Feeling Discouraged by a competent teacher

[Cowboy in Latvia]

I know it's been said already but this is important.

Practice what your teacher assigns rather than the tabs for at least 30 minutes a day and you will do a lot better.

 

[whatizitman]

I've always had a mental roadblock with music theory. It's very "mathematical", and math's always been difficult for me. And playing (pretty well) by ear contributes to my eyes just glazing over when discussing theory...or my ears taking over when (very rudiment-ally) reading music. I'd love to find a teacher with a different approach that can make this stuff more accessible to me.

I could have written this same post. Let me know if you find him or her.

I can spend time trying to figure everything out enough to be a good sight reader. Or I can just go play music. It takes me significant discipline and time to focus on the former. But every little bit helps in so many ways. It's just that my ear is good enough to figure out most popular styles of music - far quicker than reading notes.

I have to break things down to small steps. That, and I have to be using notation constantly, or it all goes out the window.

One thing I have found more helpful than not is to memorize intervals on the staff. You already know the intervals on your fretboard - particularly 3rds and 5ths (edit: and 4ths). If you can find a note and an interval, it's easier to 'see' the rest of it in context. Time and beats are another issue, but once you get one thing down well enough, it's easier to add the next thing.

Maybe we should start a dyslexic sight reading club.

 

[whatizitman]

Good teachers are gold, but you don't have to learn from a teacher, it is possible to teach yourself.
I recommend just starting with the major scale: play the hell out of that, play it in each position, play it in every key, play it and think about the scale degrees as you do so (eg. first, second, third, etc.). Eventually you'll get that down to the point where you can start using the major scale to build chords, and then you've got a world of arpeggios to practice up and down the neck, and you only need a few simple pieces of information to start: what constitutes a major scale, and what makes up a chord. There's a huge amount of meat on them bones, believe me.

Doing this has helped me progress a lot with the bass. I played guitar for years, so I knew how find chords in all keys, chord numbers, etc... Working on scales has helped me move from just picking out root notes to playing and creating melodic lines.

Figure out how where to play the standard vamps in all keys, by number. Figure out 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, relative minors, circle of fifths. Then scales, scales, scales. And you got the vast majority of popular music at your fingertips. Learning charting and reading notation just extends your ability to play and learn even further.

 

[okcrum]

It's not like you need to understand calculus to understand music. Being able to divide by 2 or 3 is enough math to handle much theory.

The OP's teacher is assuming he will be learning to read instead of using tabs. That's the big disconnect I see here.

 

[5544]

I've been a teacher. Sometimes the student just sits there saying yes to everything- "Do you understand?" Yes. "Are you getting this?" Yes. "Are you following?" Yes.

Unless the OP is 8 years old, he needs to speak up and let the teacher know that he DOESN'T understand what is going on.

Sounds like you are just teaching for a cash grab if you don't see the student struggling even though they are saying they understand everything.

 

[Salicete]

Oh, I see what you did there...

It was a typo and should have read "incompetent." Actually, not really, give the guy a break.

Explain to him what you find lacking about his approach and see if he can modify his style to meet your needs.

If he can, problem solved; if he can't its is time to move on.

 

[corndog]

Musicians are like athletes in this regard, great players don't mean they great teachers.

Talk to him, tell him your frustrations, give him a few weeks to adjust, if he doesn't or you are still frustrated, move on. Life is to short and who pays to be frustrated.

 

[electracoyote]

Sounds like you are just teaching for a cash grab if you don't see the student struggling even though they are saying they understand everything.

Agreed.

I never went on a "yes" or "no" basis--my students had to demonstrate understanding and application for me.

"Spell a G major scale for me." "Play a G major scale for me." Good teachers know how to test for practical application, can tell when they've lost a student in the sauce, and have strategies to re-teach for success.

I've known a lot of teachers like the one described in the OP. They prefer it up in that ivory tower and don't know how to connect with the student where he is and gently coax him toward progress. It's actually pretty common.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

Am I the only person who can hardly understand tabs at all? Honestly sheet music looks easier or at least just as easy.

