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I bought a book a couple of years ago - the Mel Bay 3 book compilation for beginner bassists. I learned to real music on violin decades ago, and it's way different on bass tuned in 4ths, not 5ths, different clef, etc.), so I figured that would help me learn to read music - the skill I lack. Unfortunately (or maybe it's fortunately) reading music doesn't seem to be a requirement to do the gigs I do, and I'm too busy prepping for gigs to have time to learn to read music.
Short answer: I'm really no help. Sorry.
Short answer: I'm really no help. Sorry.
A "player" who becomes musically literate and competent utilizing practical music theory and has been exposed to music history may qualify to be called a musician. Formally or informally taught is not a factor in my opinion.
Scott's Bass Lesson gives you good introductions to theory through the courses given by Scott, Phillip Mann, Adam Neeley and others. They avoid getting too involved and deep in theory, but give you high-level information that is useful in an every day gigging/practicing. For excmple, check out the courses Functional Theory for Bassits Part 1 and 2.
Jeff Berlin is on the other side of the spectrum, he gives you a rigorous academic approach focused on the bass. You will definitely learn a lot and put in a lot of time in with your bass if you study on-line with him.
These comments are written with the assumption that you have somewhat of a theoretical foundation and need help in applying it to your instrument.
Before you get started I would suggest listening to and internalizing the melody and chord changes of a given tune to the best of your ability.
Next, slow down and think before you place your hands on the instrument. Basically the idea is to zoom out and take a macro view of all that is possible from a theoretical perspective. Exploring theoretical possibilities opens your ears to new sounds and patterns.
When I am learning to improvise over changes I often take a few bars at a time and think about which notes, scales, and chord extensions are theoretically correct in the context of the chord structure and key center. Slowly assemble the notes into new patterns and then apply them to the instrument at a tempo that allows you to keep the chord structure and key center in your head. If you can't do this in your head, use staff paper to write down new ideas and as much theoretical structure as is necessary to keep your place.
When you identify new patterns you want to internalize, play them in while slowly increasing tempo. Then go back, slow down, and approach the same section from a purely mental/theoretical view point to develop more ideas. Expand this approach to the entire song at low tempo. When you come to a challenging section that needs more exploration, simply repeat the bars at low tempo so you can try out new ideas.
This approach is even better if you can explore the music on a piano as this allows you to play the harmony and improvised melody simultaneously. With a bass you can play chords or arpeggios to get the sound of the basic harmony in your head and then alternate with improvised patterns that extend beyond the fundamental harmony. At some point in your development you should be able to hold the sound of the underlying harmony in your head while you improvise.
Self paced courses usually don't cut it. People do it as its convenient and then it never foes to far with most people. Commit entirely! If there is a local college with a jazz performance program, enroll, even if you have no intention of playing jazz. The music and performance fundamentals taught will be the same as what is used for most other contemporary music genres (although probably a higher standard). Classical music not so much.
If you seriously want to learn, you have to commit. I was a year into my studies when I found I had had cancer (got it all). During the long recovery, I really got into the music (maybe it was the morphine) and decide this was something I really needed to do with my life. Made my first serious bass purchase as soon as I could walk and started gigging every opportunity I could get esp. if it was out of my comfort zone.
Most of the Bass videos are way too slow paced for me becasue I am further along, but Adam Neely is the real deal.
Smooth_bass88
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IMO what you need are music lessons, and not necessarily bass lessons. And when you learn musical concepts, try not to 'apply' them to the bass, but rather internalize them and know them, kind of like learning new words. You just say them without thinking about them
I bought a lifetime membership to Scott's years ago when they were starting up. Great investment. Plenty of usable theory there. Great seminars with printable material, play alongs with notation, tons of courses and lessons. I'm excited to see the revamped website. I always thought they should have a standard notation program with adjustable tempo.
There is a supporting forum, the campus, with challenges, practice groups, even lesson critiques.
Take a course with hours of instruction and months of work, or hit a fun ten minute lesson. There's even super quick "cool licks" with the lick at tempo and slowed down.
Sure, the basic lessons are a bit, well basic, (this finger on this fret),but you'll sort out what you need.
Another great investment is learning to read standard notation. I'll never be a sight reader at tempo, except the easiest stuff. But knowing the code opens up vast horizons. Sure, TAB can help, but it's a blunt instrument compared to the real deal.
