oh man...that youtube video..was a trip..i want to know what makes him a "professional bass player"
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Terrible Teachers
- Thread starter Stickk
- Start date
I think if that's all there is to the lesson, it's a cop out. If, however, it's used at first to get a feel for the style the student would mostly want to play, to get them interested, it makes sense, or if there are parts in songs that require things to be taught.
I myself started when I was 14 and had a lousy teacher. He knew his stuff, but didn't know how to teach. I acutally phased out of playing for almost alittle over 15 years. I lost intrest because i felt i wasn't getting it. I wasn't able to do it. I had no talent and no ability. Then I started to get the itch to play again. When I did my reaserch I found that me loosing intrest was a result of the bad teaching. I am now using a new teacher who has a masters and has been teaching for over 25 years. he even teachers a kis with ADD and the kid has made real progress. I am lucky to have him as a teacher. I have learned alot in ways of tecnique and theory.
Funny stuff here!!
As a teacher myself, this is a good an interesting look into people's perspectives on their instructors.
I play bass for a living, and have had similar experiences with various teacher of my own, and have realized that the pairing and timing are crucial to the relationship, and what a student gets out of the lesson. My current teacher, whom I met 10 years ago, and at the time was so far ahead of me, was really unable to show me anything useful. He wasn't the teacher for me at the time. Now I have a pretty good handle on my playing and a session with him yields mountains of information. It's really more of a consultation, some listening and a lot of playing, than a traditional lesson. He would be the last guy to send a beginner!
I see myself as a pretty good instructor, and quite adaptable to many situations. That said, I can also see after a few lessons if we are going to be able to work well together. At this point I am comfortable recommending a student study with someone else if I feel that they aren't going to achieve their goals with me. Often I suggest to good students that have studied with me for a couple of years to switch things up for a different perspective - some come back, some move on permanently or even take the occasional lesson with a few different folks on a rotating basis.
I would urge students to speak their mind if someone isn't delivering the goods. I repeatedly offer this conversation to my young students who might be hesitant to bring it up because I'm an adult. Often it is a simple conversation to get you both on the same page. And if it still doesn't jive, move on.
LOL on the 'So what do you want to learn' line. Sometimes this is a valid question, though it's pretty funny looking at it from a posters' point of view.
'Expert Village' is a joke for the most part though ... do they really pay these guys?
As a teacher myself, this is a good an interesting look into people's perspectives on their instructors.
I play bass for a living, and have had similar experiences with various teacher of my own, and have realized that the pairing and timing are crucial to the relationship, and what a student gets out of the lesson. My current teacher, whom I met 10 years ago, and at the time was so far ahead of me, was really unable to show me anything useful. He wasn't the teacher for me at the time. Now I have a pretty good handle on my playing and a session with him yields mountains of information. It's really more of a consultation, some listening and a lot of playing, than a traditional lesson. He would be the last guy to send a beginner!
I see myself as a pretty good instructor, and quite adaptable to many situations. That said, I can also see after a few lessons if we are going to be able to work well together. At this point I am comfortable recommending a student study with someone else if I feel that they aren't going to achieve their goals with me. Often I suggest to good students that have studied with me for a couple of years to switch things up for a different perspective - some come back, some move on permanently or even take the occasional lesson with a few different folks on a rotating basis.
I would urge students to speak their mind if someone isn't delivering the goods. I repeatedly offer this conversation to my young students who might be hesitant to bring it up because I'm an adult. Often it is a simple conversation to get you both on the same page. And if it still doesn't jive, move on.
LOL on the 'So what do you want to learn' line. Sometimes this is a valid question, though it's pretty funny looking at it from a posters' point of view.
'Expert Village' is a joke for the most part though ... do they really pay these guys?
It depends. If the student is new to the instrument, I think it's imperative that the instructor give the student something fun to do besides exercises and scales. I would think it would tend to keep the student interested instead of bored and frustrated.
Me personally, I've never had a good instructor. Just my older brother who had a great ear and lots of musical knowledge. However, he had no patience and would never share very much of his knowledge with me because he didn't want me to become as good a player as he was. Seriously.
I went to a couple of other instructors but those were all just one or two time things that I knew were a waste of time. But really, what do you expect when you're getting lessons from some early 20's type of guy making a nickel above minimum wage? I "took lessons" from two guys like that. All they were doing was trying to pay the bills until they made it big. Neither did.