No, you are not the only one, but as an olde farte I went to school when music was still taught, lo, even in elementary school, and started playing the fretless pneumatic piccolo bass (see sig if that's not obvious) in 5th grade, so I have been reading music a metric-ton longer than I've been playing bass. Someone mentioned something that lead me to the session website and I met an even more horrible notation method that I assume was for compact ASCII "notation" in the pre-pdf-era, and it maketh me shudder even worse than tabs, if you can believe that. Have a look at this "notation" and try not to run screaming:

X: 1
T: The Sally Gardens
R: reel
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Gmaj
|:G2GA BAGB|dBeB dBAB|d2Bd efge|dBAB GEDE|
GFGA BAGB|d2eB dBAB|d2Bd efge|dBAB G4:|
|:dggf g2de|g2bg ageg|eaag a2eg|a2bg ageg|
dggf g2de|g2bg ageg|d2Bd efge|dBAB G4:|

Fortunately they seem to have actual music, too, though I am being forced to pick up the tricks of reading treble clef on a bass instrument as a bass-clef-only reader normally due to what I'll likely be doing a fair amount of (reading from a treble-only leadsheet that may or may not have chords) if I ever escape the house and play with people. Painful, but broadening. Still, anything I can prep by transposing into bass clef is going to be a lot easier for me to deal with.

 

[Remyd]

I am being forced to pick up the tricks of reading treble clef on a bass instrument as a bass-clef-only reader normally due to what I'll likely be doing a fair amount of (reading from a treble-only leadsheet that may or may not have cords) if I ever escape the house and play with people. Painful, but broadening. Still, anything I can prep by transposing into bass clef is going to be a lot easier for me to deal with.

I think this is good musicality training (I mostly transpose down an couple or three octaves just for practice) and it's part of my Tue/Thu practice routine. Mostly music is in treble clef, and I'm a musician, so it seems to me to be a skill worth acquiring. In music school it's just sort of assumed that everybody can read everything, but coming back to it as an adult, well, I did have to add it back to my practice routine. ;-)

 

[lfmn16]

Sounds like you are just teaching for a cash grab if you don't see the student struggling even though they are saying they understand everything.

Sounds like you don't know what the heck you are talking about. In the future you should probably stick to topics you know something about.

 

[5544]

Sounds like you don't know what the heck you are talking about. In the future you should probably stick to topics you know something about.

I've wasted enough money on bad teachers to know what I am talking about.

 

[Craig Fones]

I think what you're experiencing is normal. I took Bass Guitar lessons many years ago from someone I saw play live and was blown away. I only had about 6-10 sessions but the material was overwhelming at the time and some of it still is. Fortunately, he handed me the material from the lessons on paper I could take home from each session. I still have those and refer to them from time to time. My point is that you're not learn it all overnight but you're probably absorbing more than you think. The stuff that makes no sense now will finally click later at some point as you continue to play, study, practice and grow as a player but you have to stay with it.

Using Tabs are a shortcut for learning what the baseline is for a song but they are not shortcut for learning much more. I'm not going to tell you not to use them but don't let them take you away from actually "learning" proper technique, music theory and from working/studying and practicing on the homework from your instructor. It may not be as much fun right now but it will make you a much better playing much quicker than just learning to be a parrot who can mimicking songs or a monkey who can copy the motions of a human.

I'm going to sound like a parent but...Set aside time (at least 1 hour a day) to work on the lessons you're paying your instructor to teach you. Don't do play with the tabs until AFTER you've done your homework. Do the work before the fun (don't let the tabs be a distraction). Tabs are good for building motivation and confidence in the very short term but becoming a higher level player with a solid foundation will take you much much further as a player. What are you going to do when you want to play with a band and you don't have a tab to follow? You're not going to learn to perform a solo and improvise from a tab.

Don't be this guy who said- "Education is important but Playing Bass is importanter".

 

[lfmn16]

I've wasted enough money on bad teachers to know what I am talking about.

Apparently not.

 

[ImNotJoel]

Agreed.

I never went on a "yes" or "no" basis--my students had to demonstrate understanding and application for me.

"Spell a G major scale for me." "Play a G major scale for me." Good teachers know how to test for practical application, can tell when they've lost a student in the sauce, and have strategies to re-teach for success.

I've known a lot of teachers like the one described in the OP. They prefer it up in that ivory tower and don't know how to connect with the student where he is and gently coax him toward progress. It's actually pretty common.

This is one very important factor for a teacher to test or quiz your students knowledge. The purpose being so you can truly tell where they are at. Some students will just say yes and some may think they have something more than they do or may just want to be on to the next technique. There is absolutely nothing wrong with repeating material during a lesson.

Many people feel playing music is an up hill climb which it is not its more like a rugged mountain with many plateaus. There may be (at least in my experience) times when you practice and practice but don't feel progress but you keep going and BOOM up, up, up you go. I agree with this it's really key for a teacher to evaluate the student.

I had two great teachers, one would have students bring in material they wanted to learn and through that would introduce theory and techniques. It was (despite many thinking wrong) a great way to get people starting out into playing and improving. But this was contingent on the student asking questions. He was great at explaining and breaking down techniques the more questions I asked the more I got out of it. Soon enough no CDs where brought to lessons.

