About Professor Plays Bass
What is Professor Plays Bass?
Professor Plays Bass is a personal music project about learning bass one song at a time.
The site documents my progress as a bass player—recording songs, experimenting with instruments and gear, and keeping track of what I learn along the way. What you see here isn't a professional musician's portfolio or a traditional bass instruction site. It's an ongoing record of learning by playing.
It's also a father-and-son collaboration. What eventually became Professor Plays Bass started with a spreadsheet my son created and maintained to help track my songs and progress. The project has grown considerably since then, but he continues to be an important part of it, including producing and editing the finished videos. We work on the project together whenever we can, and when we're apart, technology gives us a way to keep the collaboration going.
The result is part music project, part learning journal, and part excuse to keep making something together.
Learning Through Songs
Songs are at the center of how I learn.
Every one presents a different problem to solve. Sometimes it's a new technique; sometimes it's timing, dynamics, tone, or simply getting comfortable enough with a part to stop thinking about every note. Recording a song forces me to listen differently—and usually reveals things I didn't notice while I was playing it.
I'm not waiting until I've mastered the instrument to document the process. The recordings capture where my playing is at that moment. Moving from one song to the next, and occasionally returning to something I played before, creates a record of progress that's much more meaningful to me than trying to define whether I've reached some particular level.
Some songs have stories worth telling. Those usually end up in the blog.
Technology as Part of the Process
I'm also a software engineer, so it was probably inevitable that software and automation would find their way into how I practice.
Practice Studio grew out of tools I wanted for my own learning and recording workflow. Many of the individual tasks it performs can already be done with other software. The difference is bringing those capabilities together in one place and automating the repetitive steps between them—things like creating backing tracks and separating stems, preparing material for rehearsal, transcribing scores, and analyzing recordings.
Its workflow is built around Learn. Rehearse. Analyze.
The goal isn't to add technology for technology's sake. It's to remove friction. If something I would otherwise do manually can happen automatically—or several separate tools can become one workflow—that's time I can spend practicing and playing instead.
Some of those capabilities use generative AI; others rely on traditional audio analysis and software. What matters to me is whether they make the process more convenient, provide useful feedback, or help answer a basic question: What should I work on next?
Follow the Project
Everything on Professor Plays Bass connects back to the music.
The song catalog is the record of what I've played, including the basses, strings, effects, and recording details behind each song. The gear collection documents the instruments and equipment I use. The blog is where I have room to tell the stories behind particular recordings, revisit earlier performances, or write about what I'm learning from music and technology.
The finished videos bring all of those pieces together: the playing and recording, the experiments along the way, and the collaboration that has become an important part of the project.
There's no finish line I'm working toward here. The idea is simply to keep learning, keep recording, and see where the next song takes us.