No one even mentioned harmonic analysis. The topic was the major scale. Did you just join this thread to try and discredit someone?
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I don't know the major scale
- Thread starter WrapRough
- Start date
A major scale is one of the building blocks of harmonic analysis, they are not separate concepts.
Benjamin Earl
Commercial User
- Dec 31, 2008
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Wow, this is a crazy workout. There are several good ideas for variations packed into this video. I will be adding some of this to my practice routine. Unfortunately, I feel like he skipped over several building blocks that shouldn't be ignored. He starts with a one octave 7 note "box" scale, and then skips directly to a two octave scale. I'm sure he has previous videos that cover this information in more detail, but this video will be frustrating if you haven't practiced the scale from the lowest note to the highest note first.
It is assumed that you are capable of playing the major scale over the whole fretboard. It is also assumed that you can navigate all of the many paths to play the scale. The exercises in this video will absolutely help you find a few two octave pathways, but you will spend hours fumbling around to find pathways that work without practicing the whole fretboard first.
The video has very little explanation on shifting or finding optimal and efficient paths from the bottom to the top of the scale. He mentions pathway variation in passing a few times, but he really doesn't elaborate. In fact, he doesn't use many variations. There is a lot of climbing the scale in one position, then the remaining notes are reached with several jump shifts to reach the final notes of the scale. This is one way of doing it, but there are easier and smoother ways of playing two octave scales.
Don't get me wrong, if you have already done this work, then this video is gold. It is one of the things that I am currently working on, so it was perfect timing to read this post (thanks for posting!). I recently purchased the Hanon book to work on my dexterity and scale variations. I will absolutely be adding this one to the practice queue.
Yeah I don't disagree. Definitely lots of assumed knowledge. I think his main goal was to demonstrate how much work it takes to really master a scale. And this is him playing it, not someone new to it. That would have to be done countless times to get fluent and smooth. Serious, serious work.
It was nice to see him putting his money where his mouth is. I think he said how easy it is to tell his students to do all this stuff, so he's gonna sit and do it all too. Much respect and even more so for leaving in errors and mistakes, which as we know happens to everyone. Too many on YouTube only post a perfect video, so I'm glad he was warts and all.
Which Hanon are you using? The piano one? Or bass specific one?
Benjamin Earl
Commercial User
- Dec 31, 2008
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- Fretboard Visualization Author
I have the piano one. I just use the bass clef for the left hand. I didn't know there was a bass specific one! It is pretty cheap, so maybe I'll check it out.
True, but there has to be some time reference. Without time there is no melody. Without melody there is no harmonic progression. Without progression there is no tension and no resolution, which is what harmony is all about. The only thing that distinguishes V-I from I-V is time.
YMMV
Time is not necessary to study harmony.
Harmony is a mathematical function that eliminates time. Time is intentionally left out of the equation (ie function).
Your statement about some combinations being musical gibberish is not true AT ALL. All of the exercises are equal in their importance. No one permutation is "better" than another. How can one be more important than another when they are simply variations of each other? You only made that comment based on your personal, off the cuff assumption without exploring it first. How much you get out of any of them depends on how much work you put into it, and how you intend to use it.
However, there is absolutely no requirement to know everything, which isn't possible anyway. You just want to be fluent in the things you are working on, and recognize that you can always increase your knowledge level in some way, step by step.
Working on them in different time signatures isn't important or required. However, it is important to work on them based on shifting 16th note subdivisions. There are probably other ways to vary the exercises even more, but it's not something you approach blindly and without thought. Being efficient with your time is a huge consideration.
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I've been working on a variation of these exercises since about 2 months after I stated lessons and continue to work on them in some aspect every time I plug in. Every. Time. And because I've done this for so long, I can play pretty much anything I want without thinking about it much.
The fact that you can recognize the things you need to work on and have a willingness to accept that, puts you light-years ahead of 99% of the posters on Talkbass. Please keep this up. We've had a few conversations in the past and I recognized you as a 1% kinda guy awhile back. In my time on TalkBass, I can count on one hand, the number of people that I thought really understood the process of learning music on a fundamental level. But I had a master teacher. Most don't have that advantage.
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That's a pretty bold personal off the cuff assumption right there. I was devising and using exercises based on combinations and permutations, not dissimilar to your list above, over 30 years ago. They certainly help with dexterity and stamina, and with opening the ear. But an open ear will eventually show that a good proportion of such execerices are of questionable musical merit, IMHO/IME.
