Giving bass instruction

[Rockin John]

Good morning guys.....

A friend has asked me to give his teenage son bass lessons.

With 30+ years at playing I should be able to help. But my skills - such as they are - and experiance dont automatically qualify me to teach someone. After all, I'm self taught myself.

If I am to help, the instruction may as well be structured in some way, which means work on my part. Dont mind that as long as he in particular, and I can bebefit from the arrangement.

I'd like to help this lad so would like to ask TBers for pointers. Could anyone please suggest how I might structure lesons / help for a complete beginner? Is there perhaps a resource to which I can go for information.

I suppose one option would be for he and I to buy a bass tuition book and work from that. There may be other options.

All help gratefully accepted.



Thanks.

John

[Fishbrain]

theres a site called something like www.musicteachers.co.uk and if you go to that I'm sure theres some kind of music teacher resources. as always though, i may be wrong...

[steveb98]

Originally Posted by Rockin John

Good morning guys.....

A friend has asked me to give his teenage son bass lessons.

With 30+ years at playing I should be able to help. But my skills - such as they are - and experiance dont automatically qualify me to teach someone. After all, I'm self taught myself.

If I am to help, the instruction may as well be structured in some way, which means work on my part. Dont mind that as long as he in particular, and I can bebefit from the arrangement.

I'd like to help this lad so would like to ask TBers for pointers. Could anyone please suggest how I might structure lesons / help for a complete beginner? Is there perhaps a resource to which I can go for information.

I suppose one option would be for he and I to buy a bass tuition book and work from that. There may be other options.

All help gratefully accepted.



Thanks.

John

I would say look at some bass books not to teach from but to get an idea of the topics covered and general order. Also lots of online bass lessons, take a look at those, for same reason. That should give you a good idea of how to structure and write some lessons for your student.

[tycobb73]

teach him a lesson then teach him a song that uses that lesson. my wife took guitar lessons as a teenager and got bored with it cause all the teacher wanted to do was teach her chords and she didn't learn one song.

[trasser]

How much of a beginner is he?
It is important, that you learn him the right left and right hand technique from the very beginning. Give him some excersises. And teach him a fairly easy song, something he might like to listen to himself, some rock or whatever he's into. The important thing is, that the song speaks to him, this means that he will go home and practice it. That should do it for first lesson.

[Rockin John]

Thanks very much.

An absolute beginner, Trasser.

[IanStephenson]

"do no harm"...

The most important things you can do are help him form good habits, and make sure he doesn't adopt any bad ones. I recently saw a kid play who'd been taught by a guitarist I know who isn't a regular teacher... The kid was pretty good, but had picked up all the guitarists bad habits.

Far better to have him playing poorly with good habits, than well with bad ones - over time he'll get better, but bad habits get trained in.

I'd make him do warm ups, and hammer him on wrist position/posture for the early lessons so it becomes locked in - very hard to fix latter.

When I've occasionally taught complete beginners, I start them with just the right hand, playing A's then D's, then E's (with the thumb muting the E as necessary). Then get them to play 12 bar in A. They get to concenrtate on one think, and GET IT RIGHT, but still play some fun music. Once the right hand is locked in, which only takes one session, that technique will serve them well.

Ian