Emily Werner

Dr. Maynard

MUED 271

December 11, 2019

For my peer-to-peer lesson I taught Shannon Matthews how to play a D major scale on

the string bass. I gave a lesson on bass instead of violin because Shannon has experience with

violin. This made the lesson interesting because she already had some knowledge about

playing a string instrument, but needed a refresher on some things such as what each part of

the instrument is called. It was also easy to teach things such as string names because the bass

strings are opposite of the violin strings. It was helpful that she was comfortable handling a

string instrument.

Our main difficulties came from holding the bass. It was hard for her to balance the bass

against her body and her shoulders began to hurt from holding and playing a heavy instrument

because as a vocalist, she is not used to holding something up for so long. Another physical

difficulty came from her nails. Shannon has long nails which made it difficult for her to play

notes. We worked for a long time on the “bass face” and the hand position that a bassist has to

play with order to easily play notes. She wasn’t able to fully rotate her hand and wrist out

because of her nails, but she got the general idea.

As a vocalist and former violinist, Shannon is naturally good at tuning pitches. She

picked up the fingerings and note position so quickly that we went beyond my lesson plan of

do-sol and ended up learning the entire D major scale. She also had good bow technique. She

had a naturally good feel for how much pressure was needed to create good tone and volume

with the bow and she kept it nice and straight. Overall, she did a really nice job and was a willing

and eager learner.