You've Got to Be Carefully Taught
I had my first bass lesson yesterday. Man, thirty minutes goes by in a hurry. Of course, it did take me and my instructor a few minutes to get ourselves re-grounded. I had chatted with him for long enough the week previously that he somehow got it into his head that I had already done some lessons. Once I reminded him that I was like Silly-Putty still encased in its egg, we were off to the races.
We first ran some things that I already knew: Note progression, the notes on the open strings of the bass and the basic structure of a major chord. From that, we extracted the key of G Major and identified it on the bass.
He then walked me through some of the basics of hand position, which I found pretty helpful. For the left hand, the upshot is that you think of the front of the neck as a two-dimensional plane. That plane should bisect the left hand. This gives a good angle for the fingers to hit the strings comfortably. The only other thing to help identify if the hand is relaxed is if there is space between the neck and the palm of the hand.
With the right hand, the action is a pulling motion instead of a strumming motion, which I already knew. He also said that I should spend time figuring out if my index or my middle was the dominant finger. I haven't noticed a preference yet, but we will just see what develops.
We then discussed triads, the root, the 3rd and the 7th and how they fit into musical progression as well as their role in chords.
By this stage we were close to being out of time. He tasked me with practicing the scale as well as its triads. He also suggested that I do so using a metronome saying that in his experience as an instructor, the students that use a metronome while practicing tend to progress more naturally.
However, since our next session isn't for another two weeks, I will probably also extract some other keys on my own and try to identify their parts and play them.