Other than that, I'm self taught. I download tabs off the 'net, and can mimic them well enough to play in a cover band.
The whites of the eye are quite resilient. I managed to stab myself in the eye with a crossbow bolt when I was a kid, and it only left a small grey mark. Plus, I'm pretty sure bee's stingers have agitating chemicals in them, so it probably felt a lot worse than it actually was.
I had a teacher fall asleep on me in the middle of a lesson. I was a beginner, desperately trying to learn how to read music, and my playing was a little, um, slow. I look over and he has his elbow on his knee, head in hand, sawing logs. That was my last lesson with him.
I'm a teacher with 25 students (mix of bass, guitar, mandolin, and ukulele). Here's my standard for everyone under the age of 16: We will divide the 45 minutes between fundamental sight-reading, formal music skills, and THEN we will do some ear training/tablature, favorite-song stuff. It's all good, but a balance is really important. Otherwise, you're just helping students learn one song after another, and nothing that will help them help themselves some day. The parents of these young people really respect me for that, I retain students for well over two years on average, and I have a waiting list about 30 deep. And I never fall asleep during the lesson
my first teacher was a real D'bag. dressed just like bon jovi too. i had been playing for about 6 months when i started with him & the first thing he does is some slap thing to Superstition & then tells me to do it & i explain i had never slaped before & he rediculed me for not being able to do it.
& then i found the best teacher you could ever ask for. they are out there.
& then i found the best teacher you could ever ask for. they are out there.
he was right, you suck.
Me myself had a teacher from start, we made it go for maybe 6 months. Not a big fan of sheet music myself, so we broke it up. Cant deny he helped me a lot with my technique tho.
Moral of the story: If you are a beginner, be sure to stick to a teacher, at least for a while.
Me, Im thinking about finding myself a new one soon, seems to me I really stopped improving lately :-(
My first two music teachers were horrible.
At the age of ten, I tried to start out on the guitar - please forgive me! The guitar teacher I had was a mean bastich who was generally hard to get along with. He yelled and screamed a lot, would snatch the guitar out of my hands when I made a mistake...to a ten year old who'd never played before! I quit after two months.
In elementary school, we all had to learn to play those little plastic recorders. Horrible whistle-sounding things in the hands of untrained children! Anyway, at a parent-teacher conference, our music teacher told my parents I had no musical skill whatsoever and would never be able to play an instrument. My parents told me what she said because they could tell she was an idiot - and they told me to pay her no more attention than I needed to pass her class! Go Mom and Dad!
At the age of ten, I tried to start out on the guitar - please forgive me! The guitar teacher I had was a mean bastich who was generally hard to get along with. He yelled and screamed a lot, would snatch the guitar out of my hands when I made a mistake...to a ten year old who'd never played before! I quit after two months.
In elementary school, we all had to learn to play those little plastic recorders. Horrible whistle-sounding things in the hands of untrained children! Anyway, at a parent-teacher conference, our music teacher told my parents I had no musical skill whatsoever and would never be able to play an instrument. My parents told me what she said because they could tell she was an idiot - and they told me to pay her no more attention than I needed to pass her class! Go Mom and Dad!
I don't know that not being able to write tab is necessarily the sign of a bad teacher. Because I can read notation, tablature drives me batty. I find it very inconvenient except for fingering suggestions.
Of course, the other point about being late, I very much agree with. That's unprofessional.
Of course, the other point about being late, I very much agree with. That's unprofessional.
Heh, these stories make me glad I have a good teacher... He'll do up tabs for me, but then expects me to transcribe them into musical notation and bring them back, properly completed, for the next class. Or he'll give me something in notation, and I got to work out the fingering / tabs that will work best for my hands / technical level... forces me to learn where all the notes are on the neck, learn to write notation in proper keys (and figuring out which keys various pieces are in...), is getting me to the point where I'm getting a lot better at being able to play from notation rather than leaning on tabs... Plus the classes are one-on-one. Makes a big difference.
Actually, it was my guitar (acoustic folk style playing) teacher who was the pits. This was back in junior high school. Parents bought a fairly cheap guitar. The action was so high it really hurt the fingers. But teacher never even checked my guitar (or those of the other 4 people in the class) to see if it was set up properly, never showed us how to change strings, etc. She tossed chord charts at us, then 'strumming charts' I guess you could call them, told us to memorize them, and then expected us to be able to play them next class, without going over tempo, etc. Needless to say I quickly learned to hate guitar. It wasn't until I started my current set of classes with my bass that I realized that it wasn't that I sucked at guitar, it was that my teacher sucked...
