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I'm a fraud! I don't know what the *@^$ I'm doing!

D

de la mocha

Aug 20, 2005
1,488
16
NEW JERSEY
#1
Listen, I've been playing the bass for a few years now. I only play on sundays at church. I can only afford a squier jazz and I don't have a lot of money to splurge.

I have a wife and I pray everyday when I get to work I don't get laid off. I'm 100% self taught. Saying that to say this.....

How the hell did I get this far?!!!! I only play by feel and by ear! I don't know what the hell the purpose of scales or modes are, I don't even know what they do. I'm so ignorant!

I need a teacher! How is it possible to be able to play with others and learn songs with out knowing anything but how to tune up? I think I have a gift!

I'm looking for a teacher, and I just bought a book on bass scales which leads me to this question.....



HOW DO I USE THIS BASS SCALES BOOK? HOW CAN I APPLY THIS TO MAKE MUSIC?

After memorizing a bunch of scales, what do I do with it? SHOW MEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!! :hmm:
 
#3
A teacher will really help you.

And honestly, as a bass player you'll rarely use a full scale. Most of the time you'll use just certain degrees of the scales.

In particular the root, third and fifth.

This is pretty hard to explain in a discussion forum, but here goes...

If you're playing a song with a chord progression like: A, Cminor, D

When the rest of the band is playing A, you could play any note in the A major scale and it won't sound horrible. If you stick to playing the root, third and fifth (A, C#, E), it will probably sound really good (but kind of boring).

Same for Cminor. When the rest of the band is playing Cminor, you can play any note in the Cminor scale, in particular the root, third and fifth will sound really natural.

Etc. etc.
 
#4
Well, if you have played twice or more in any one situation, you are doing something right.

Relax. Worry about your abilities will make you play worse. However, attention to & action towards growth as a bassist are very good things.

Others smarter than I will surely chime in on how best to learn & then use scales.
 
#6
de la mocha said:
Listen, I've been playing the bass for a few years now. I only play on sundays at church. I can only afford a squier jazz and I don't have a lot of money to splurge.
Click to expand...

Once a week is better than nothing.
A Squier Jazz bass is a terrific instrument and a great value- nothing to be ashamed of. The one I've played feels and sounds fantastic.

de la mocha said:
I have a wife and I pray everyday when I get to work I don't get laid off.
Click to expand...

Join the club, a cast of millions!

de la mocha said:
How the hell did I get this far?!!!! I only play by feel and by ear! I don't know what the hell the purpose of scales or modes are, I don't even know what they do. I'm so ignorant!
Click to expand...

You got this far because you have passion and aptitude. Learning to play by ear is terrific training, and is a skill that can get you very far. Scales and modes, at the basic level, are really quite simple, but are really just tools to create music, much like a pile of tubes of paint and and brushes are to a master painter.

de la mocha said:
I need a teacher! How is it possible to be able to play with others and learn songs with out knowing anything but how to tune up? I think I have a gift!

I'm looking for a teacher, and I just bought a book on bass scales which leads me to this question.....
Click to expand...

You will get a ton of advice of varying quality on this site, from vague, incomprehensible run-on sentences, to clear, accurate and enlightening guidance. But finding a teacher for real-time interactive instruction will go a long way to answering your question on how to turn scales/modes into music.

I posed the same question to a well-known jazz bassist several months ago and he gave me a 3-4 hour private lesson that solidified a ton of concepts, that I could never convey via text here.

Practice, persist, have fun, make music- all that jazz...
 
#7
My friend and I were talking coming home from a gig, and I was explainging how I knew I wasn't a great bass player technically, and therefore I wasn't positiveof my playing ability. This is an acoustic led full band that he put together and asked me to play in.

He replied with, " you may not be able to play all over the neck, but you sit well in the group and don't over play which makes you better than X because he is just the opposite. You feel the music, he just plays it."

You can hone your talent, but don't feel inferior because you aren't the most technical player out there. The world needs pocket players, we are all different and we all see the instrument and music differently.
 
#8
nightcityburn said:
My friend and I were talking coming home from a gig, and I was explainging how I knew I wasn't a great bass player technically, and therefore I wasn't positiveof my playing ability. This is an acoustic led full band that he put together and asked me to play in.

He replied with, " you may not be able to play all over the neck, but you sit well in the group and don't over play which makes you better than X because he is just the opposite. You feel the music, he just plays it."

You can hone your talent, but don't feel inferior because you aren't the most technical player out there. The world needs pocket players, we are all different and we all see the instrument and music differently.
Click to expand...
A good friend of mine who knew a lot more theory than I and could play 4x as fast, knew all the flashy tricks, and play Geddy Lee lines like they were nothing by himself. He was great on his own and like I said, lightning fast. Beyond that, he couldn't find the pocket to save his life and I got more praise from his band when I sat in for a few basic songs (blues and classic rock) than he got in 3-4 years of playing with them because I locked in with the drummer and had less in your face tone. He wasn't bad with the band but his flash had no real substance in terms of supporting familiar songs.
 
