Has anyone tried School Of Rock?

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I am not really a GnR fan. I did get the hype in the late 80’s when it came out, but it lasted a year for me, and I thought the rest of their stuff, after AFD all sucked.
BUT
Duff, Duff
I had already wanted to be a bass player when I first heard AFD, and in my teens, for that specific time, I wanted to be Duff, period.
I ended up getting a Telecaster and being Izzy, but thats a different story. LOL

Duff is a pretty respected Bass Player, so to me, I would go in to it saying, I am going to be Duff, and learn Duff bass lines, and I am gonna anchor the rest of these people, so they can have their hair metal month of fun.

I identify with Nikki Sixx for other reasons.
He is not a really good bass player IMO, he is average. Certainly he is better and has more experience then I do, but out of most glam metal bands, he is middle of the pack, if not grading up the rear.
But the experience to play in a live rock band for a spell,
I personally can get past all that, and would jump at the chance if I I had the money for it.

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42

I did sign up, but I’m having second (and third, and fourth…) thoughts. I’m wishing I’d tried to get private lesons with @JoshFossgreen first. Hoping I didn’t make a big, expensive mistake. No money has changed hands yet, but I still hate to bail, because they’ll be setting up groups today for tonight’s rehearsal. The first song is Ratt’s Round and Round. Not a song that makes me run away screaming, but not something that makes me say, “oooh, I wanna learn that”.

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43

I’m a huge fan of these situations - getting together and learning songs is the best thing any bassist can do!
Also - taking lessons while working on specific songs can be the best, most productive way to get into lessons.
Maybe do both?
At any rate - keep us posted on how it goes!

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44

@Paul_D – Please don’t bail on it, I am very interested in a report on how this works out.

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45

I got totally turned off from SofR after an email exchange with the local franchise. First, I asked about their mask policy, and was told they still require masks. I refuse to wear a diaper on my face, so that was the first landmine. The second one was even worse. I asked about the average age of the students in the group, while mentioning I had just turned 72; the response was, “Oh yes, the kids can always use a grandmotherly type to look up to”.
I’ll pass.

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46

Hey all! Just thought I’d share my little slice of experience, having taught at a School of Rock for a couple months quite a few years ago:

  • The overall idea is awesome, getting together with peer-level musicians with some guidance from a pro
  • The including quality will vary wildly depending on what teacher you get
  • There may be other options for adult band workshops that are better priced, or pay their teachers better, or something else better

Couple data points:

  • When I started at the SoR location I taught at, I inherited a few students from a previous teacher. One of them had been learning the Maxwell Murder solo, and the teacher was teaching it to her… totally wrong
  • Once I sat in on a full band session with middle/high school age kids. They were working on Monkey Wrench (Foo Fighters), which has a slightly quirky rest between the intro and first verse. The teacher on hand was totally failing to explain it adequately, I had to take over with the whiteboard and help out. :stuck_out_tongue:

So you may have a good experience, you may not! Trust your instincts if you think a teacher sucks. If you feel like you suck at music after a session, the teacher sucks. If you want to give up, the teacher sucks. If you’re super confused and not getting enough support… the teacher sucks!

I’d say that’s my 2 cents, but it’s basically my whole dollar. :money_with_wings:

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47

Thanks Josh. It’s nice to have that voice of experience on this.

They talk about the SoR ‘method’ but they don’t ever describe what that is on the website. Is it the aspect of having everybody part of a band and teaching around that? Or is there something else to it?

@PamPurrs That was just damn rude of them. :-1:

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Yeah, I saw that too… :pleading_face:

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49

Here’s my report from the first rehearsal:

I think it will be worth it. All adults, mostly knew each other, people come back again and again. Someone said it was her ninth season. Four people originally enrolled their children, then joined themselves. One of the children has gone one to prepare for a career in music.

Out of 9 or ten people, only one student and the director acknowledged actually liking hair metal much. It’s about more than the music. This is a real community.

The actual rehearsal went ok. I didn’t know my part so mostly played roots. There is a YouTube channel that has bass playalongs, both isolated bass and with the track. It shouldn’t be a problem learning it. Parts of it are hard. Lots of eighth note chugging, with a pick, all downstrokes. Bonus: the bass has to be de-tuned a half step, the same as another song I’m working on. I can just leave it like that.

I think my teacher is at least competent. We’ll see how it goes.

This will be fun. I will learn music I wouldn’t have given a second thought to otherwise, and become part of a community. I might even be back for more seasons, if they do music I really want to do.

