Quit the lessons, play from the heart, Denis... best tip I could give anyone in our field...
At the start of the seventies I was placed on a stool and had the neck of an acoustic placed against my left shoulder in a music lesson... first and last time... in '75 I acquired my first bass with my own wages, a Grenn semi, a copy of an EB2, and I just played along with my favourite records: Alice Cooper, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers Band, Marshall Tucker, Black Oak Arkansas, Grand Funk Railroad, Deep Purple, Free & Bad Co, Mountain, and so on... I learnt a lot that way, and from a few books, most notably a book on James Jamerson, and from just practicing what I thought sounded good... I moved onto a lot of Duane Allman's sessions, and into R&B, and played more and more...
I've been told I play pretty well, but I'm not a "shredder"; If I listed my main influences, they would have to be Dennis Dunaway, Berry Oakley, Mel Schacher and Felix... and I'm probably of the "less is more" school, with a hint of Lemmy...
Quit the lessons, play from the heart...
Oh yeah, and get playing with other musos, if at all possible better than yourself; make yourself stretch... the rewards will be better...