Introduction

In this portfolio, I will be teaching India Davies how to play bass guitar. I will be giving a personalised teaching experience, focusing on the specific areas she is most interested in. I have been in a band with India for almost two years, so I have known she has had an interest in learning bass for some time. My main thought process, which I built my pedagogy around, is personalising the learning experience to the student. In one survey, it was found that one of the main reasons people quit instrument learning was due to “lost interest/didn’t want to learn anymore” (ABRSM, 2024). I found this reflected in my own personal experience of quitting guitar for several years, as my lessons never taught anything I found interesting, and they never gave me a love for music. Therefore, although I may skip over some important basic fundamentals, e.g. scales and note positions, I believe teaching aspects the student is interested in will spark passion and allow a return to the fundamentals at a later date.

Lesson 1

In lesson one my main aims were too see India main intentions with bass playing, along with getting her comfortable with the instrument. As previously stated, this is so I can plan my future lessons accordingly. The first part of my lesson was just a conversation too understand what she would like to play. I have been good friends with India for a while so I existing had a rough idea of music taste which will help me understand what main technique she would focus on.

After the conversation I will get her to just make a noise on the instrument, either using a plectrum or using finger to pluck the string, to see what she finds more comfortable. She ended up sticking with using a plectrum, which for the music she was interested in playing fit well, as rock/ punk bassist typically, lean to playing with a plectrum due to the tone in the attack of the string. I got India just to pluck the E sting to get familiar with playing a note, while along with making a constant note. Although this may seem to go against my previously stated pedagogy, as the idea of just playing one string may seem boring, I’m hoping her hearing the note may be a very small push towards the “spark”, with her being able to hear herself make a noise. I also don’t overwhelm her telling her the basic fundamentals as I believe overloading her with information may overwhelm her on a first lesson. So I will scatter in the basic information, such as notes, name of bass parts passively throughout our lessons.

Lesson 1 evaluation

In the conversation India stated she mainly listens to rock, punk and emo genres of music, which is stuff I existing knew but it’s good to get reconfirmed as there was a possibility she may want to focus on a different genre. She also stated that she has played bass before but never had a professional lessons. Also a few weeks after this lesson we discussed a possibility of her playing bass in our band for a song, which she was quite passionate about. So a later aim was to teach one of our own songs.

One thing I took initial note of when I watched back the footage of my lesson was I needed to give more positive feedback while India was playing. Positive feedback has shown to encourage and boost confidence of students. And from lessons on words I needed to more conscious of using more verbal encouragement. Another note I took from watching back is having a friendlier, opening energy. I seemed very professional and serious in the videos and I believe having a more opening vibe in the lessons would give a more comfortable environment for learning.

While looking back on my lesson I skipped over a lot of the setup of playing bass, with the bass buzz article (2025) recommending educating about the part of the bass and setting up the amp. I at the time view this as the information that may overwhelm her. However I never returned to these aspects resulting her not knowing what each knob of the bass does, or how to get a tone she likes on the amp. Furthermore I set up the bass every time meaning if she may be left in the dark when setting up the instrument in the future. This was an oversight on mainly because it became second nature to me too set. I also could have been more conscious of timing in this lesson, overrunning in certain aspects not resulting in enough time to playing the bass.

Lesson 2

One of the teaching tips I used was mnemonics for remembering the notes of the open strings. We used “Edgar Actually Doesn’t Grow”. To remember the open string tuning for bass, EADG. Mnemonics have been found to help memory. In a research project it was found “Participants in the mnemonic condition showed significantly greater improvement in memory performance after training than participants of the active and passive control groups” (Dresler, 2017). The standard tuning of bass is an important foundation in bass playing, and is also a good starting point to learning the notes on the fretboard. Which will be helpful in improving, and songwriting situations. I continue to quiz India on the mnemonic weekly after this, the repetitive quizzing should also help the notes stick in her memory.

