• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Have scales ruined music?

#41
We do not speak by using single letters but using words that are comprised of those letters. We all can agree that letters make words and notes in a scale comprise chords

Scales are important to know how chords and modes etc are formed, but making music is all about using the chords modes with other musicians. You can take a BRAND NEW musician and show him chords and can start making music right away... songs would be extremely boring if all people did was run up and down scales. What I believe Carol Kaye was getting to in ruining your hand and ear is, when jumping in and jamming if all you know is scales it will be hard to follow the chord changes and create “music/ bass lines” over the chords the piano, guitars are playing. Just playing within in a key does not mean you can play every note at any given time.

I think it also depends on the music you are playing. I come from a background of classical trumpet and I always found scales very useful for muscle memory in doing fast runs in an orchestra setting. However, I play bass in a worship band or rock band and being able to create lines by working around the chords the guitar is playing is a lot more efficient.

Disclaimer: I was never classically trained on bass guitar, and I don’t recall every staying at a holiday inn.
 
#42
well.... just remember, these 'old days' were back around when bass players didn't realize there was anything besides root, fifth, octave. Hell, i doubt they even realized there was a G-string on the bass....;)

listening to the whole interview though makes the point much clearer. The way the OP framed things, I really didn't get the context of the comment.
 
#46
This definitely sounds like a idea vs. mechanics thing to me. The only difference is that chords are groups of notes played simultaneously and scales are groups played linearly. The note themselves are there either way. The idea of chords is being able to play notes within a scale in any order whereas with scales it's either up or down.

At least, thats how it looks to me. Seems more psychological than anything.
 
#47
Now to the real question...... chicken or the egg?

j/k, IMHO. To be a well rounded musician it is important to know them ALL..... but I truly believe it comes down to the music YOU play... (jam band vs. in a studio reading of sheet music etc. etc.) and that depends on where you put most of your focus/wood shedding.

As long as you are laying down the groove... that is all the matters.
 
#50
i know what she means, and after watching the vid that the quote is from yeah it makes sense.

i know at times i get stuck in a rut with 'playing in the scale' and i know it is simply due to familiarity, but there lies the kicker.

to people that go from chordal shapes, scales are/can be alien and the same stands for scale players looking at chordal players.

luckily for me being self taught i had some of the best instruction tools you can buy (or cant buy to be truthful) my ears. not saying i am a musical genius.... far from it but i know what sounds right to me and i have learned that way, however some people i know that have had structured instruction have developed strong ties to the scale method and cannot budge from it probably due to the teaching methods used.
 
#51
Twelve Tone Equal temperament has ruined music. "Classical music" in the 20th century pushed a lot further and a lot more experimentally into the area of unequal temperaments. Harry Partsch was one composer who chose not to make the compromise of composing for 12TET and instead pushed for microtonal composition.

I suppose fretless bass players could stray out of 12TET but it is frowned upon, especially if they keep a little strobo tuner running that shows how far they dithered from this 'compromise' temperament.

Music imho is ruined because all the riffs are used up. These 'phone number riffs' (you can learn them on a fretboard like a phone number) are all taken!

The biggest advances have been made in the technology. Consider the tech the Beatles used for their US live shows, then the tech the Dead used in the '70s and the tech Metallica used in the '80s etc etc... massive leaps in producing stable live sound...

Now lets reapply all this updated tech to the directions of music the 20th century 'classical' composers were going in. I dare you! :p
 
#52
Scales are teaching tools and like most teaching tools, are after-the-fact reductions of existing musical practices. Lots of blues does not adhere to 12 bars, Mozart wrote all his sonata's and died before the conservatories started teaching the textbook sonata, Robert Johnson played a lot of things, and the blues scale from a Mel Bay book isn't one of them.

To say that music is made up of scales is to say that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Charlie Parker, Robert Johnson didn't make music.
 
#53
Scales are teaching tools and like most teaching tools, are after-the-fact reductions of existing musical practices. Lots of blues does not adhere to 12 bars, Mozart wrote all his sonata's and died before the conservatories started teaching the textbook sonata, Robert Johnson played a lot of things, and the blues scale from a Mel Bay book isn't one of them.

To say that music is made up of scales is to say that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Charlie Parker, Robert Johnson didn't make music.
 
#55
theretheyare said:
Scales are teaching tools and like most teaching tools, are after-the-fact reductions of existing musical practices. Lots of blues does not adhere to 12 bars, Mozart wrote all his sonata's and died before the conservatories started teaching the textbook sonata, Robert Johnson played a lot of things, and the blues scale from a Mel Bay book isn't one of them.

To say that music is made up of scales is to say that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Charlie Parker, Robert Johnson didn't make music.
Click to expand...

Well said, for once a point that warrants a double post!:p

Martin
 
#57
BassmanSBK said:
Precisely. If you are playing a G-major blues, you cannot start start wanking around the G scale, as if anything in the scale fit at any time. Rather, you need to play G chord tones over the I chord, D over the IV chord, E over V chord--using appropriate passing tones between chords.
Click to expand...

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you here - wouldn't C be the IV chord in G+, and D the V?

GT
 
#58
Meddle said:
The biggest advances have been made in the technology. Consider the tech the Beatles used for their US live shows, then the tech the Dead used in the '70s and the tech Metallica used in the '80s etc etc... massive leaps in producing stable live sound...

Now lets reapply all this updated tech to the directions of music the 20th century 'classical' composers were going in. I dare you! :p
Click to expand...

Integral serialism extended to lightshows? :ninja:

Webern meets Britney Spears! "Hit Me Baby 12 more times, this time in retrograde order."

Oh dear, I need a drink now. :)

GT
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back