Aerials by System Of A Down, because it's one of my favorite songs to play, and it is fairly easy. I hope evryone has a great week, and I'll check in with you next week.
Hello all and welcome to week 8 of genius hour! I will avoid getting side tracked and jump right into the important stuff that everyone is interested in. During the main part of the week, I was busy with several assignments. On Friday I ended up staying at home due to food poisoning. I was able to get some practice in yesterday and today. I didn't work on anything new, but it was nice to get a little bit of playing time in. I am hoping to get in some more practice time before Thursday. I will explain in the week nine blog, I do not want to spoil anything. Just know that it is exciting. That's about all I have for you this week. Next weeks blog may be a little earlier, so be on the look out for that. I hope everyone has a productive and successful week.
Hello all and welcome to week 7. This week I did manage to practice, but I was not able to learn any new songs. I will have to do some research on some more songs, because I am sort of running out of options. Without getting too technical, I am playing in drop C tuning, so if I was to tune to standard tuning, I would need to have my tech set it up again, which is something I would like to avoid if possible. This journey has been an enjoyable one, and I feel like my background in guitar has made the transition easier. I am not sure what this week will hold, but hopefully I can learn a new song. I hope everyone has a great week, and I will see you next week for week 8.
Hello all, welcome to week 6. This week has been pretty crazy since most of my classes are trying to cram several assignments in before the end of the quarter and also spring break. That has kept me occupied, and I have not had free time to play bass. With next week being spring break, I will be out of town and will not be updating the blog. So when we come back the week of April 9th, that will count as week 7. For anyone else going on spring break, I hope it is a relaxing one, and I look forward to returning in two weeks for week 7.
Hello and welcome to the week 5 update. This week I did not learn any new songs. I instead tried to focus on "cleaning up" the ones that I have learned so far. It seems to be going well and I may decide to start learning another song before spring break. I am not entirely sure of schedule this week, so that will play a big role in what I decide to do. I will be meeting with my mentor in roughly one month, so I am really looking forward to that. At this point it doesn't look like there will be enough time to efficiently learn how to slap, which is totally fine. I've noticed that when I now listen to songs, I can more clearly hear the bass, and how much it benefits a song. So I've already reached one of my goals and we are only five weeks in. That's about all I have for you this week. I hope everyone has a productive week, and I look forward to week 6, the halfway point.
Hello all reading week 4. I can't believe we are one third of the way through! For some unknown reason my week 3 post got deleted. I believe it had something to with the fact that I posted that on my iPad, so that won't be happening anymore. Anyway I didn't get the chance to play until yesterday. I did, however learn another song, Aerials by System Of A Down. This is one of my personal favorite songs, and it is a lot of fun to play. Now I will move on to cleaning up the songs that I have learned over the past few weeks. There are various parts in some songs that are a little sloppy. Overall I am vary happy with this project. I realize that most people will say that you need to learn scales first in order to become good at an instrument. They can be beneficial, but music is about doing what you want. If you want to learn scales, go ahead, if you want to jump straight into learning songs, go ahead. In my case for both guitar and bass, I chose the latter of the two options. I hope everyone has a productive week, and I look forward to next week.
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