The other teacher I had straight up said to me when inquiring do you want to learn songs and learn to copy them or be a musician. I picked answer B he was all about technique, theory, and creativity you didn't move until you had it down. I make him sound like a hard ass but he was really nice actually but if I wasn't ready he wouldn't show me anything new. Some stuff even with practice would take more than one lesson but I felt confident about the material. He would put you on the spot and have you apply what you learned.

 

[Jonithen]

So i'm still learning the basics of playing my bass guitar. My current teacher is very talented and knows his stuff, but I cant comprehend much of what he tells me. As he sits across from me, explaining scales and showing me them, I can't put what he says onto my own bass. Where as my looking up tabs for songs is very easy for me to understand. Looking at the frets by numbers rather than fingers/finger placement as numbers is working for me more. My point is, every lessons leaves me feeling discouraged and inadequate despite my being fairly decent at what I practice at home. Are there any good bits of advice I should follow? I wan't to enjoy learning, not dread it.

I can relate. Here are my thoughts.

While a good teacher should totally understand where you are at, you have to realize he's a guy with a guitar and not a psychic mutant. You can't be afraid to tell him that you're having a hard time wrapping your head around something. Sometimes the answer really is "just do it over and over again and eventually it will click" but this is also a mental exercise, so if you aren't understanding what you are doing it will be hard to build on it. I was at a complete loss for pretty much anything theory-wise beyond knowing that fret 5 on a lower string = fret zero on the next higher string with standard tuning and that fret 0 and 12 on the same string were the same note - I could follow a tab but I had no idea how any of this stuff worked except sometimes some things sounded cool without any understanding of what was happening or why.

Instead of getting defensive about it, I got over it and just accepted that I didn't know something and found someone to help me out.

Now obviously everybody is different and you're going to have preferences and expectations of a teacher and they are going to have preferences and expectations of students. Hopefully these line up. Because you're paying for these lessons you should be able to expect a certain amount of professionalism - there will be times where you get frustrated and he'll get frustrated. Ideally you both work together to figure out what the problem is and how to either solve it or come back around to it later. That can't happen if you expect him to magically know you're having trouble. He probably doesn't expect you to get it 100% that day in class, but expects you to go home and work on it and tell him when you see him what your troubles are.

You can't be afraid to say "hold on, I'm totally lost here and I'm not understanding this but I want to."

 

[jd56hawk]

Musicians are like athletes in this regard, great players don't mean they great teachers.

Talk to him, tell him your frustrations, give him a few weeks to adjust, if he doesn't or you are still frustrated, move on. Life is to short and who pays to be frustrated.

Definitely...Ted William comes to mind.

 

[Sav'nBass]

So i'm still learning the basics of playing my bass guitar. My current teacher is very talented and knows his stuff, but I cant comprehend much of what he tells me. As he sits across from me, explaining scales and showing me them, I can't put what he says onto my own bass. Where as my looking up tabs for songs is very easy for me to understand. Looking at the frets by numbers rather than fingers/finger placement as numbers is working for me more. My point is, every lessons leaves me feeling discouraged and inadequate despite my being fairly decent at what I practice at home. Are there any good bits of advice I should follow? I wan't to enjoy learning, not dread it.

That's the difference between learning songs, and mastering your instrument and learning music.
Most of us can improve greatly in mastering our instrument and learning music, which will make learning songs easier.
It might seem hard or boring, but it's where the real money is.

I agree totally... For years I just did the former. Have been playing since 1977 with a total of about 20 solid years of actual playing and I just started to do this at this late stage in the game. For a long time learning songs was enough but now I want to be able to appreciate the instrument more... and it is a little frustrating because at this stage I know that there are some things that I will never be able to fully master due to physical constraints... but I have seen my playing grow since I broke down and started again from the ground up...

A truly competent teacher will find a way to make their lessons work for you.
Don't mistake a competent player for a competent teacher. They're completely different skill sets.

This .. exactly. I may be wrong about this because I have never taught anyone but I would think that a good instructor should leave you looking forward to trying what you are learning and inspire you to want to show them improvement.

 

[RED J]

For years I just did the former

Me too. I wish i would have had all the resources we have at our desktop all those years ago !

 

[LordPanze]

wow, i forgot i posted this.
thanks for the advice all. I am currently getting set up with a new teacher (who is also a friend) which should make it a more comfortable experience for me.
I had 4 lessons with my previous teacher. I had this sort of difficulty in high school as well. Im hoping that learning from someone I know in a less formal setting might help me with my mental block.

I'm doing far better than I had even thought I would be by now. I'm doing plenty of drills to help me get familiar with my bass. Thank you all for the encouraging words. I WILL continue to improve. I didn't buy a bass to just sit around at home and plink away at it, I need to improve. I want this to be a career for me. not just a hobby.