Learning Chords Vs. Scales for beginners

[MustacheJoeII]

Can't believe this thread is still going. As I said earlier, you guys are confusing what you should learn and what you should play, there is a big difference. Learn as much as you can not what you only want to.

As for the Carol Kaye references...I would bet anything she knows her scales as good as the chords. I find that to be counter-conducive to the learning process not to learn scales along with chords and their relationship.

I know studio musicians like Carol Kaye and others sometimes read charts that are written in nothing more than roman numerals for the chords for each measure in the song.

Basically without getting to analytically overboard, If you know your scales and chords, then when you see a roman numeral for the number 7 in the key of E major for instance, then you will know what chord to play because the number 7 refers to the 7th chord tone in the scale of that particular key, or does it?

BONUS QUIZ For the people who support learning chords only (not for you music teachers on TB to answer) WHAT CHORD DOES THE ROMAN NUMERAL 7 IN THE KEY OF E MAJOR???

Man, you play in Nashville and you don't even get the haughty music theory Roman numerals, you just get a key and some Indian/Arabic numbers.

I know the answer, but I'm not telling...

 

[fourstringburn]

No I don't play in Nashville , but I'm aware of the Nashville number system. I Just want to show how knowing scales is relevant to the chords and why one should learn both at the same time to see and understand their relevance.

 

[MustacheJoeII]

I wasn't saying that you personally are a Nashville guy, I was saying that when anyone plays in Nashville, they get even less to go on than the Roman numerals with all their shorthand glory. You (meaning anybody playing in Nashville) just gets a key and a number. You (meaning anyone) might as well be playing figured bass organ.

 

[bassbully]

Bass musicians universally recognized for their skill and artistry are "wankers"? I probably shouldn't be surprised at that opinion, but somehow I am.

Thanks for posting all that though. Seriously. Before, someone might have actually taken your "advice" as meaningful, but by you weighing in on the importance of staying ignorant and shortsighted, it will hopefully dissuade them further form doing so (good job with the ad hominem at the end too, that really goes a long way to legitimizing your points).

I had a long rant back to this one that might of got me attention form the mods putting this kid in his place telling him off yadda,yadda and then said to myself..What am i doing? today is a new day live, love, laugh... its just the internet

 

[JTE]

Things keep going back and forth, and it's not really back and forth, but they work together. I think you need to know the major scale (again, using "know" as defined in my previous posts) in order to know the chords. I suppose it's possible to do this all with rote patterns and physical shapes, but that isn't really KNOWING anything.

How do you figure out the notes to an Amin7 chord? Most commonly it's learned as knowing that a minor 7 is 1, b3, 5, b7. So know the A major scale, and alter the 3 and 7 as needed. That gives you the main notes you need to create a functional bass part for that chord. Whether the passing tones you use come from the G major scale (where the Amin7 is the ii), or the F major scale (where the Amin7 would be the iii chord), or the C major scale (Amin7 being the vi), is a LOT less important than knowing that your main targets are A C E and G notes.

It goes together, and can't really be separated. It's when we create these false dichotomies that one is more important than the other that we get these rabbit-trail discussions. You gotta know both and how they relate. When I first started playing I was thinking very much about what notes were in the chords, but I needed to know the scale so I could know the notes in the chords. And the fingering part was the LEAST important part of the learning process- the understanding and knowledge lead to the fingerings.

John

 

[u84six]

I will answer that question.
I understand where you're going, but it isn't germane to this discussion. You're getting into discussion about creativity, NOT learning modern theory of music. The first shelters humans built were probably made of sticks and mud, and I'm sure they were functional, but that didn't make those humans engineers....modern building engineers don't learn how to mix water and dirt then wrap it around sticks now-days do they?

