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Old 02-02-2015, 10:54 AM   #1 (permalink)
EPOCH6
V8s & 12 Bars
 
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Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: British Columbia
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Default Teaching Bass Lessons [Rock] - Suggestions & Advice

So my roommate wants to take up bass guitar. He's been a close friend of mine since high school so the lessons will be loosely structured and informal, basically just hanging out in the living room jamming with him / guiding his learning. I've been playing guitar for ~10 years and took professional lessons for the majority of that time, so I'll be drawing out a road map that loosely mimics how I was taught, and I'll be using my guitar to teach him. He has decided to learn with a pick (which I believe will make things easier for both of us). We'll be getting started later tonight when I get home from work, basically my plan is to focus on the following first:

- Reading & writing tablature
- Tuning / notes along the neck
- Basic 12-bar blues & finger exercises
- Learning and transcribing a few basic rock songs

Once I believe (and he believes) that he is comfortable with the above we can move on to more intermediate songs, learning by ear, and begin working on a basic understanding of scales and modes. He has some very basic musical background knowledge that I think will make the learning curve quite smooth for him. We'll be transcribing his lessons / tablature in a notebook. I know he has a good sense of rhythm, he did take some basic guitar classes back in highschool so his finger dexterity is already reasonably developed and his chord shapes look pretty good, I heard him messing around a bit with the bass last night and his notes are clear (minimal fret buzz), and he's quite self disciplined in other arts so I'm not worried about him feigning interest or not practicing.

Any advice from other bass / guitar players on important fundamental concepts to focus on early on and some suggestions for beginner songs to learn? So far I'm planning on starting him off with the classic firsts, Seven Nation Army, Smoke on the Water, Sunshine of Your Love etc etc.
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Originally Posted by Bobbycob View Post
There's 3 reason why the Rolling Stones are better. I'm going to list them here. 1. Jimi Hendrix from Rolling Stones was a better guitarist then Jimmy Page 2. The bassist from Rolling Stones isn't dead 3. Rolling Stobes wrote Stairway to Heaven and The Ocean so we all know they are superior here.
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