Another cool tool is irealb. A $20 app with thousands of charts, and you can adjust tempo, style, key, and accompanying instruments.
If you don't already have it, something like garage band let's you record and playback your efforts.
I've never had much luck with private lessons.
There is a supporting forum, the campus, with challenges, practice groups, even lesson critiques.
Take a course with hours of instruction and months of work, or hit a fun ten minute lesson. There's even super quick "cool licks" with the lick at tempo and slowed down.
Sure, the basic lessons are a bit, well basic, (this finger on this fret),but you'll sort out what you need.
Another great investment is learning to read standard notation. I'll never be a sight reader at tempo, except the easiest stuff. But knowing the code opens up vast horizons. Sure, TAB can help, but it's a blunt instrument compared to the real deal.
Another cool tool is irealb. A $20 app with thousands of charts, and you can adjust tempo, style, key, and accompanying instruments.
If you don't already have it, something like garage band let's you record and playback your efforts.
I've never had much luck with private lessons.
Scott's a great guy and a real mensch. His lessons are so slowly paced and padded with unrelated rambling I simply can't watch. They are all like 15 minutes or longer to address one or two simple concepts. Who has that kind of time?Another good vid guy (who I think is now doing some stuff with Scott's) is Adam Neeley. He's refreshingly focused and not too chatty (hear me Scott?) and has his own channel on YT well worth subscribing to IMO. (Probably because so much of what he says is in sync with with my own pet theories about bass playing.)
On the other hand, I think Adam is great. One aspect of his greatness is that he tears down the artificial barrier between "player" and "musician".
This is incomprehensible to me. As I type this, I have my very excellent Les Paul Limited the my left rear and my also excellent fretless Jazz to my right front. I play them with the same brain and same musicianship I have worked for decades to acquire. Nobody who done either for more than a minute would confuse their musical functions. I've learned things on one that I've applied to other, mostly by the conduit of my musical knowledge and applied musical effort.
I think the bit about putting the bass down while studying theory is nothing short of terrible advice. It has the effect of segregating theoretical knowledge from practical knowledge, leaving you with no idea how to integrate them. This is the position you are currently in. Putting the bass down with only exacerbate the problem, reinforcing the idea that one has little to do with the other.
Work through all matters of theory on your instrument. That goes for piano, guitar, trombone, bass guitar, whatever. That's how you incorporate it into your playing and receive actual musical benefit.
PS I always have a guitar of some sort on my lap when watch Adam's videos. Probably have about five hours of playing The Riff by this point.
Much good information given.
The only thing I would add is to learn the melody line of any song you do.
Once you really know the melody, everything else that is happening in the song "fits" better in your wetware.
The only thing I would add is to learn the melody line of any song you do.
Once you really know the melody, everything else that is happening in the song "fits" better in your wetware.
Learning music theory is like small interconnecting machine parts that separately don't seem to have a meaning or function.
But when assembled together begin to function as a whole machine.
So all the "voice leading""altered dominant" and "tri-tone substitution"stuff that makes little sense apart,will slowly start to make sense later as it becomes internalized and is used.
But when assembled together begin to function as a whole machine.
So all the "voice leading""altered dominant" and "tri-tone substitution"stuff that makes little sense apart,will slowly start to make sense later as it becomes internalized and is used.
That's why I suggested beginning piano lessons and an introductory theory course. A brief personal background: I took piano lessons from the 1st-5th grades. In 6th grade, Mom let me quit taking piano lessons when I started playing trumpet in school band. I switched to euphonium in the 8th, and to tuba in the 9th, all the while singing in church choirs. Having learned to read music (both bass and treble clefs) as a young kid helped me immensely when my instrumental focus shifted and my voice changed. When I picked up the bass in high school, reading charts in Jazz band was a breeze. Cdim7/E? Yeah, I knew what that meant. Need a simple horn arrangement of a popular tune for pep band? I could do that too, based on what I knew of choral arrangements. Now, at 52, arthritis and CTS have diminished my playing ability somewhat, but I still got my "book learnin'"
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I believe the idea is to learn the theory as a mental concept before you apply it to the instrument. After learning a theoretical concept it should be applied to your instrument or it doesn't really serve a practical purpose. But that doesn't mean there is no benefit from reading a book or writing ideas out on staff paper.
IMHO, applying the theoretical concept to multiple instruments is a great way to solidify your grasp of the material. A theoretical concept is consistent from instrument to instrument, but technique required to apply a theoretical concept varies from instrument to instrument.
