Making it to Third Bass

After a lifetime of household members unexpectedly entering a room to find me thrashing around and jumping off furniture, in what usually began as air guitar but always progressed to some sort of impression of the onset of an airborne orgasm; I decided to learn bass guitar for real this year.

My selection criteria for the guitar was pretty simple. It had to be red. Okay, okay, so I know bugger all about guitars at this stage (but red is pretty awesome, admit it). That said, I was fairly intent on purchasing a low-end guitar so I’d appreciate a good bass when I finally played one. I’d long promised myself a flying V guitar as a reward, when I could actually play without constantly checking the position of my hands, like a sex pest with Alzheimer’s.

The next step was finding a guitar teacher. Finding someone who explicitly teaches bass was not as easy as I’d expected, but I ended up going with the teacher who was geographically closest to me. As someone who doesn’t have a car, I didn’t really want to lug my guitar around on public transport too much (you kinda need an allergy to shampoo to be one of those guys) – so finding someone so close was very handy.

Or so you’d think.

Things started out optimistically. He was very understanding with my requests – I wanted to concentrate on methods which would speed up the process of externalising all the song ideas in my head, how to effectively jam with others, and the ability to play along to some of my favourite songs for fun. (It would later eventuate that this handily covered up his own ability to provide any form of teaching structure, but eh, it worked at the time).

He was a nice guy, but perhaps a bit too young and inexperienced. He certainly knew how to play bass, in fact a lot of different instruments; but teaching was not his forte. Unless something’s changed at my local TAFE institution, I’m pretty sure I could at least rely on them not to swill beer throughout the lesson I’m paying for. When you begin slurring the names of chords, I’m not going to put much effort into working out what you mean by “play chord mrrrrrf”.

For the time being, I assured myself that this was all very bohemian and at least I was banging out some of my favourite Biffy Clyro songs thanks to his assistance.

A few weeks later, I arrived too early for my lesson. His flatmate said he’d be home in around half an hour, so I wandered off to the closest pub for a quick beer, which just happened to be a pub known for its gay patronage. My visit reminded me that you really can always be surprised by the unexpected presence of hotpants when the most unlikely wearer stands up from a table.

When I returned to my guitar teacher’s place, I mentioned that I’d nipped off down the road for a quick pint while I was waiting for him. The fact that I gargle scrotum must have never come up in conversation, because he quickly exploded into a lengthy volcanic tirade against That Fuckin’ Faggot Pub I Am Forced To Live Near And Did You Know They Want To Put A Fucking Sauna There Too Can You Imagine All Those Poofters Fucking Only Hundreds Of Metres From My House.

This monologue went on for some time, and I was almost shocked that he didn’t have a PowerPoint presentation ready on the topic. (In retrospect, it’s pretty lucky that the stripper incident hadn’t happened before this – I’d probably have said something stupid like “Yeah! I’ve seen a woo-woo, they’re awesome! Teeheeeee!” in the hope we could get back to the matter of learning how to play the fucking guitar).

Of course, as the lesson went on, and his personality continued to be enhanced by Melbourne Bitter, the topic kept coming up at the most confusing moments. “Let’s work on your hammer on technique with that chord progression – fuck, I wish I could hammer some of those poofters up the road into the ground, eh?”

It would go on to become a recurring theme in my lesson every week, eventually pushing me beyond thinking of him as a real-life sitcom character, and wondering how I could most effectively use the piano in his teaching studio to crush his ribs.

In the end, I realised that he was simply lacking in teaching skills. The lessons ambled everywhere and I never got any feedback on how I was going (there were plenty of ticker updates on The Gays though).

Not sure if it’s so great that I gave him the boot only after realising he was a shit teacher, not because I’d endured hours of his ATTACK OF THE GAYS rhetoric; but I ended up looking for a new teacher. He did send me an SMS asking why I’d decided to stop lessons… I was tempted to reply with something like “Gosh, couldn’t you see my barely-concealed boner every week? I was worried you’d finally break the closet-case facade, and I’d have to test my ability to pound you in time to the fucking 120 beats per minute metronome timing you inexplicably kept assuring me I should be able to play in time to”.

It’s okay though. My learning is still progressing, and I’m still working towards my goal of the world’s first Homo Party Metal concept album based around fonts. The punk chantalong of “Impact”! The classic guitar solo of “Helvetica”! The thumping industrial of “Lucida Console”! The soaring power balladry of “Palatino Linotype Italic (Supertext)”! Just you wait.

Tagged as: Bass Guitar, Beer, Biffy Clyro