Hello!

My name is Dean and I am an electric and double bass player from Malta. As a musician, I enjoy working and playing with as many people as I can, which is something I have been doing since the age of 10.

My music education was fostered by numerous private teachers, workshops and clinics in Malta, which led me to move to the Netherlands in 2017 and pursue my bachelor and master degrees from Codarts Rotterdam and Conservatorium van Amsterdam. In addition to meeting all sorts of incredible players, I also got the chance to study with some of my electric bass heroes including Gary Willis, Jeroen Vierdag and Glen Gaddum, as well as Mario Rossy and Stefan Lievestro on double bass.

Nowadays, apart from teaching, I am usually busy writing, playing and recording with a number of projects in Rotterdam/Amsterdam, including my own band. To this day I still find that I am at my happiest when playing and jamming with people, which is something I am trying to do more of.

Teaching

My teaching practice draws a lot on my personal experience as a student. Even though I always had lessons from tutors with proven track records and methods, the fun in making music for me was to find my own way of learning a concept and to find creative ways of applying it. This led to a direct awareness of the processes that go into learning and it helped me come up with a flexible approach that provides a clear method while supporting the students on their individual musical journeys.

Why get a teacher?

A teacher is often someone who has experienced a broad range of playing situations, has studied with other teachers and knows key information to pass on to students. However, teaching is as much a process of tutoring as it is of nurturing.

Within every budding musician is a seed that, given plenty of stimulation, time, patience and some guidance, can blossom into a unique voice which might have otherwise been repressed or lost. A good teacher is able to help the student bring about this development in themselves, and ultimately to become their own teachers.

What happens during lessons?

My approach to teaching is flexible, goal-oriented and it aims to support rather than instruct the bassist on their musical journey. Students are encouraged to set up their own learning goals and gradually get to know their style and preference. We use the following pillars as areas of exploration:

• Technique: tone-production, right-hand techniques, fretboard positions, fretboard mapping, physical posture, fluidity exercises.
• Groove & rhythmic-study: deconstructing iconic grooves, analysis, rhythmic exercises, polyrhythms, groupings, odd-timings.
• Walking bass: transcriptions, time-feel, note-choices, style/aesthetic, function.
• Applied theory & skills: reading bass clef, reading chord charts, knowledge of scales and chords, ear-training, song-analysis.
• Improvisation: transcribing and applying ideas from selected solos, concepts, patterns, harmonic knowledge.

These lessons are open to bass players of all levels wanting to learn any particular style. The student does not need a bass for the first few lessons (unless they prefer to play a left-handed bass).