For example, play a G Maj triad on Bass, Piano, and Saxophone. The notes are always GBD, but each instrument requires different physical motions to play the notes.
If you simply know how to play the pattern of a G Maj triad on one instrument without understanding the notes are GBD, how will you efficiently translate the concept to another instrument? Theory is the mechanism that connects it all together and allows us to quickly grasp and communicate musical ideas.
Indeed. However, I'm not envisioning the OP as working through musical concepts on a sheet of staff paper with a pencil. Granted, that's an assumption but I don't think I'm wrong (so what else is new). I really see acquiring a theoretical concept in the abstract then applying it to your instrument in a practical fashion as adding an unnecessary, inefficient step. Those are the kind of mental gymnastics that are often off-putting to novices and lead to the adoption of the "I don't need to know theory; Hendrix didn't" attitude.
I'm advocating removing the intermediate step with the thought that it benefits beginning players without duly burdening them. Didn't Jeff Berlin just have a thread about this?
That's my biggest complaint about Scott. He definitely rambles a lot. Adam is far more focused. Sort, sweet, and clear. My kind of instructor. When I teach IT topics on occasion I try to do the same. The less time it takes to explain or demonstrate something the better most students will retain it. My GF has a graduate degree in cognitive and neuro psychology with a focus on learning and memory, so she's helped me a lot by vetting things whenever I have a presentation or an instructional article to write.
Fortunately there's other instructors at Scott's site that are also good teachers with their own courses, so I put up with Scott's chatty style. But I'm more a "give me something to read" type of learner. So videos are usually better for me as supplements to a lesson rather than the actual lessons themselves. But different people have different learning modalities so I try not to criticize Scott. Or at least not too much.
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Consider taking a music theory class at community college. This will force you to do your homework and although one class may not be enough to complete your understanding, it will likely give you a good enough stronghold to either be A) interested enough to continue with classes, B) able to continue working on it on your own or C) learn that you really don't care that much.
Try using a keyboard for your learning so you are less likely to fall into your old habits (easy to do). Once you understand stuff, you can transfer it to bass/guitar.
Be patient. This can be pretty cerebral stuff and at times will be frustrating. But it is worth it if you want to become a "musician".
Try using a keyboard for your learning so you are less likely to fall into your old habits (easy to do). Once you understand stuff, you can transfer it to bass/guitar.
Be patient. This can be pretty cerebral stuff and at times will be frustrating. But it is worth it if you want to become a "musician".
I tend to think of it as learning a theoretical concept without being encumbered by the instrument. I believe academic theoretical knowledge and instrumental technique involves different and discrete mental processes. The must be studied individually and together.
IMHO, The problem with learning theory directly on the instrument is we tend to translate the material to finger patterns and forget the academic knowledge. When I play a walking bass line at tempo, I don't think about the individual notes, I read the chord symbol, anticipate a sound in my head, and my technique is strong enough that my fingers track with what I am thinking.
When I am trying to figure out how to play over unfamiliar/challenging changes, I may have the bass in my hand but I initially draw on my academic knowledge and think about which notes fit without regard to the instrument. Then I play the notes and let me ears be the final judge. I.E. what looks right on paper doesn't always sound right because notation can sometimes lead to inaccurate interpretations of intent.
When I am soloing I move in and out of playing purely by ear and being guided by the notation on the pages. I don't have the discipline, mental facility, or memory necessary to commit a large library of complex harmony changes to my head.
For context I initially learned to play by translating written notes to finger positions. Once a year my teachers would explain scale theory, but none of that really sank in. Later I spent a lot of time listening to recordings and playing by ear. Eventually I went to college and focused on the study of theory and ear training which was applied using piano, bass, and voice.
IMHO, if you want to gain a good understanding of theory, the piano provides a far better mechanism for grasping the concepts than bass.
So I'm pretty much the only person on this board that Jeff didn't piss off at a NAMM show? He's always been cordial to me, although I'm actually a card-carrying Will Lee fanboy. Maybe I did something wrong?
And I thought I was the only one. In high school, we'd skip out and go to the drummer's house to watch Letterman's daytime show. I was mesmerized by the first incarnation of TWMDB. I can honestly say Will Lee is the most influential bass player in my life.
I know plenty of Will fans from all over the globe, but we're usually older and more quiet about it.