Things have evolve quite a bit since the first buildings were made, and the same is true of music. If all someone wanted to do was make some pleasing sounds, then by all means, take out your instrument and tinker away at a melody. But to make that the equivalent of what a musician does, is as erroneous as saying someone who pitches a tent is in the same league as someone who builds skyscrapers. We are talking about the tools one needs to learn in order to unlock full creative potential, and ultimately that's what music theory is there for. With a full toolbox at our disposal its much easier to create AND be able to play with others using the same tools and materials.
Again, I'd like to point out that modern bass musicians (like Wooten, Miller, Manring, Caron, Gwizdala etc.) are also masters of the theory, technique and craft that unlocks their potential. Those are the people to look to and aim to emulate.

There's a local guy I know that has been playing guitar for around 40 years. Never took a lesson and doesn't even know what a chord progression, scale, or a key is. He plays his guitar lefty (because he's a lefty), and doesn't even restring the instrument (i.e. the 6th string is the 1st string for him), and he is one of the best guitar players I've ever heard. When you play with him, even if he doesn't know the song, he can play right along with you better than anyone I've seen who can improvise. If you try to tell him the key or chord progressions, he cuts you off and tells you to just start playing (he doesn't want to know). He has played with a lot of famous people as a session guitar player and has a bunch of CDs out on iTunes that have sold quite well.

Here's a guy that has no theory, but can write a great song, play better than most guitar players, and can improvise with any band ranging from rock to jazz. How did he learn? By listening to music and playing with other musicians.

On a personal note, I find that too much theory puts you in a box, and you have to bring that box around with you everywhere you go and use it with everything you do. Kind of a restraint, wouldn't you say?

 

[bassix67]

There's a local guy I know that has been playing guitar for around 40 years. Never took a lesson and doesn't even know what a chord progression, scale, or a key is. He plays his guitar lefty (because he's a lefty), and doesn't even restring the instrument (i.e. the 6th string is the 1st string for him), and he is one of the best guitar players I've ever heard. When you play with him, even if he doesn't know the song, he can play right along with you better than anyone I've seen who can improvise. If you try to tell him the key or chord progressions, he cuts you off and tells you to just start playing (he doesn't want to know). He has played with a lot of famous people as a session guitar player and has a bunch of CDs out on iTunes that have sold quite well.

Here's a guy that has no theory, but can write a great song, play better than most guitar players, and can improvise with any band ranging from rock to jazz. How did he learn? By listening to music and playing with other musicians.

On a personal note, I find that too much theory puts you in a box, and you have to bring that box around with you everywhere you go and use it with everything you do. Kind of a restraint, wouldn't you say?

Or you can look at it like he's super talented, has great ears, photographic memory. Everybody's not like that.
Thats like saying Koby Bryant when't from HS to the NBA why cant I? And you're 5'6. That's an excuse everyone uses when the music is over one's head. If you knew theory you'd the difference between knowing and not knowing. Knowing theory and being able to use the knowledge on your instrument means your free.

 

[younggun]

On a personal note, I find that too much theory puts you in a box, and you have to bring that box around with you everywhere you go and use it with everything you do. Kind of a restraint, wouldn't you say?

Then you are using the tools wrong, and have missed the point of learning them in the first place. Nowhere does learning competent theory replace using your ears and experience. It adds to it. Of COURSE you're supposed to play with other musicians and develop your ears. I don't see a single person advocating differently, do you? I'm not even sure why your are trying to pidgeonhole the discussion that way, or where you have somehow read into someone's post that this is true. Its the same thing as trying to create the artificial dichotomy between learning scales "vs." learning chords, when they are actually one in the same, and enhance each other forming a whole greater than the sum of the pieces.

There is a reason its called theory. No one has said you can't learn to play by ear. There are plenty of musicians that have done so, but music can be compared to language and all of the theory stuff can be compared the written part of that language that helps to communicate ideas from one medium to another. From concept to physical reality. Simply saying someone can speak and therefore doesn't need to learn to write is, once again, a self-limiting concept. You can actually do both and have them enhance each other. If someone can't figure out how to do that, then its just an indication that they haven't put the time in.