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50

Thanks for your report @Paul_D. What market are you in?

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51

Seattle. Just from looking at the websites, the Bellevue franchise may be stronger, and it’s closer to work. OTOH I can ride my bike to the Seattle franchise in 15-20 minutes. Took the bus there, rode home. I’m a car-free urbanite, so location and transit access are paramount.

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52

You ride your bike with your bass case? Wow!

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53

It’s gig bag with pack straps. But they make racks to carry a surf board on a bike, so if I had the right bike, I could carry a hard case.

Look at 2:35 on the video at the top of this page: https://lectricebikes.com/

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54

Thanks for the update.
I’ll have to see if my local guitar center has this with other “adults”

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55

Not exactly, but a thinner sound the. What we expect to explode from the speakers.

I am interested to hear what you and others think, when you analyze this, and pull the bass from the. Track if you can, to compare

YESSSSS!!! exactly what I was getting at. I am so stoked you stuck your foot in the water to give it a feel.

Again, BIG YES. You never would have, now you will, you may never again, but the part that gets engrained in your brain will live, if only on the Sub-conscience levels, but maybe it will fire thru fingers at the right time during a bass solo or during some improv at a jam session.

Yeah, I remember the 80’ Seattle Hair. Metal scene

Was r it the one that got crushed by the 90”s LA grunge thing

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56

I’d appreciate hearing about some examples of this… SofR is pretty much the only one I’ve ever heard of…

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@JoshFossgreen and I taught at something similar years and years and years ago - it was not an official School of Rock session.
It was something I had set up at a local non profit for summer music programming.
The teachers were badasses.
(Can I say that? Too self congratulatory?)

Even so - the challenges of getting a handful of people together to turn into bands is steep. I feel like I’m pretty good with the band workshop SofR dynamic, and I’ve hit some serious walls depending on the group dynamic, skills, etc.

The idea of putting people into bands and getting them to perform is ubiquitous. If you don’t want to do the SofR thing, check with the local music shops and see if there is a program they are running or a local teacher is running.
That’s often a place independent-style band-making workshops happen.

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58

Late to the thread, but I’ve been to 3 SoR classes (in Palo Alto, CA - masks required) and I’ve enjoyed them. I went to my free class the week before quarantine started last year. I figured it sounded like fun and having someone lead the class instead of having a drama band situation would be worth the money. Instead, we went into quarantine - so band rehersals were canceled. I did like my instructor, so I stuck with him through the quarantine.

During quarantine, I did meet with some folks I saw posting on NextDoor to play as well. The drummer and guitarist played in bands in high school and college. They were great. And very tolerant of me with less than 1 year bass…it was fun. But then lockdown got more strict, and people had visitors coming over for holidays, so we didn’t meet more than twice. Still - best experience from NextDoor for me by a long shot. And over summer, the drummer’s busy with some kid activities, so we might not get back together until September.

So now, with SoR starting up adult band again, I figured it would be worth the extra cost. And it is. I was intimidated at first again, listening to the folks talk about their prior experience. But once we started playing, it was obvious that we were all at the SoR for a reason. My instructor does a good job of simplifying bass lines and the idea is that as I get more comfortable we’ll add things back into it.

Which is different than learning on my own, where I would try and play each note, but just much slower. Playing with others, there’s a minimum speed to be playing at, so I’m simplifying the notes, to be able to play the right speed. I figure the variety of methods is good too. The peer pressure of improving noticeably each week is there too. And I am expecting to be pleasantly surprised with how much better we are in 7 more weeks. Then stage fright can take all those gains away!

The theme before quarantine was 90s rock. I wasn’t that excited by it, but it is the school of rock not the school of funk. I didn’t expect that a quarantine cycle later, we’d be back at 90s rock again…still, the band aspect is worth learning some of these songs I wouldn’t normally learn. And looking at the posters on the wall, they do have other themes that would be great - Prince, Billy Idol, British Invasion…so I hope the next session will have songs I’m more interested in. Though, being the only bass player (there are 6+ guitarists, so we’re making 2 bands) does give me the option to choose which of the 2 bands to join for any particular pair of songs. Everlong vs Scar Tissue…Zombie vs Are you gonna go my way…1979 vs Alive.

Botton line - I leave rehersals feeling great and excited to be playing bass and motivated to practice more when I get home afterwards. I figure that’s a win.

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59

Dang. What a great experience. :sunglasses::+1:

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60

Wow! That sounds like you have a good SOR location.

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