Been teaching him for a week now and he's picking it up quite well. We went in the order I described above:
- Reading & writing tablature
- Tuning / notes along the neck
- Basic 12-bar blues & finger exercises
- Learning and transcribing a few basic rock songs
As of today he can play through the following songs reasonably well:
CCR - Run Through the Jungle
CCR - Green River
CCR - Ramble Tamble
Tom Petty - Runnin' Down a Dream
Billy Idol - White Wedding
Black Sabbath - Electric Funeral
To warm up before starting a new song we usually jam through a ~5 minute 12-bar. He's interested in jumping into minor pentatonic scales already so he can start improvising leads while playing along. I'll be easing him into that slowly, transcribing the boxes for him, tabbing out a few catchy riffs in each box etc, but I think he needs to primarily focus on learning songs and playing through them confidently right now. It seems like he's only getting more interested each day so things are rolling along quite well.
Quote:
Make sure to teach as if it were a lesson in drumming. As with all instruments, the player needs to incorporate percussive instincts, but it rings much truer with bass players.
/oldwisemanvoice
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Absolutely, one of the first things I explained to him was the importance of bass working in tandem with percussion. He was mentioning that it's harder to decipher bass lines out of a song than the guitar and I told him it's a lot easier if you first focus on the drums and then notice that the bass typically moves in sync, then the bass line sort of jumps out at you, works well for him.