There's a local guy I know that has been playing guitar for around 40 years. Never took a lesson and doesn't even know what a chord progression, scale, or a key is. He plays his guitar lefty (because he's a lefty), and doesn't even restring the instrument (i.e. the 6th string is the 1st string for him), and he is one of the best guitar players I've ever heard. When you play with him, even if he doesn't know the song, he can play right along with you better than anyone I've seen who can improvise. If you try to tell him the key or chord progressions, he cuts you off and tells you to just start playing (he doesn't want to know). He has played with a lot of famous people as a session guitar player and has a bunch of CDs out on iTunes that have sold quite well.

Here's a guy that has no theory, but can write a great song, play better than most guitar players, and can improvise with any band ranging from rock to jazz. How did he learn? By listening to music and playing with other musicians.

How exactly does he "write" a great song if he can't write it down in any meaningful way that anyone else could understand? Someone else would have to write it down for him wouldn't they (someone who understands notation and theory)? He may be a great player and musician, but in terms of the rest of the musical world, he is incomplete. I wonder how much longer, how many extra and unnecessary years he spent learning things by ear that he could have understood fast could he read. For every gig your friend gets based on his great playing, I wonder how many he never gets invited to for due to his lack of knowledge. He certainly could never play in an orchestra pit with hundreds of charts in front of him. Something that could easily be remedied by some discipline and effort. It wouldn't do anything to take away from his playing, and may open doors he didn't know was there. Granted, that may be something he doesn't care about after 40 years of playing, but it doesn't make it any less true.

I know of a very well respected and famous bass player who can't read and plays exclusively by ear, I'll call him "Mr. RP". A good friend of mine, who is a top player and professional private and university teacher locally, once met and took a lesson with Mr. RP. Within minutes of sitting down with him and going through Mr. RP's approach to music, it became very apparent to Mr. RP that he couldn't impart much of anything because he didn't have the language to do so. He stated that he was extremely embarrassed, and despite all his years as a professional successful bass player, he felt that he was doing my friend a disservice with the lesson. To his credit he realized right away that my friend was more knowledgable than he was and they ended up having a meaningful discussion anyway, and shared some great stories. Mr. RP said he had basically kept it under wraps for years that he couldn't read. He told the story that he once got a gig playing in an orchestra pit with a big band, based solely on his worldwide fame as a player. He took all the charts home, had a friend who could read play all the basslines and record them, then spent 2 weeks memorizing the lines. When it came time for the show, he said he got through it, but it was still a train wreck. Didn't get invited back the next year either. His biggest regret was never putting the time in to learn to read and understand theory. This guy is a millionaire, has been playing bass professionally for over 40 years, and realizes that he has been limiting himself by his lack of knowledge.

I personally have started jamming with a local Flamenco Guitar player. He too is very good, and plays professionally by ear. The first thing he did when he sat down with me and we started going through some standards was say, "Man, I gotta learn to read, it'd be so much easier in the long run."
For every example you can provide of some "great" player who doesn't read or understand theory, there are thousands more that do. The ear player is the in the minority professionally, so using that as an example to others for how to learn is bad advice.

There is not a single thing that will be detrimental to your playing by learning theory and correctly applying it (this means using the appropriate tools for the job, and leaving the rest in the box), but just the opposite can be true if you don't.

I can't understand the logic that the path to getting good at something is by denying yourself knowledge that is readily available.

 

[younggun]

Or you can look at it like he's super talented, has great ears, photographic memory. Everybody's not like that.
Thats like saying Koby Bryant when't from HS to the NBA why cant I? And you're 5'6. That's an excuse everyone uses when the music is over one's head. If you knew theory you'd the difference between knowing and not knowing. Knowing theory and being able to use the knowledge on your instrument means your free.

I should have just saved myself some time and +1'ed this.

 

[bassix67]

I should have just saved myself some time and +1'ed this.

Lol!!!!

