Bass Teaching

[Rowbee]

I've been advertising locally for a few weeks offering my services as both a bassist and a bass teacher. I've had an enquiry today from someone looking for a bass teacher - this will be my first ever lesson.

 

I wondered if anyone had any advice?

 

My intention is to chat to them later and find out what level they believe they are, what they are looking to learn and what they want to achieve. I also want to find out what music they enjoy playing - although I intend to help them learn some of their favourite tracks, I also intend to try and get them to create in musical styles they may not have considered.

 

I intend to help them with technique if necessary and I believe my knowledge of theory is certainly enough to get me through at least a lesson for beginner.

 

Basically, I'm a little nervous - I know I can blag my way through an audition for a band but this is new territory for me.

 

Any help and advice would be appreciated folks?

[Mike Bear]

I think your going the good route. It's very good to figure out their goals. They will also need guidence for those angles in where they may not know what the good stuff is just yet.

 

Don't show off too much, work to get them comfortable. Some jokes are good. Though I feel bad when I told a first time student that my metronome was a device that was connected to their chair that shocked the student every time they hit a bad note. He looked really worried.

[Rowbee]

Lol, thanks for the advice - I really respect my old teacher for the patience he was able to display, he would allow me to play the same part over and over again without looking even slightly bored or annoyed. Which is more than I can say for my drum teacher and I found his approach really knocked my confidence.

[Luke73]

Congratulations and good luck!

 

It sounds like you're taking the right approach indeed. Finding out what a students likes and goals are is an important thing I think, but sometimes they won't really know and it's up to the teacher to help them find out.

 

Speaking from personal experience as a student, one thing I have found frustrating is that sometimes a lack of structure in the lesson's can make it difficult to see where one is going, and to track progress.

 

Maybe that's the wrong word for it, but I've experienced teachers where it just seems to be a week to week thing like... "hey - this week I'm going to give you this"...etc etc...

 

For me at least, a clearly defined curriculum with an outline of where we're going and how we're going to get there helps make a much more effective learning environment with measurable outcomes.

 

I guess each student is different and you need to tailor your approach to their needs, but I really feel there's more to teaching bass than teaching them the latest song their mates are into, or throwing them a secret new exercise every once in a while.

 

I'm a teacher in a further education environment (it's called TAFE (Technical and Further Education) here in Australia). I teach Computer Systems Engineering (read mostly MCSE networking). One day I hope to be able to say I teach bass.

 

Good luck!

 

[Rick Hoffman]

I've never given bass lessons, but I've given gui*ar lessons to youngsters, and the most important thing I can stress is teaching the young ones rhythm and timekeeping while keeping the chord theory and scales relatively simple until they have a good feel on keeping time with whole notes, 1/2 notes, 1/4's, 1/8's, if you can get a kid to play even 16th's with his fingers god bless you! Good luck!

[Rowbee]

Thanks for the advice so far, folks. I agree that structured teaching would be beneficial to my "pupil", I guess I need to find out what they can do before I consider how to structure it though.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with ensuring they have a good concept of rhythm too as I think this is probably something overlooked by most self-taught beginners.

[Dave Brown]

Nice to see you getting into teaching. I'm sure you'll discover that teaching is it's OWN unique art. Good luck.

 

The question has come up from time to time, and there has been a lot of interesting opinions. Our first moderator, Ed Friedland himself, posed the question: " What do you look for in a teacher?"

 

From a student's perspective, we've had: "Lessons...are they worth it?"

 

Another new teacher opened the thread: "Giving Private Lessons?"

 

Bumbcity announced: So...I\'m teaching at a school now!"

 

Nice little thread here in: "Does my teacher suck?"

 

There's a lot more cool stuff. Good Luck!

[Rowbee]

Thanks Dave, I did a bit of searching but didn't find any of the above threads. I'll check them out when I get home.

[JonathanD]

All this is my opinion, sorry if some of it seems like Im telling you what to do. Its all just a suggestion.

 

It looks like you are taking a great approach by feeling them out and going from there. Some students can deal with very dry material, practicing and learning it well. Some students have shorter attention spans and need new things often. I often found the most difficult thing was the accuracy level to expect from students. Some students I would push hard to make it perfect, some i knew just would work that hard, so i only pushed them as far as I could without them getting frustrated.

 

I dont know about other teachers, but sometimes I would think why am I teaching people, they can learn all this on their ownor I am not good enough to be a teacher. Let your students decide that. There were some students I had to refer to other teachers because we did work well together.

 

Any information you can grab on psychology of learning or cognitive psychology would be helpful. It helps you know the small things that help memory and muscle memory retention. It also helps in planning your presentation.

 

Don't be lax about your schedule, make it set in stone and they will respect you and their time slot. I made students pay a month in advance and gave them one makeup lesson a quarter (unless they worked hard and had legit. reasons). Most people wont take you serious unless you make them. It took a long time for me to get 25-30 students as regulars (about 2.5 years) but it was well worth it. I'm sure you will figure out your rules as you go, but when you do print a sheet and give it to new students so they know what to expect. My policy was if you miss a lesson without notice you still pay. If students didn't practice I cut them.

If your students are young, talk to their parents and get them to help with making them practice at home. My parents made me practice saxophone when i was in 5th-7th grade and by my 8th I did it on my own and loved it.

 

The line between friend and teacher is hard. Often music teachers ant to be buddy buddy, I did. But the students I had that relationship with didnt do as well. I dont know if its just because I got along with slackers or if it was they relationship.

 

If you can find places for them to do recitals that would be great to get them experience.

 

good luck.

[Rowbee]

Again, thanks for all the advice. I had a chat with him on the phone yesterday and to be honest I'm not sure I can teach him. I'm not convinced he has the right attitude for learning; he apparently plays emo guitar and wants to learn to play bass in a funk style. He sounds like he thinks he knows how to already and he says he wants to watch me and copy what I do.

 

This parrot fashion sounds like a bizarre teaching method to me, how can I teach someone who thinks they already know? I've offered the first lesson for free so I guess we can get an idea of whether this will work or not and see if he does know all the theory he says.

 

I gave him a list of available days and asked him to phone me back when he knows what day he is wants; I'm not even sure he will.

[TimR]

Originally posted by Rowbee:

how can I teach someone who thinks they already know?

Try asking him to do what he thinks is right. Watch and correct as necessary. Teaching is as much about guidance than saying this is the way you must do it.

 

You could spend all day watching a good teacher but if you haven't played and had your mistakes corrected you will not be getting the most out of him.

 

Teaching is also a good way of finding how little you actually know. Especially when someone asks you a question that you have difficulty in answering. Conversely you may surprise yourself at how much you do actually know when you answer a difficult question well.