I also, in retrospect, am not to happy with the way we learned music back in school. I took flute for five years. Actually, I was a decent flute player; and I could certainly play from music notation (almost entirely classical music, with a few jazz/swing pieces thrown in here and there); but anything dealing with music theory, other than how to read standard notation, was never touched. I never realized until I started playing bass just what folks were really talking about when they talked about playing music in differend keys, had no idea how chords are formed, couldn't have told you the difference between a major and minor chord, modes and such were a mystery, all I could tell you about a pentatonic scale was that it had something to do with the number five (which I would have assumed as 'penta' means 'five'....) So I'm busy making up for a lot of lost time, learning music theory as well as trying to develop proper playing techniques, etc.
I think that's what I dislike the most about bad / indifferent music teachers. Not only do you find yourself behind / taking a lot longer than it should to learn stuff, but it can even put someone off from playing an instrument at all. Know too many kids who have quit playing instruments they, at one point, loved - because they couldn't stand the music instructors they had.
Actually, it was my guitar (acoustic folk style playing) teacher who was the pits. This was back in junior high school. Parents bought a fairly cheap guitar. The action was so high it really hurt the fingers. But teacher never even checked my guitar (or those of the other 4 people in the class) to see if it was set up properly, never showed us how to change strings, etc. She tossed chord charts at us, then 'strumming charts' I guess you could call them, told us to memorize them, and then expected us to be able to play them next class, without going over tempo, etc. Needless to say I quickly learned to hate guitar. It wasn't until I started my current set of classes with my bass that I realized that it wasn't that I sucked at guitar, it was that my teacher sucked...
I also, in retrospect, am not to happy with the way we learned music back in school. I took flute for five years. Actually, I was a decent flute player; and I could certainly play from music notation (almost entirely classical music, with a few jazz/swing pieces thrown in here and there); but anything dealing with music theory, other than how to read standard notation, was never touched. I never realized until I started playing bass just what folks were really talking about when they talked about playing music in differend keys, had no idea how chords are formed, couldn't have told you the difference between a major and minor chord, modes and such were a mystery, all I could tell you about a pentatonic scale was that it had something to do with the number five (which I would have assumed as 'penta' means 'five'....) So I'm busy making up for a lot of lost time, learning music theory as well as trying to develop proper playing techniques, etc.
I think that's what I dislike the most about bad / indifferent music teachers. Not only do you find yourself behind / taking a lot longer than it should to learn stuff, but it can even put someone off from playing an instrument at all. Know too many kids who have quit playing instruments they, at one point, loved - because they couldn't stand the music instructors they had.
The title of this thread made me remember my first teacher. My mum chose the guy because his lessons were cheap. He was one of those guitar teachers that apparently also taught bass. I had two or three 'lessons' with him that really confused me, as I had been learning from instructional DVDs and materials on the internet beforehand and he basically told me all the things I had learned were wrong. He even told me not to use my tuner as "they aren't accurate" or something. That was pretty much the last thing he 'taught' me.
My second teacher was great. I learned loads and I liked him. He even got me work experience in a recording studio! Unfortunately He had to go and live somewhere else.
The good news is I found a new teacher and his lessons are great. I have really improved as a musician since starting to learn from him. There are good teachers out there, you just might have to meet a few bad ones first, I guess.
My second teacher was great. I learned loads and I liked him. He even got me work experience in a recording studio! Unfortunately He had to go and live somewhere else.
The good news is I found a new teacher and his lessons are great. I have really improved as a musician since starting to learn from him. There are good teachers out there, you just might have to meet a few bad ones first, I guess.
The only music teachers I've had were 5th grade band, which was just an extracurricular activity after school; high school music appreciation, who was a really good teacher and funny guy; and college music appreciation and fundamentals of music, who was one of the best teachers I've had in any subject. Given my location, instrument teachers are very rare, and good ones are more valuable than gold. I'd love to have a teacher, but they just don't exist here 
On the other hand, if I end up going to grad school here, there is a beginner guitar class with the community college section of my college and I'm going to take that and run with it.
On the other hand, if I end up going to grad school here, there is a beginner guitar class with the community college section of my college and I'm going to take that and run with it.
^ From signature...so much for turn the other cheek...
+1
LOL stop you're hurting my sides....