 

[u84six]

Then you are using the tools wrong, and have missed the point of learning them in the first place. Nowhere does learning competent theory replace using your ears and experience. It adds to it. Of COURSE you're supposed to play with other musicians and develop your ears. I don't see a single person advocating differently, do you? I'm not even sure why your are trying to pidgeonhole the discussion that way, or where you have somehow read into someone's post that this is true. Its the same thing as trying to create the artificial dichotomy between learning scales "vs." learning chords, when they are actually one in the same, and enhance each other forming a whole greater than the sum of the pieces.

There is a reason its called theory. No one has said you can't learn to play by ear. There are plenty of musicians that have done so, but music can be compared to language and all of the theory stuff can be compared the written part of that language that helps to communicate ideas from one medium to another. From concept to physical reality. Simply saying someone can speak and therefore doesn't need to learn to write is, once again, a self-limiting concept. You can actually do both and have them enhance each other. If someone can't figure out how to do that, then its just an indication that they haven't put the time in.

How exactly does he "write" a great song if he can't write it down in any meaningful way that anyone else could understand? Someone else would have to write it down for him wouldn't they (someone who understands notation and theory)? He may be a great player and musician, but in terms of the rest of the musical world, he is incomplete. I wonder how much longer, how many extra and unnecessary years he spent learning things by ear that he could have understood fast could he read. For every gig your friend gets based on his great playing, I wonder how many he never gets invited to for due to his lack of knowledge. He certainly could never play in an orchestra pit with hundreds of charts in front of him. Something that could easily be remedied by some discipline and effort. It wouldn't do anything to take away from his playing, and may open doors he didn't know was there. Granted, that may be something he doesn't care about after 40 years of playing, but it doesn't make it any less true.

I know of a very well respected and famous bass player who can't read and plays exclusively by ear, I'll call him "Mr. RP". A good friend of mine, who is a top player and professional private and university teacher locally, once met and took a lesson with Mr. RP. Within minutes of sitting down with him and going through Mr. RP's approach to music, it became very apparent to Mr. RP that he couldn't impart much of anything because he didn't have the language to do so. He stated that he was extremely embarrassed, and despite all his years as a professional successful bass player, he felt that he was doing my friend a disservice with the lesson. To his credit he realized right away that my friend was more knowledgable than he was and they ended up having a meaningful discussion anyway, and shared some great stories. Mr. RP said he had basically kept it under wraps for years that he couldn't read. He told the story that he once got a gig playing in an orchestra pit with a big band, based solely on his worldwide fame as a player. He took all the charts home, had a friend who could read play all the basslines and record them, then spent 2 weeks memorizing the lines. When it came time for the show, he said he got through it, but it was still a train wreck. Didn't get invited back the next year either. His biggest regret was never putting the time in to learn to read and understand theory. This guy is a millionaire, has been playing bass professionally for over 40 years, and realizes that he has been limiting himself by his lack of knowledge.

I personally have started jamming with a local Flamenco Guitar player. He too is very good, and plays professionally by ear. The first thing he did when he sat down with me and we started going through some standards was say, "Man, I gotta learn to read, it'd be so much easier in the long run."
For every example you can provide of some "great" player who doesn't read or understand theory, there are thousands more that do. The ear player is the in the minority professionally, so using that as an example to others for how to learn is bad advice.

There is not a single thing that will be detrimental to your playing by learning theory and correctly applying it (this means using the appropriate tools for the job, and leaving the rest in the box), but just the opposite can be true if you don't.

I can't understand the logic that the path to getting good at something is by denying yourself knowledge that is readily available.

You apparently missed the point I was making, but I do understand your perspective. Learn the alphabet, read and write, and you can get ahead in life. Sure. But you're missing one thing. Music is an art. It's an expression of one's self. There's no book in the world that can teach you that.

