Hey all, I just had my first 1-on-1 in-person private bass lesson and (spoiler alert!) it went terribly, and I just really need to vent/get some reassurance that I haven’t been going about this all wrong. Now there’s A LOT of background information in this story, but I will address all of that as it becomes relevant.
I have been learning bass for about four months at this point and am about halfway through the course. I told myself I would start here and if I was really enjoying it, then I would start learning more seriously and find a teacher. I am still very much a beginner bassist, BUT I am not a beginner to music. I have played drums for over 15 years. I played all through high school and college. I was in concert band, symphonic band, jazz band, I played in church, I joined a friend’s rock band, I marched drum corps and indoor drumline. I played snare, tenors, marimba, timpani, I can read sheet music… you get the picture. I did take a long break after college, so my chops are gone, but the knowledge and experiences are still all there. I explained all this to the instructor (who came recommended from a friend) and we were all set to begin lessons.
Now my first major red flag was that when we started the lesson, he didn’t ask me or seem at all interested in my “why?” I do private language instruction on the side, and the first question I ask literally all of my adult students is “Why do you want to learn the language I am teaching?” and “What goals do you have for your language learning, if any?” ANY INSTRUCTOR in a private 1-on-1 setting who does not ask one or both of these questions to you in the five minutes of your first lesson more than likely has no idea how to actually teach. And I will stand by that.
He leaves me to warm-up, so I start running through my major and minor scales then start playing some riffs I like. As soon as he comes back he tells me I am playing wrong. I have my thumb resting on the pickup and am plucking using pointer and middle fingers (you know, like how every video on YouTube teaches you to play). The “correct” way is to rest your thumb on the neck and pull your wrist all the way down to pluck. Why you might ask? Because your pointer and middle fingers are different lengths, so when you pluck your middle finger will be louder than your pointer finger. When you play his way, both finger tips will be parallel to the string and thus produce the same volume.
What?!? So not only does this approach feel uncomfortable and look ridiculous, the entire justification he gave is simply not true. However, it ended up being totally okay and not really mattering. Why? Because he insisted that I play with a pick for our first lesson.
Yes. My bass teacher insisted that I play with a pick for the entirety of our first lesson even after I told him that I wanted to learn to play finger style.
It was about at this point that I realized that this would be my first and last lesson with this instructor.
The remaining fifty minutes of the lesson went equally as the first ten minutes. He spent the next 15 minutes explaining to me how to read sheet music and count rhythms after I already told him I knew how to. He said that beats 1 and 3 were “strong” and beats 2 and 4 were “soft.” Those are literal translations of the words he used, and I am only pointing it out because it will come up again later.
We then spent the next 30 minutes sight reading from a work book he wrote. I have never been good at sight reading, and doing it on an instrument I barely know in a clef I never read made it even more difficult. When I would mess up he would just say “that’s wrong.” Yeah, I know. I have ears, too. No tips, no insight, no teaching, just “that’s wrong. Okay here’s the next random melody I want you to play.”
There were so many random things he would say that just made no sense. I like he told me always down pick on down beats and up pick on up beats, regardless of the string. I would play beat three on the D string as a down pick, the and of three would be on the G string, so I would down pick again and he would say that’s wrong. I should have up picked. Makes no sense. Why would I not be as efficient as possible and down pick that again?
He also kept telling me I was playing wrong/wrong dynamics. Which I thought was odd because there were exactly dynamic markings written on any of the music he gave me. After some back and forth I realized that why back at the beginning of the lesson when he told me that beat one was “strong” he wanted me to play it accented and beat three should be almost as strong (like with a tenuto). I told him that if he wanted those notes played accented then they need to be noted as such. He said, literally, “Beat 1 is always accented.”
What?!?
He then spent the last 10 minutes of our (my) lesson ranting to me about “feel” and “tempo” and “the role of the bass” and he had very clearly made a lot of assumptions about me because of background as a drummer. He kept saying “bass isn’t about speed” and then would mimic a drummer playing a big fill (arms flailing and all) and “when you play bass tempo doesn’t matter, it’s about the feel.” WHERE DO YOU THINK THE FEEL COMES FROM? Again it would be one thing if he had taught me about feel and groove, but he had me sight reading twinkle-twinkle little star and other random 8 phrases I had never heard before.
“Play this. That was wrong. Now play this.”
This dude very clearly had one approach to the instrument and instruction and by God that’s what he’s going to teach and that’s the way he is going to teach it. I don’t care if he has been running that shop longer than I have been alive; he has no idea how to teach music. I am not crazy, right guys? I am just better off doing what I have been doing and having fun learning on my own, right?
Sorry for the negativity, but I just needed to rant. What has your experience been with private teachers? Take care all.
I’d never played a bass so I bought a kit and built one, and fell in love. The logic of bass playing spoke to me. I learned that most music theory application traces back to piano. I recently changed to piano now and love it. This was partly due to a patient, kind teacher who is not full of herself, unlike the 2 I tried before her. Keep looking and good luck!