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How to get student to learn the fretboard

DougD

DougD

Bassman7654
Sep 19, 2002
2,812
31
North Las Vegas NV
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#1
OK, I have this student. Very good kid with a lot of potential. But I can NOT get him to learn the fretboard. Ive tried every trick I know, but it's just not sinking in. He runs scales and modes like nobody's business, but cant play a melodic fill up the neck or anything like the, because he gets confused. Anybody out there know a sure fire way to get a kid to learn his way around the neck? When I say kid, I mean he's in his late teens. This kid grooves great, has almost perfect time, but seems to have a mental block when it comes to learning the neck. Can any of you more experienced instructors give me a suggestion or two?
 
#3
If he knows his scales and modes as you say then he knows the neck, or are we talking about more than naming notes and finding them on the neck?

If it is about his improv skills and his lack of note choice then what you need is a key to open him up. In that case i would always say chord tone exercises. Chord tone exercises are the links between chords, scales, triad, etc that work harmonically all over the bass fretboard, the Jeff Berlin exercises are quite brilliant in their simplicity, and may be the bit that is missing. Each to their own in learning and each learn to understand in their own way, learning something should mean it is internalised, not just recited. When it is learned and internalised it is a foundation to build and connect losts of ideas with leaps of thought.

If you want a copy of Jeffs chord tone exercises drop me a PM with an e-mail address and i will send it on.
 
#4
I used to give my students a quiz for the first 5-10min of the lesson EVERY lesson. I'd break it up in chunks. Week one they would have to answer on a piece of paper random notes I drew on little boxes with a specified fret that they had to answer. The E and A strings up to the 7th fret was a good start. After that 5 min quiz (yes time it, they either know it or they don't), then I'd verbally quiz them for 5 min at the end of the lesson. Saying "play me an E". Believe it or not, it worked. They'd learn the fingerboard. On the D and G strings I'd tell them that it's a mirror image of the E and A strings to just figure out the octave in their heads, and that also worked really well.

Also, for those with iphones or droids there is an app for that. I'ts called fret surfer. It's not free, but it's cheap and worth it. He could learn on that in waiting rooms, sitting in the car, etc...
 
#5
What has worked for me is to have them learn this grid (I call it "the musical alphabet")
A-A#(Bb)-B-C-C#(Db)-D-D#(Eb)-E-F-F#(Gb)-G-G#(Ab)-A
I explain to them that for our purposes there are 1/2 steps between E-F and B-C (that takes away the Cb and Fb that may be confusing at first). I explain to them that as we are going up in pitch (toward the bass body) we are going forward in the alphabet and as we're going down in pitch we are going backwards. I then have them play and call the notes on each string up to the 12th fret with #s going up and flats going down. We then look at from the 12th fret up and I explain to them that it's the same pattern as the bottom 12 frets. It's pretty effective.
 
#6
My #1 suggestion would be interval training.

Having scales under your fingertips isn't much use, unless you can correlate that information to the twists and turns of the musical phrases that you're trying to communicate. This relates directly to Fergie's suggestion vis-a-vis the Jeff Berlin materials.

The best thing that ever happened to me in terms of improvisation, learning new parts, fretboard navigation, etc., was having my dad teach me about tetrachords and intervals, then having that backed up by a college course that concentrated on hearing, singing, reading and playing intervals.

As with any learning process, the more senses you can engage, the better. Mix receptive and expressive processes. Have him listen to different styles of music, and talk about the intervallic choices that define its character. Talk about the moods that intervals invoke, and how that depends on context. Sing or play intervals, and have him identify them. Call them out, and have him sing them back to you. Repeat the process, but put a bass in his hand, and have him play them back to you. Have him study them on a piano keyboard, just to give him a different visual reference. If he's a reader, teach him how to identify the various intervals by the number of lines and spaces between adjacent notes. Have him build chords by stacking intervals...

The more of these types of exercises the two of you can come up with, the faster this stuff will be rutted into his nervous system.

One other thing: What's his motivation like? Are you force-feeding him, or is he actively seeking to learn the fingerboard himself? Sometimes, you need to address attitude issues before you can move forward with the mechanics of playing. This is his problem, and he needs to be engaged in his own learning process. If you're able to challenge him to come up with his own exercises and strategies to solve the problem, it will reap major dividends.
 
#8
As mentioned you will have to find this person's "key" to unlock his method of learning. Once you find which way he learns best use that method. Here is a little more on that subject. The Four Learning Styles in the DVC Survey

For what it is worth, I see him as a visual learner. Patterns he knows, however, connecting them to the entire fretboard seems to be the problem. Charts of the entire fretboard, perhaps? I'm a pattern guy and had problems seeing the need to move up the neck in all five locations. Might explore that with him, he may need to know why or how this is important. Pattern people tend to love their patterns, perhaps he just needs to know how this will help.

I also suspect pattern people are not all that creative. We play by rote (what we see).

One other factor enters into this. Personality traits. There are four of them that quickly explode into sixteen as most of us do not fit into just one category. I'm a talker/controller. I like to follow the rules, know why I'm doing something and fear being wrong. We controllers tend to be in accounting, engineering, etc. As I mentioned we tend to not be very creative, however, you can count on us being correct. If not we beat ourselves around the head and face until we do get it correct. Now the talker in me is loose as a goose and is always giving the controller in me fits. Go figure. Invalid Link Removed

Where does your student fit in all this?

Good luck.
 
#11
MalcolmAmos said:
As mentioned you will have to find this person's "key" to unlock his method of learning. Once you find which way he learns best use that method. Here is a little more on that subject. The Four Learning Styles in the DVC Survey

Good luck.
Click to expand...

Great link Malcolm, and here is a key thought to anyone that thinks this could be a relation to them. Exams of any nature usually require the information to be expressed in the written word, being able to express what you know in the written word is just one way of showing what you have learned. If i went to Spain i would be considered illiterate because i cannot read and write in Spanish..they may even consider me stupid as i could not give them answers to simple questions. What they want from me is to represent what i know in Spanish, not whether i am clever.

Câu hỏi của hôm nay Ngoài ra, hai cộng với hai là những gì?

See you are not stupid you just don't represent the question or the answer in the form required...it's not that you do not know the answer.

And so it is with learning, there are keys to learning just as there are many languages, match the right one to the student and they are off and running.
 
#13
DougD said:
OK, I have this student. Very good kid with a lot of potential. But I can NOT get him to learn the fretboard. Ive tried every trick I know, but it's just not sinking in. He runs scales and modes like nobody's business, but cant play a melodic fill up the neck or anything like the, because he gets confused. Anybody out there know a sure fire way to get a kid to learn his way around the neck? When I say kid, I mean he's in his late teens. This kid grooves great, has almost perfect time, but seems to have a mental block when it comes to learning the neck. Can any of you more experienced instructors give me a suggestion or two?
Click to expand...

You didn't post whether he learns song by ear well, or at all. I would have him learn the sound of wider intervals and make him learn the pitch of open strings first, then where the other notes are located. You can play a not without him seeing you and he should play that note without much delay or wrong notes.
 

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