Hey,

I had bass lessons and today I had the worst lesson ever. All of the theory he is teaching me just isnt clicking at all. And we are working on teen town and ive only got about half way throught but its taking me like 2 weeks to get it. Im just extremely frustrated with myself and how the lesson went. Any others have days like this where your lesson makes you want to go insane?:help:

-ben

a song like that isn't supposed to be easy man, its supposed to be frustrating.

i had a lesson where i was playing with a pic and the teacher threw it away and said "real bassists don't use picks" i laughed at him.

yeah i know, but just in general, lessons are getting extremely hard and frustrating and its actually taking a serious toll on me haha as embaressing as that may be. We are also doing the Slap IT! book, and since it has a cd i dont have to raed the music i just remember it by ear, but now he wants me to read even tho he hasnt taught me notes really that well at all ( we went over like 7 excersizes months ago). Sorry to vent here guys but i know you are always here for a fellow bassit in need.

My piano teacher is one of those guys. Packs your mind with theory, and it doesn't make sense until two weeks later when you're reading the newspaper on the can. Then when you don't have a piano to check it out on, it makes so much sense.

Stressful, but I'm glad in the long run to have them.

eh, i don't take music as seriously as a lot of people here. i honestly think theres a such things as knowing too much. i don't know a whole lot about music, i know where the notes on the fret board are, i know major and minor scales, i know what makes a triad and an arpeggio. thats all i need. everything else is just playing what i feel and listening to other musicians and ripping them off. i can't slap, i can't tap, i can only play with my index and middle finger. but thats all i need. if music wasn't enjoyable to me, i wouldn't play it. of course, sometimes i do get frustrated, then i just put the bass down for a little while and come back to it later. the vast majority of the time its my frustration thats the road block, and if i remain relaxed i have no trouble playing what i want.

then again i'm a lazy stoner so *** do i know?

You have a valid opinion. If you dont mind tho, id like to show the talkbass community some of the excersizes he makes me do:

1. Major Scale in 6ths (All up)

-but he said something about some of them being minor or watever but that didnt make sense to me.

2. Mixolydian flat 9 flat 13. I got that.

3. Dominant 7th #11 flat 13 arpeggio, this i sorta understand, but i dont see any reason why i need to learn it. Therefore, I asked him why, and his explanation was so utterly confusing I didnt know to make of it. anyways...

then he has me doing the Slap It! boook and teen town

I don't know just a lot of it seems worthless but Iam sure its going to help me in the long run. It's just discouraging.

take a day or two away from it. whenever i go away from my bass for a week or two i come back and can play like a madman.

last time i tried taking bass lessons in this crappy little town i ended up showing the teacher how to play almost all of Portrait of Tracy and explaining to him that you in fact can strum a bass. (stupid guitar teachers giving bass lessons) :bassist:

Nope, I have not.

-Mike

Try going to College for Jazz bass THEN see how frustrated you get!

-Mark

1. Major Scale in 6ths (All up)

-but he said something about some of them being minor or watever but that didnt make sense to me.

the 6th degree of your major scale is the relative minor that's probably what he was getting at.

Just keep at it man, be glad you're have a teacher that is challenging you with some difficult stuff and not one that is gonna have you play "Hot Cross Buns" for a year.

Slightly at a tangent, I've taught lessons (school, not bass) that have not gone to plan and you just have to learn from them, move on and do better next time.

So don't feel bad, it's not just the student who can have a bad time. Sometimes things don't work as expected for the person giving the lesson.

i honestly think theres a such things as knowing too much.

Thats because you don't know enough...

Just because you know something doesn't mean you have to use it. If you can do X you can still not do X. If you can't do it you can only not do it...

The "learning stuff hold me back" attitude just means you haven't learnt enough to know when (and when NOT) to apply it.

As for bad lessons - most of the bad lessons I remember where when I was trying to hide the fact that I basically hadn't done the work - I'm sure it was pretty obvious to the teacher! I haven't taken lessons for years, but for a long time I was very lazy. I felt bad about it, but it took me a few years do decide to do something about it.

I;m not sugguesting this is the case here - Teen Town is tough. You can;'t learn to play everything in one week - I once spent 18 months learning one piece (for an exam). That was the ONLY piece I was practicing all that time, and that was when I was working hard. At the end I got a good grade though.

It just takes time. If you're putting the work in and you're enjoying it, then just take the odd bad week as one of those things...

Ian

Thanks for all the support guys. I agree, the case was probably that I didn't spend enough time on the material.

Your teacher may be going too fast for you. Not every bass player learns at the same rate and not even the same bass player learns each part of his musicianship at the same rate. Some things come slower; some come faster.

Don't get discouraged by your current situation. Just talk openly with your teacher and tell him you need more time to absorb the lessons. Maybe it would be a good time to set new priorities with your teacher.

By the way, what you describe is no where near the worst class I have ever had in the many classes I have had. I had been playing about a month, when my bass teacher made me feel like a total dork and made me feel as if he believed I had NO POSSIBILITY of ever being a bass player. Worse, he stormed out and never came back!!

But I made up my mind then and there to show him he was wrong. I had to work very hard. Bass playing did not come naturally to me and I was handicapped by starting very late, but I did put in the work.

Don't ever let a teacher undermine your confidence. If he continues to make lessons too difficult and too fast for you, find another teacher. You have the rest of your life to learn.