It’s been four years now that I’ve been taking weekly lessons and working on learning how to play the bass guitar.

I worked first with a guitar teacher who taught me the basics. I resisted using proper finger placement, insisting it hurt my (old) arthritic hands. I didn’t do myself any favors. I did learn to play a bunch of cool songs with my first teacher.

The last year I’ve been working with a teacher who is an actual bass player. He’s stricter about finger placement and playing scales. I’ve learned to listen to the music and know whether it’s in a major or a minor key. I can even figure out the notes if necessary just by ear.

Playing bass isn’t easy, but it’s always fun and interesting. In the clip I’m working on blues type music, playing pentatonic scales. You can see by my face at the end that I wasn’t impressed by my own playing. I did mess up the finger placement on the major scale on the low B string.

Oh, well, there’s always next time.