The main focuses of this week’s lesson was working on the general physically of playing bass. I got this idea from my own bass lessons. My bass teacher, Dave Kane, worked a lot on muscle usage while playing the bass. This helps playing for long period of time, as if you using multiple muscles, it stops one area being the source of pressure so won’t ache sooner. This is done by slightly engaging the arm by pulling back while pressing down on a fret, so the hand isn’t the only thing engaged. The reason I decided to use this was due to India’s hypermobility. Hypermobility results in muscles becoming tired, tight, or sore from continuous activity. I also have hypermobility and found playing bass for period of time quite strenuous. So working on these aspects should help combat muscle pain

Along with muscle usage, left hand usage. This is making sure her using all fingers while fretting. Along with, good thumb positioning, either being on the back of the neck or over. Finger strength will increase over time, so it’s good to start exercises now increasing strength of all the fingers and doing “finger per fret” will also get her use to using all her fingers and prevent bad habits forming.

Lesson 2 evaluation

The first thing I notice and mentioned to India was the excessive movement when playing each note. Every time she took her finger of a fret she would move it far away from the fret, almost at a 90 degree angle to the neck. This excess movement would result in struggling to change notes quickly, as if every time she released a fret and uses the mentioned excess movement it would extra few milliseconds to hit the next note, which within music playing is quite significant. Along with excess movement resulting in the potential to muscles tiring faster.

I decided to get her to do a basic “finger per fret” exercise, starting on the 9^th fret using her pointer finger, then 10^th fret with her middle finger, and etc. When I do finger per fret exercises I typically do it lower on the fret board, but due to her hands being smaller I decided to move the exercise higher so she wouldn’t have to stretch as much. The main goal I had for her in this exercise is to get her to not more her finger as excessive as before. Typically another goal of this exercise is to make sure the finger doesn’t “break”. In this context “breaking” refers to the finger joint just under the nail not being straight while holding down the fret, making sure there is a bend in the finger. This is important due to if the finger does “break” it has no support and the pressure goes completely into the joint, resenting in stress in said joint.

I noticed when the notes was slightly “buzzy” or “not full” she would shake her head and show discouragement in her playing. So I made sure to use positive feedback when this would occur to make sure she wasn’t getting too discouraged or annoyed at herself.

Lesson 3

Between lessons, me and India discussed learning a song from our own band, misting. I decided to teach her “Saint, of mine” this is due to the songs simplicity of the part, as it’s easy to remember and mainly whole notes or quarter notes. The song also had aspects of bass playing she hasn’t learnt yet, this resulting in pushing her out her comfort zone without being too difficult. Some new aspects being the use of Power chords (2 note chords), as well as half step bends. These new aspect will push her out her comfort zone while also getting her to practice the existing fundamentals she needs to work on. For the actual lesson I just focussed on the breakdown of song. The break down could be viewed as the easiest part to explain and play as is just four repetitions of 3 chords (Esus2, Gmaj7, E (2^nd inversion, bass plays the B)).

I also decided to get her to play standing up for this lesson. Although a seemingly small aspect of playing bass, it can change aspects of the physicality of playing. This could be due to the bass being lower to having to engage different muscles. This will also result in her experimenting with strap length. Lowering or heightening the bass results in playing the bass slightly differently, personally I have my strap quite low as I find it more comfortable to do fast right hand picking on, and with the style of music I play it helps me out.

Lesson 3 Evaluation

Due to changing my lesson plan to teach her the “Saint, of mine” I wasn’t able to transcribe the bassline before the lesson, so the first part of the lesson was me verbally teaching her the part. I made sure to continue using positive feedback as she learned. One example of this is when she does a note bend for the first time. She does the bend near perfectly on first attempt. I was conscious it may be something we have to work on, as note bends could be quite physical awkward to do, and along with India’s hyper mobility I was uncertain how it would go, but due to her success I didn’t need to dedicate much time to working on it.

One possible flaw of my verbal teaching was explaining the rhythm of the “picking”. It would have been better to have shown the rhythm transcribed in tabs, but due to the aforementioned lesson plan change, there wasn’t much I could particularly do.

I made sure to mention the note names along with the fret number when instructing. I tried to state the note name each time, in order to passively teach her what each fret is. I noticed this working with the G on the E string. I continued to use this method in lesson 4.

