Hi, it’s Paul Wolfe from how-to-play-bass.com here. This is the second in my series of video articles covering the subject of teaching. And ties in with the reopening of my online bass lessons. But in respect of whether you’re going to take those or not, you should have a look at this article, check it out, see what I’ve got to say. We’re going to talk about what the student needs to bring to the table when he decides he’s going to have bass lessons.
What a successful bass student needs to progress, the 3 Ps. So imagine this scenario. You’re new or recently new to the bass. You’ve got yourself a shiny new precision bass and you can pick out a few notes here and there. Maybe a friend is showing you some tricks or you’ve picked up something from some YouTube tutorials, but you decided you want to get better. So you’ve done some research. You’ve asked around and you found yourself a good teacher. And now, you feel pleased with yourself because surely, you’re going to start getting good pretty soon.
Sadly, there are students who think like this but if they take a lesson or two, then suddenly their ability level is going to soar. And some of this expectation is fed by so-called bass gurus who tell them that they can learn to play the bass in 81 days or learn to slap in 30 days, and this gap between the student’s expectations and the realities of what is actually required leads to so much frustration that sometimes, some students just give up. And no one seems to be honest and spell out that learning is a two-sided process. There’s a teacher who teaches and the student who learns. And just as the teacher has obligations he needs to fulfill in order to teach, so the student has his own set of obligations that he has to meet in order to learn and maintain constant progress.
I call the student’s obligations the 3 Ps. The first P is Practice. Now, you think it was fairly obvious that once a student has been taught a lesson, then he needs to go away and practice what he’s taught. Unfortunately, I’ve had students who think that a couple of 20-minute sessions noodling on the basses in a week constitute practice. Well, let me spell out what’s required.
To make consistent improvement, you have to practice regularly. In fact, practicing daily is best because practicing daily takes advantage of how the brain learns. No matter how busy you are, you should be able to make 30 to 45 minutes a day, most days of the week. Okay, you can take some days off, especially if you can practice 60 minutes a day. If you can’t make that kind of time commitment, then you should reconsider whether you actually want to learn the bass or not because you won’t get very far without regular practice.
The second P is Persistence, and you need this in spades because committing to learning an instrument and then maintaining that level of commitment can be hard, especially if you lead a busy life with work or family, etcetera. And you need to be persistent because there will be times when the last thing you feel like doing is picking up your bass and putting in some practice time on it. And if you let things slide for a day, it’s easy to let is slide the next day too. And pretty soon, you could find that you’ve not practiced for a week or a month. If you want to get better, you need to keep that routine of daily practice or near daily practice going. You need to be persistent.
The third P is Perspiration. Learning to play the bass is hard work. Putting in the daily practice week after week, month after month is hard work. Sure, there are days when it feels great. But just as surely, there are days when you really don’t feel like doing it and it’s your persistence that will get you to your bass. Once you’ve got it plugged in, then you’ve got to work hard to get your daily practice done. And if you’ve got to keep working hard, there are no shortcuts to getting better, no 81-day route that will magically lock off the necessity for years of practice. You just got to keep working at it day after day, week after week, month after month.
The fourth P is the pleasure you will get when the combination of practice, persistence, and perspiration combine and you can pick up your bass and confidently play with the rest of the guys in your band in a public setting. And maybe, you’ll leave and get paid for it. And yes, I know there were more Ps there, but I couldn’t help it.
Summary
So when you’re taking lessons from someone, remember that the 3 Ps are a good shorthand to sum up your obligations to firstly your teacher and secondly your self. If you take the 3 Ps in a positive approach—oops, that was another P, sorry—into whatever learning environment you’ve chosen, you will become a better bass player.
So if you’re a bass beginner or you’re new to the bass guitar, I advise that the quickest way for you to get better is to take lessons with a good teacher. If you can’t find a teacher in your area or you’re interested in doing lessons or having the advantages of online bass lessons work for you, head over to my website at how-to-play-bass.com. Check out the online bass lessons page. There’s a link to it on the right-hand side of every page. Have a look at the information I’ve got there, see if it’s something that you might be interested in. If it is, use the contact form on the website or send me an email. If you have any questions, do the same. And I’ll see you then.
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