Bass guitar lessons in Thames Ditton
Bass is the instrument most people underrate and every band needs. It is quick to sound useful on and takes a lifetime to sound good on, which makes it unusually satisfying to learn.
Who these lessons are for
- Beginners — bass is a genuinely forgiving first instrument.
- Guitarists who have been asked to cover bass and want to do it properly.
- Players who can hold a line down but want to understand what they are actually doing.
- Anyone who needs to read, whether for a show, a band or an exam.
What a lesson looks like
Same lengths and rates as piano and guitar. Bass lessons split fairly evenly between the hands and the ears: left-hand economy and right-hand tone on one side, and on the other, hearing where a line wants to go. We work over records you already know from the first lesson — a bass part out of context is close to meaningless, and learning one off a song you love teaches you three things at once.
Levels and exams
Beginner to advanced. Grade exams through Rockschool or Trinity if you want them, though bass students want them less often than pianists do, and that is fine.
In Tom’s words
Teaching bass changed how I teach everything else. A bass line is the harmony seen from underneath — it tells you what a chord actually is, not what it is called — and once you have spent time down there, figured bass and walking bass and a McCartney line all start to look like one subject. I now teach the piano left hand rather differently because of it.
What it costs
Prices are being confirmed — please ask and Tom will tell you straight away.
A free tool that helps
Tuner — four, five and six-string bass among the presets. Free, no signup, works on a phone.
To print: Bass tab paper — blank four-line tab with the string names down the left; and Blank bass fretboard diagrams — seventeen-fret necks for shapes and patterns (there is a five-string sheet too) (PDFs, A4). All the blank paper.
Worth reading next
Ready to start?
Tell Tom what you would like to play and roughly where you are, and he will come back to you with times.
Get in touch