SimBass

My favourite bit is: "Spec: sound: sounds GR 8 !" Is that the manufacturers spec? Also..anyone speak German and know what all the text says in the white space which you can only see if you highlight it?

[quote name='Davethebassboss' post='686395' date='Dec 16 2009, 03:13 PM']Hi there I taught a 9-year old at Musicians Institute - he had been sent by his mum to learn all sorts of instruments and wasn't exactly excited at the thought of theory !! I found that by diving into his library of good tunes on his CD Walkman we were able to learn some simple basslines that he could play along with, and then formulated the lessons this way: 5 minutes listening to the tune from last week 10 minutes playing the tune 10 minutes looking at what we were playing, eg notes, simple scales 5 minutes listening to a tune for next week (at first it would take a couple of weeks for one tune) This meant that it was centered around playing which he actually liked to do (!!) and gave him a sense of achievement at being able to play his favourite tunes. His technique built up as he played, and I corrected it as we went along. After about 6 months doing this we then introduced proper scales and simple notation which he then used to play other tunes not previously known to him. I taught him until he was 12, by which time he could read simple music, follow a chord chart with his own bassline, and play simple solos using modes over a piano chord structure... Hope that helps [/quote] Thanks for all the advice...particularly the about lesson structure! Out of curiosity...at what point did you start transcribing the songs he was learning...did you do that from the start? or did he just learn a pattern at a time (and did you use tab/staff music notation or both) My instinct is that introducing conventional music notation as early as possible is good but this may be my classical background creeping up on me?

[quote name='NickH' post='686306' date='Dec 16 2009, 01:44 PM']I've found when teaching youngsters, it's even more important to give them something recogniseable and familiar, and don't even think about scales, chords, any kind of theory etc. Make him feel like a little rock star in the making and he'll be motivated to play, which is 9/10ths the fight. Kids just absorb knowledge like a sponge at that age as long as you can hold his focus.[/quote] I think that is the main thing for me...what to do about chords/scales. If you ignore chords/scales then surely you are only teaching technique. It's surely impossible to play from a chord sheet without chord knowlegde. On the other hand I guess at that age it may be more important just to encourage a love of the instrument and to teach riff's/specific songs. Maybe a middle ground would be to teach the Major and Minor chord shape and a fret board and leave it at that. It would give a good foundation without any REAL theory? Thoughts?

I think this is the best place for this... Basically a friend of mine has asked if I will give his son (aged about 8 or 9?) some bass lessons. The kids dad is an accomplished guitarist and has been showing him the basics for the last couple of months but would like someone with more knowledge to help out. The kid has basic music knowledge from doing piano lessons (but I gather not for long) and I've seen him play (He played a song with our church Sunday school on Sunday for Christmas so he is at least somewhere!) I've taught a few people to play bass but never someone less than about 16 so I'm guessing I should probably have a whole different approach...( I vaguely remember my Cello lessons aged about 9) ...any advice appreciated!

Just wanted to add a note to recommend StringsDirect ([url="http://www.stringsdirect.co.uk/"]http://www.stringsdirect.co.uk/[/url]) there is a similar thread from 2 years ago but I think an update is due. Ordered yesterday afternoon (due to cheapest for my favoured Warwick Black Label) arrived at 9am this morning via free delivery. And its our Office Christmas Lunch today so feeling all festive I decided to make the effort and thank them for the great service...and they sent my a 10% off code for my next order!!! Please don't all email them for a code since I don't think it works like that, however they really do deserve to have their praises sung...plus they price match and do much more than just strings! (edited to add link)

[quote name='The Marlin' post='679859' date='Dec 10 2009, 06:34 AM']I moaned about the active circuit - as enguaging it made little differece to the tone.[/quote] That's interesting I had a 775 for quite a few years...Really liked it. What do you mean by engaging the active circitry? As far as I was away it was an active only instrument (ie. active circuitry could not be disengaged). There was a "boost" switch...which admitedly didn't make much of a difference but as far as I was aware it was never meant to "engage" the active circuitry, it was just a subtle boost? [url="http://www.yamaha.ca/content/guitar/products/electricbasses/RBX775/specifications.jsp"]Yamaha Canada Spec (only country with spec still online)[/url] So does the mod turn this into an active/passive switch?

Michael bought some Bass Player Magazines from me. Paid straight away and good comms...cheers!

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Just sold some Bass Magazines to Ben, It was an absolute pleasure, paid quickly (immediatly), replied to emails/PM's quickly and was all in all a pleaure to do business with. Cheers Ben!