Lesson 4

Plan

Previous lesson recap: Started looking at the “saint, of mine” breakdown

Aims : work on left hand techniques, playing constant notes

Objective : play the “saint of mine” bassline in full

Time/ mins	Activities	Assessment method	Resources
15	Run over the song “Saint, of Mine”	Watch her play the bassline, and give comments on what needs improving, With knowledge of prior lessons, Focus on India’s left hand position (using more than one finger) as well as looking at her strumming pattern of the breakdown.	One bass guitar, One electric guitar, 2 jack leads, two chairs, two plectrum, the “saint, of mine” tabs
5-10	Go other different bass exercises. For her to practice playing “Finger per fret” and also build strength	Go over the “X in a box” finger practice, making sure that the fingers don’t “break”, as well as making sure good hand posture The exercise main goal is to get India used to playing with all four fingers.	One bass guitar, jack lead, two chairs, plectrum (Optional)

Saint, of mine by misting bass tabs – https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/user/tab/print?app_utm_campaign=Export2pdfDownload&flats=0&font_size=0&h=APGWKL-qMqp65rkOQ3qo-hKG&simplified=0&transpose=0

Before lesson five I tabbed out the song in full so India could go other in before lesson and become familiar with the bassline. I will be using the song as a way to analyse how she performs in context. It’s very easy to ignore proper technique while playing a song as your brain focuses on getting the notes right and ignore aspects like using multiple fingers. I also plan to end the lesson with more finger strengthen exercises. Although may be seen as tedious, they are extremely useful within playing string instruments, and as previously mentioned will be significantly helpful within helping India’s hypermobility. I have attached above the lesson plan i wrote in advance to lesson 5

Lesson 4 evaluation

When first discussing how her progress out of lesson practice of the song went she mentioned she has simplified part. Specifically she struggled with playing the power chords, instead just playing the root. This is an aspect I thought may happen due to power chords being quite strenuous, especially for new players. She also mentioned it was particular hard to play on her own bass most likely due to high international and thick strings. Along with that there were certain transitionary lines differ in the chorus, instead she just stuck to one of these. This wasn’t a verbal discussion I just decided to not correct her as the part still works and my main intentions wasn’t to test her memorise the part, but making sure the notes she was playing all sounded full and with good technique.

While she was playing the bass part, I tried playing the guitar part on piano to accompany her. This idea was quickly scrapped as due to my poor piano skills, messing up the part, was throwing her off. However this landed the idea of me getting a guitar and playing along with her. This worked quite well, as I can actually can play guitar so wasn’t throwing her of by playing the wrong chords. This also resulted in giving her experience playing along to another instrument. While watching India play I noticed occasionally her thumb would not be at the back of the bass or around it. Instead pointing down to the floor and not being used at all. This is very unconventional and may result in hand pain with continued use. So I got her to experiment with general hand placements on the neck of the bass to stop this bad habit.

At the end of the lesson I got her to do another “finger per fret” exercise, this one more challenging than the first. I refer to it as X in a box due to the shape played resembling it. This exercise goals are similar to the other finger per fret exercise, getting use to using multiple fingers and aiming to not let the fingers break. This exercise also stretches the fingers a lot more as it uses all the strings over 4 frets, the awkward pattern will also get India’s finger moving in new ways, hopefully strengthen the fingers.

Conclusion

In conclusion I found my lessons with India to be quite successful. Gaining a good basic level of complacence in; using a plectrum, getting a constant sound with each note and note bending. The aspects she needs to work on are; using multiple fingers while playing, consistency in picking. These aspects that will slowly develop over time with continued playing over time. While looking back and evaluating my teaching methods there were aspects that I can work on. First issue realised in my teaching portfolio was not recording the full lesson. In the first two lessons I would only record selected aspects for this portfolio. Which meant I would forget aspects I had or hadn’t taught in previous lessons. A minor aspect which affected my teaching was that India was an existing friend of mine. Although this helping in aspects like, comfortability in lessons, knowledge of what she want to play. It resulted in taking the lessons less seriously occasionally going off into conversation. However, India has expressed continuous interest in playing bass after the last lesson and has told me she has gotten the bassline to “Saint, of mine” cleaner. This meaning my original goal for the lessons to light or fuel the spark worked and I hope to see India to continually learn and practice.

Bibliography

ABRSM (2014) Making Music: Teaching, Learning and Playing in the UK. Availble online: https://www.abrsm.org/sites/default/files/2023-08/makingmusic2014.pdf [Accessed 28/04/26]

Benedetti, G. (2025). First Bass Lesson. Available online: https://www.bassbuzz.com/lessons/first-bass-lesson. [Accessed 28/04/26]

Dresler, M., Et.al (2017). Mnemonic Training Reshapes Brain Networks to Support Superior Memory. Neuron, [online] 93(5), pp.1227-1235.e6.