#9
Don't try to learn by rote memory. It goes no where except frustration, as you already found out.

The fun of learning theory is to realize how the music works and you can use that to make it work for you. And just a little goes a long way. You already have the ears and the hands. With a good teacher you can reach the next level.

Congrats and good luck.
 
#10
de la mocha said:
I only play by feel and by ear!
Click to expand...
That's the best way to play! It's authentic that way - it's real, it comes from the heart, not the head.

By all means, learn some theory, but at the end of the day theory is just names for sounds. Once you know how to make the sounds, you don't really need the names. Theory makes it easier for us to talk about the sounds and how to make them, but it isn't the end in itself. The sound is. Theory is a map; sound is the territory. Do you need a map to drive around your home town?
 
#11
SmokeyB said:
Don't try to learn by rote memory. It goes no where except frustration, as you already found out.

The fun of learning theory is to realize how the music works and you can use that to make it work for you. And just a little goes a long way. You already have the ears and the hands. With a good teacher you can reach the next level.

Congrats and good luck.
Click to expand...

This is great! "Don't learn by rote memory". "Learning" and "memory" often are confused, but they don't mean the same thing. Sorta like memorizing "Trust in the LORD with all your heart..." and actually trusting Him to provide all you need.

So, I'd start with learing very simple basic theory. What a major scale is (that is, how it's built of whole steps and half steps and how it sounds is learning the scale. Being able to play it in any key in two octaves is memorizing it). Don't memorize that the key of A has three sharps, LEARN WHY it has to have C#, F#, and G#.

Then learn very basic harmony- how to harmonize the scale (stacked thirds), and how to build the basic chords. That means knowing that a major chord is 1 3 5, a minor chord is 1 b3, 5, etc. Know this for the major, minor, dominant 7, minor 7, major 7, diminished, and augmented.

Then apply it to bass lines you play. For example, if you know how to play "Badge" by Cream, look and find the Amin7 chord (actually it's an arpeggio- a chord played one note at a time) for the intro and under the Amin chord at the beginning. Listen to a recording of the lines you play by feel, and figure out what notes you're playing. FInd out what the chords are you're playing under. Put them together and you'll start seeing the things you do that work well, and you'll be able to extrapolate them to other songs, chords, whatever.

I like to say there're only two rules of music theory that are never violated. One, if it sounds right, it is right. The second is akin to that- if it sounds wrong, it is wrong. Theory is really just a way of explaining what sounds right to most people most of the time.

jte
 
#12
It's really awesome to see all the replies in this thread saying it's ok.
I'm in the exact same position. I've been playing for quite a while and I still don't know crap. I'm really angry at myself for not learning pretty much ANYTHING.
I learned by ear and play by ear.
I just can't believe I've gotten this far, and I'm angry at myself for it.
By now, it seems impossible to actually start learning theory, scales and all that stuff.
What, with a full time job, two kids and practicing and writing with two different bands, it's hard to get some free time to learn this stuff.

I think it all came from some VERY VERY BAD advice I read in Bass Player magazine when I started playing 15 years ago.
I can't recall who said it, or exactly how it was phrased, but it came down to this...
"Don't learn any of that stuff. Why limit yourself with all these "rules" and "theories" about how music "should" go? You'll just trap yourself into writing and playing with all these rules in mind all the time. "

Looking back now, horrible advice. I totally see now that these things can only help.
Playing for as long as I have, it's pretty embarassing to not be able to go to practice and have my guitar player tell me that this new song is in "A minor whatever stuff"... and I wouldn't know what the hell is going on.
 
#13
I'll bet you that 2 months of lessons with a local, qualified pro will really set your mind at ease about some of your scale questions. I see the posts above (sorry for not using the quotes), about Root, 3rd, and 5th. This is probably something you are already doing, and not even realizing that you are, in fact, playing scales. If you can identify the root of C, G, and A, for example, you can put those scales to work.

Look on the bright side: you're already playing by ear and you're not making the congregation ill, so you must be doing something right! Good luck.
 
#14
ive been playing near 6 years, cant read score, never got lessons, have a great ear and feel for bass.. happy.. i wouldnt worry bud.. you got this fair cause your alot better then you think :) and its not what u play its how you play it..

There may not be grass on the field but you can still play ball
 
#18
I don't know how old you are, but you may want to consider taking a community college theory class.
My high school offered basic theory, but I don't know if that's the norm.
I found it way beneficial to study in a classroom environment, because of the discussion factor and people bringing up questions I hadn't thought to ask.

Go ahead and enjoy playing and fill in the information as you go along. Theory is just a method of putting labels to what you're hearing.

I think I got the most out of learning voice leading in chord progressions and learning to sight-read solfege (singing lines using syllables for intervals; ie do-re-mi-......).
 
#20
Start learning tunes, just learn basslines. Get the bass bible or something like that, rather than a load of scales. When you're learning scales you can't expect it to just become apparent what they're for. It's not like that, you just learn them and then 6-12 months later you might be aware that it was useful. If you want to get immediate results, then have a look at some actual basslines, or learn to improvise over blues or jazz changes.
 

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