The band I'm currently playing with is all original music "written" by a women who decided to pick up a guitar and sing just 3 years ago. Never took a lesson and barely knows what a G major chord is. I've played in several bands from rock to funk, with Berkeley grads (I live in MA) and I have to say, she is the most creative and has the best sounding songs I've ever played in my life. We've got a very successful CD and I'm touring more than I ever have in the 30 years I've been playing, and it's all because of her. The person that learned a few chords and doesn't even know what a scale is.

 

[Phineas]

The chord and the scale are synonymous, and I can prove it!

C13(11)

C-E-G-Bb-D-(F)-A

Look closely, you realize that when you play this chord on a piano, you are playing every note in the Fmajor scale at the same time.

F-G-A-Bb-C-D-E

Get it? I can associate a scale for every chord, and vise-versa.

You cannot learn chords effectively without knowing your scales, and you cannot understand how to utilize scales without harmony(chords).

One thing that is been left out of this thread is the art of listening. Often under utilized and taken for granted. Learning both at the same time will only speed up the progress. That is just like tell a student to only practice a "C" scale. I tell my students to practice ALL of the major scales. It really makes a difference.


Phineas

 

[younggun]

You apparently missed the point I was making, but I do understand your perspective. Learn the alphabet, read and write, and you can get ahead in life. Sure. But you're missing one thing. Music is an art. It's an expression of one's self. There's no book in the world that can teach you that.

The band I'm currently playing with is all original music "written" by a women who decided to pick up a guitar and sing just 3 years ago. Never took a lesson and barely knows what a G major chord is. I've played in several bands from rock to funk, with Berkeley grads (I live in MA) and I have to say, she is the most creative and has the best sounding songs I've ever played in my life. We've got a very successful CD and I'm touring more than I ever have in the 30 years I've been playing, and it's all because of her. The person that learned a few chords and doesn't even know what a scale is.

No, I didn't miss your point. I got it, and said so in my first reply to your post, and then responded by saying creativity is not germane to the discussion of the best way to learn music theory. You've taken the discussion in a completely different direction by bringing the issue of creativity into it. Once again, I am NOT SAYING, NOR HAVE I EVER SAID, that creativity is not important in making music. Art is not craft, but neither is it devoid of craft and simply creativity as you seem to be saying. It is an amalgamation and melding of the two. A craftsman may not be an artist, but a true artist is certainly a craftsman.

You seem to be taking the position that artistic creativity and learning theory are somehow mutually exclusive concepts. You back this up with some examples of players that you claim are fantastic musicians: i.e. this woman you are touring and playing with...do the backing members of her band have no grounding in theory?, does she create all of the musical parts, or do the other musicians in the band contribute? Did she "write" the drum parts, the basslines, the chord structure? Or did she simply come up with a melody and some ideas and others filled in the blanks? Michael Jackson was often described as a creative and talented force, but most of the music "he" created was only based on his ideas that others around him had to flesh out and produce. Without the other real musicians around him, he would have never gained the fame he did. There would have been no music, just a kid gyrating around and singing melodies.
There will occasionally be exceptional and highly talented individuals that are lucky enough to not have to study as hard and diligently as others in order to reach, what to others would be their full potential. They are the Mozarts and Einsteins of the world (although they are perhaps bad examples of this, seeing as they had a very full understanding of their technical fields too). People like that are one in 10 million though, and you can't emulate talent like that. Its impossible.
Using a few highly unusual and exceptionally talented individuals to try and disprove a system that has worked for a vast number of people is not a sound argument.
On the one hand you have those exceptions, but on the other hand you have the mass of most humans. People who may have a propensity or talent, but that then must study a consistent proven system in order to reach a high level of proficiency in their given art form, and unlock their artistic and creative potential. That's what music theory is there for.

The fact of the matter is that most of the acknowledged creative and artistic professional musicians have a very full understanding of theory. They then utilize it to further their creativity and music. Guys like Pattitucci, Caron, Mingus, Jamerson, and Jaco (to name a very few bass musicians as example), spent literally thousands of hours practicing their instrument and learning theory in order to produce what they did. Whether or not you like their music is a matter of opinion...the fact that they produced large volumes of quality work, and are considered by the majority of the music world as masters of their art form, is not.