Why is shifting semi-quaver subdivisions more important than working on time signatures?
Because if you can shift a motif by a 16th, you should have the facility to apply it to any time signature by default. I guess the operative word here is "should". If you want to work on odd time signatures, that is a totally different direction of exploration than what is being discussed.
I've found that keeping a task small and focused yields better results than trying to apply everything to everything. But as you are fond of saying, "YMMV".
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Choosing to work on gibberish is a personal choice. Choosing to work on what is useful is also a personal choice. The ability to recognize the difference will increase your efficiency. I don't think playing gibberish was executed or demonstrated in Adam Neely's video.
However, to say that gibberish exists isn't saying anything useful in my opinion, but I suppose at the end of the day it is true.
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That's a fair point. I think the two ideas are inextricably linked yet distinct. Moving the motif around the pulse is shifting the accent of the motif, i.e. syncopation, anacrusis or polyrhythm. Changing time signature or meter is not the same, and requires a different approach, although there is certainly some overlap in the mental process and, superficially, the aural effect. I think both provide equally valid frameworks for technical exercises and musical exploration.
The gibberish comment was not in relation to Adam's video, the exercises therein, nor their usefulness. It was a response to the later comment about there being '5040 possible combinations' of notes in the major scale.
Thanks, I appreciate the comment. I've always embraced learning. Well, as an adult anyway
I don't believe in talent, only hard work.
Adams video was really him pointing out that there are no shortcuts, and that this level of understanding and fluency is what you need before even remotely thinking you "know" something.
I remember a conversation we had and you said it was surprising my teacher was covering the diminished scale already, and now I totally get that comment. When you said it, I stupidly thought "well I know the other scales". Wrong. I didn't even know that I didn't know them...
But it does beg the question, if it takes this long to really know stuff, at what point in one's teaching does one move on to something new? I'm having weekly lessons, so there is only so much work you can get done in a week before the next lesson. And you want to learn new stuff every week. I'm still not sure how to handle that.
Country music and Iron Maiden are examples of the the major scale. The intro to Run to the Hills is an easily recognizable major scale sound.
You don't have to know everything about a lesson cold before you can apply it. You fool with it till you're sick of thinking about it. At that point you can feel ok with working on something different. Lather, rinse, repeat. Because you have to go back to that thing you were sick of at some point. So, you have to do a certain amount of grunt work first. Scales, arpeggios, pentatonics, etc. and you learn to kinda manipulate that stuff in the same ways as demonstrated in the video. You can apply Adam's process to nearly anything having to do with music. But you don't have to be some kind of genius with all of it...
Then, ideally, get yourself into a situation where you can kinda apply the stuff from your lessons. To do all that you need to find a band that plays what you like and you use the stuff from your lessons to simply play the songs. I think live playing situations are a requirement for advancement. Playing in your bedroom or basement is ok but you're not going to really get it by doing just that.
If you recall, I told you I had a 15 minute lesson that I've been working on for 10 years. The stuff in that video is the exact lesson I was referring to. I've never stopped working on it. I have pretty good facility with it, but there are aspects I can add to it, and I have to keep up the maintenance. But it's still the same 15 minute lesson that I had 10 years ago.
I once asked my teacher what I should be practicing. His reply was, "everything"... That doesn't mean, everything, everyday. You just pick something you may have worked on maybe last month. And get on it.. Just keep doing that.
Hard work is absolutely the key. But I love practicing and figuring this stuff out, so it's never a chore for me.
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When I had that lesson with my teacher and once I'd gained some basic facility with it, he casually mentioned that the permutations of the exercise numbered in the thousands (and I gave the number for that particular set) When I asked him why he never mentioned that number at the beginning, he said, "If I had, you wouldn't have done it..."
Again, there is no "gibberish" involved, simply because of a high number of exercises. It's just a number. Whether you want to do it or not, is a personal choice. And that 4480 number was for only one key. So multiply that by 12....
I don't have anything else to say about this aspect.
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So what are the constraints when working it out to that number? Is it the intervals? 2nds? 3rds, 4ths? Is it the order of pitches? Ascending? Descending? Alternating? Up 3 down 2? Is it the time values of each note? All whole? Half? Quavers and 2 semiquavers? All combinations of 16th subdivision? Crotchet triplets? And what is the ambitus? 2 octaves? 3?
