Teaching Techniques

[theworldismad]

For a church fundraiser I am going to auction off bass lessons. I have a general idea of what I want to do, but is it wrong to jump the student right into music theory? The last thing I want to do is teach the student songs without backing them up with knowledge of the structure behind the song and how the line was written. Anyone have a good springboard idea for me to use as a lesson plan?

EDIT: Title should be "Techniques for Teaching"

[somedumbguy]

Honestly, if you are only going to do a few lessons, you are better off teaching a small amount of technique, and then just teaching them certain (easy) songs like How Great is Our God, or Trading My Sorrows.

Now, if you plan on continuing lessons with them, then I would consider some music theory type stuff.

[bassic.science]

I'm wondering if your church really has that many kids interested enough in bass to take lessons. Usually the bass player is the worst guitar player, everybody chomps at the bit for guitar spots because all the girls scream for them.

[theworldismad]

Haha bassic.science it sounds like there is some old scar behind that reply. Yeah the reason that I am doing this is because I am in a missions team that is going to Africa- so people are generally pretty willing to support anything in the auction. The starting number of lessons is ten.

[MalcolmAmos]

You may get an adult as the largest bidder. Much easier. Ten lessons can get a person started on the right foot.

Find what they want and give it to them. Adults want to have a say in their training and they like to discuss the training --- kids will accept a lecture format, adults prefer another way. Main reason for the popularity of forums like this. We need to discuss our training with someone.

Basic adult training 101.

As to theory - yes, somewhere in those 10 lessons theory should enter the picture. Perhaps a short paper, scale/key chart or an Internet site that deals with the homework assignment. Best instructor I ever had always had some theory about what we were doing included in the homework assignment. BTW The homework assignments were written out, this especially is important with the kids, they wake up in another world each day and will not remember what you said from one day to the next.

[bassic.science]

Ha! After re-reading what I wrote I can see how it came off as sounding bitter (unintentional, I assure you).

I've played bass in a few church settings and I've never seen or heard such shameless self promotion as I did there. In particular, when I would play for college age or young 20-somethings, it was a near guarantee that someone would approach afterwards offering their guitar playing services. This is as ludicrous as me approaching my favorite band after a great concert and offering to play bass for them if they ever need. Like I said, I can see why they'd want to play guitar, they had to swim through a sea of giggly girls trying to talk to the guitar player (also usually the band leader) to try and take his job. Bass player? Not so much. But it's necessary to fill in the song, so that's why I was saying usually the worst guitar player in the bunch gets this job, and you can tell because they use a capo (seen this multiple times).