Adam Nitti | Great Bass Tip - Scales

[-=DanAtkinson=-]

Already posted this in the Bassists forum, but thought it would fit here also...

This is a short video from Adam Nitti. I thought his advice was brilliant. For some reason I never thought to play scales like this.

Just so you know, in the previous video he showed how to play scales starting on the low string and working up the neck, which is the only way I ever do it.

http://bassplayer.tv/index.html?req=...nitti/anitti10

[Snerek]

wow great vid! i totally forgot about this site, its got a lot of great stuff in it!

adam nitti - video 7, what song is that playing? i know i've heard it 1398 times but i cant remember it!



he seems like a good teacher and i could learn a lot from these videos

[HaVIC5]

Good advice from Adam Nitti, but I disagree with somethings he teaches in his clinic. One of the things is his mindset on 3-notes-per-string, all horizontally-based with no emphasis on position shifts. Shifting positions, especially on a four string, is incredible important when learning scalar patterns. There was a guy who asks a question sometime in that clinic about how to play lowest C to highest C, something everybody should learn, and he doesn't really have anything to say about that and just says "there's no easy way of doing it".

[T-MOST]

Well, is that true? or is there an easy way of playing low C to high C??

[russianspy]

Originally Posted by HaVIC5

There was a guy who asks a question sometime in that clinic about how to play lowest C to highest C, something everybody should learn, and he doesn't really have anything to say about that and just says "there's no easy way of doing it".

He's right, though. There is no easy way. And while playing from the lowest to highest C is useful as it practices fretboard awareness, there is really no practical application for it. How many songs require a 4 octave C scale? What he's showing here is just as useful a way for knowing the fretboard and for actually playing real songs.

[Snerek]

i'm a new bass player, what is a good way to learn this C - to -C fretboard patterns?

[Snerek]

Originally Posted by Snerek

adam nitti - video 7, what song is that playing? i know i've heard it 1398 times but i cant remember it!

hahah its a garageband loop! haa i just realized that

[HaVIC5]

Originally Posted by russianspy

He's right, though. There is no easy way. And while playing from the lowest to highest C is useful as it practices fretboard awareness, there is really no practical application for it. How many songs require a 4 octave C scale? What he's showing here is just as useful a way for knowing the fretboard and for actually playing real songs.

Yeah, you're not going to have to play the lowest C to the highest C, but you're DEFINITELY going to have to come up with a method for shifting positions, and his entire method is about staying in one position for every scale. If you're only learning scales in terms of the positions that they occupy, that gives you absolutely no "vertical" thinking, which is especially bad for a four stringer. Upright bass players think vertically all the time, and have a very developed system (Simandl) for facilitating position shifts and fingerings of two-string scales and even one-string scales. You should have a much more fluid understanding of the fretboard rather than thinking of it position-by-position, and by figuring out the many, many fingerings and ways you can get from low C to high C will give you that ability. Once you have that under your fingers, that's the "easy way" to do it, and you should be able to think in terms of that.

[SteveC]

It's another approach.

[Brado]

Originally Posted by HaVIC5

Good advice from Adam Nitti, but I disagree with somethings he teaches in his clinic. One of the things is his mindset on 3-notes-per-string, all horizontally-based with no emphasis on position shifts. Shifting positions, especially on a four string, is incredible important when learning scalar patterns. There was a guy who asks a question sometime in that clinic about how to play lowest C to highest C, something everybody should learn, and he doesn't really have anything to say about that and just says "there's no easy way of doing it".

From a clinician standpoint, Adam saying "there's no easy way of doing it" is a way of sticking to his main point. If he were to break down how to do all of the possible shifting from low c to high....it would eat up too much time. He was demonstrating the movement through a scale using the different modes. I've done a few clinics where somebody asked a question like that....it took up a huge chunk of time/ I could have spent more time talking about things that the majority of the players in the room would benefit from....Sure; they all could benefit from knowing how to do that (c scale from low 1st fret to high 24th), but it wasn't as important & as applicable to what I played & what I was there to teach. Adam has done about a bazillion more clinics than I....he's one heck of an educator/ player/ and an even better person.

[matthewbrown]

Originally Posted by HaVIC5

Shifting positions, especially on a four string, is incredible important when learning scalar patterns.

There is so much emphasis among so many bassists on notes per second that (I think) that articulation often gets thrown out the window. How many bassists do you know that can play legato? How many actually do it well? You can't play legato without lots of shifting, and so many bassists fail to practice either one that they sound like machine gunners when they solo...

One of the first things I teach my private students is how to play a single-string major scale using proper shifting. Once they grasp that, they have something to build on both technically and with respect to theory (how a major scale is constructed).

[-=DanAtkinson=-]

My point was simply that I had never thought to play scales starting on the high string, and I realized that I've been approaching my improvisation just as he described: 90% of my walks start at the bottom and move up. His advice helped me break out of that very limited view of the fretboard.

[leishan]

Originally Posted by Snerek

hahah its a garageband loop! haa i just realized that

Do you know which Garageband loop that it is?