Dyslexia and fretboards...

[Danonearth]

So, does anyone else have dyslexia? I do with reading and writing letters/words, but am starting to wonder if it also applies to notes on the fretboard? It would be a great excuse as to why I can’t keep track of or remember the names of notes! Lol

 

[edwinhurwitz]

There's a lot of relatively simple exercises you can do to learn the fingerboard so that you have it in your head. What is also helpful is to really understand your triads and arpeggio & scale fingering. Having done a lot of that makes it so I don't have to look at the fingerboard or think too much about where I need to go physically as opposed to musically. It does take a lot of work.

 

[AK Bass Guy]

Hello.
I’m moderately dyslexic and have been dealing with it for a long time now. My advice is do what you’ve been doing to deal with reading and math. Don’t think of words and numbers as a string of independent characters but the total as a symbol.
I’ll get to how this relates to bass in a moment.

I read about the symbols instead letters/numbers a while back and the theory is that people with dyslexia have an easier time dealing with symbols and shape and then letters and numbers. So when you look at a word on a page if you view is as one complete object and not letters your brain will lock onto the image and translate it to be recognized as that word. It really helps reduce how letters or numbers can “dance” around on the screen/page.

So to apply this to bass it works like this. Practice patterns not notes, all scales are a set of patterns on the neck. Patterns are geometry and much easy to grasp then trying to visualize a bunch of letters on a neck. Once you get a couple patterns down, you only need to be concerned we’re the tonal center is of the chord that is being played and your ears/brain will tell you how to get from one tonal center to another and what pattern/scale it will take to get there.

As far as reading sheet music that’s just going to be a pain in the ass and take a lot of practice but notation are symbols and anything on the staff isn’t to bad to deal with. It’s when you get into the ledgers/lines above and below the staff is when you dyslexia will fight you when trying to count quickly if a note is on the 3 ledger or 4 ledger.

As for tab I would stay away and only ever use it as a reference to see if a particular song is using particular pattern for the riffs. Going to make some here a bit angry when I say this but, tab is trash. Most of it is written poorly, it doesn’t teach you how to understand basic notation or theory and in the end the only thing you have done is learned how to play a song by route. Also as a dyslexic tab is even harder to read than notation. Some people have made it very far with tab, but I would go on a limb as say that highly functioning tab only players have essentially surpassed tab and are just very good play by ears players.

I hope this makes sense and feel free to pm if you have more in-depth questions are or feel more comfortable talking about dyslexia frustrations not so publicly. It to me a long time to get use to my dyslexia and feel comfortable admitting to my peers it was something I struggle with all the time.

Cheers.
Oh, sorry if I have a bunch of typos or bad grammar, with this large of a post I’d have to proof reed this thing 7 times to find all the errors.

 

[Danonearth]

I

Hello.
I’m moderately dyslexic and have been dealing with it for a long time now. My advice is do what you’ve been doing to deal with reading and math. Don’t think of words and numbers as a string of independent characters but the total as a symbol.
I’ll get to how this relates to bass in a moment.

I read about the symbols instead letters/numbers a while back and the theory is that people with dyslexia have an easier time dealing with symbols and shape and then letters and numbers. So when you look at a word on a page if you view is as one complete object and not letters your brain will lock onto the image and translate it to be recognized as that word. It really helps reduce how letters or numbers can “dance” around on the screen/page.

So to apply this to bass it works like this. Practice patterns not notes, all scales are a set of patterns on the neck. Patterns are geometry and much easy to grasp then trying to visualize a bunch of letters on a neck. Once you get a couple patterns down, you only need to be concerned we’re the tonal center is of the chord that is being played and your ears/brain will tell you how to get from one tonal center to another and what pattern/scale it will take to get there.

As far as reading sheet music that’s just going to be a pain in the ass and take a lot of practice but notation are symbols and anything on the staff isn’t to bad to deal with. It’s when you get into the ledgers/lines above and below the staff is when you dyslexia will fight you when trying to count quickly if a note is on the 3 ledger or 4 ledger.

As for tab I would stay away and only ever use it as a reference to see if a particular song is using particular pattern for the riffs. Going to make some here a bit angry when I say this but, tab is trash. Most of it is written poorly, it doesn’t teach you how to understand basic notation or theory and in the end the only thing you have done is learned how to play a song by route. Also as a dyslexic tab is even harder to read than notation. Some people have made it very far with tab, but I would go on a limb as say that highly functioning tab only players have essentially surpassed tab and are just very good play by ears players.

I hope this makes sense and feel free to pm if you have more in-depth questions are or feel more comfortable talking about dyslexia frustrations not so publicly. It to me a long time to get use to my dyslexia and feel comfortable admitting to my peers it was something I struggle with all the time.

Cheers.
Oh, sorry if I have a bunch of typos or bad grammar, with this large of a post I’d have to proof reed this thing 7 times to find all the errors.

Interesting! Thanks, AK Bass Guy

Yes, I have often thought of 'Western' scales as more smaller patterns (kinda like Japanese scales

So, if you can imagine a Major or Minor scale as a combinations of 2 smaller patterns...

Anyway, great answer! Very helpful

Thanks!