 

[germ_77]

Expanding this, especially point 1, is the crux of the recent discussions. When I say "Learn the major scale and how it's constructed", I do NOT mean "be able to wiggle your fingers to the right spots to play a major scale". For this, "knowing" the major scale means:
A. You know its construction- W W H W W W H
B. You know how to determine the correct notes (with the correct enharmonics- it DOES matter) for the scale in any key. That is, you know how to figure out that A major is A B C# D E F# G# A, and you know WHY it's F# and not Gb.
C. You know what it sounds like.
D. You can find the notes for it and play it across the neck starting in any position (not necessarily starting on the root- this is vital for actually playing music instead of playing scales), and you can find the correct notes and figure out a fingering across at least two whole octaves to get from the first fret to the 12th.

Only then do you KNOW the scale. And the diatonic major scale is the first one to learn like this. In fact, you could a long way with that being the only one you know.

For point 2 (Learn how basic chords are built from the major scale- e.g Major is 1,3,5, minor is 1,b3, 5, etc.). This is covered in any basic harmony book. The goal is to be able to figure out for yourself (that is, no book or chart or diagram) the notes to the main types of chords. I think you should at least be able to spell out:
A. Triads- major, minor, diminished, augmented
B. 7th chords- Major 7, Dominant 7, Minor 7, Minor 7b5 (a/k/a "half-diminished"), and diminished.
In order to be able to do this for any chord, you need to know the correct notes in the major scale. So, instead of trying to memorize that an Abmin7 is Ab Cb Eb Gb, just build your knowledge- You know that the major scale is W W H W W W H. Start on Ab (the root) so the whole step is Bb, the next whole step is C (the third), half-step to Db, whole to Eb (the fifth), whole to F, whole to G (the 7). And from knowing that a minor 7 is 1, b3, 5, b7, you pull Ab, Cb (not B), Db, and Gb.

3. Learn the Harmonized scale- write out the scale on paper. Using C as the example, you'll get:
C D E F G A B C

On top of that write out the EXACT SAME scale starting on the third note:
E F G A B C D E
C D E F G A B C

Do it again a third higher to get the triads:
G A B C D E F G
E F G A B C D E
C D E F G A B C

And one more time to get the 7th chords"
B C D E F G A B
G A B C D E F G
E F G A B C D E
C D E F G A B C

Then ANALYZE those stacks so you see WHY the I and IV are major 7th, why the ii, iii, vi are minor 7th, why the V is a dominant 7, and the viii is a minor 7 b5. Instead of memorizing merely that they ARE those kinds of chord, learn WHY they are. It'll help a lot. And a lot of this is stuff you can do on the bus, during pointless meetings, and in your head when your wife is telling you about those new shoes....

Point 2 and 3 lead right into the other part of the original question in this thread. Now that you own the scale, and you know how to determine the correct notes for the primary chords, find 'em on the bass. Don't get a chord or arpeggio chart, figure them out for yourself and write your own chart. It will bring this stuff home to you in a way that merely looking it up won't.

Take the chord progression to a song you know, and write out the chords. Then figure out the arpeggio for each chord. Find the notes (again, don't limit it starting on the root) all over the neck. Then compare that to the bass line for the song. Yeah, there'll be notes that don't follow the arpeggio and sometimes not even the key. But look for where the chord notes ARE.

For example, check out what Jack Bruce plays for the Cream song "Badge". The chords after the bass intro are Amin to D to Emin (it's a chord that's essentially an E root and 5 with the high alternating between F# and G- it's an E minor tonality). For the Amin chord Jack simply plays A C and E; hammers the root for the D chord, then plays essentially an E minor scale under the Emin chord. "My Girl" has Jamerson playing just the root and fifth for the intro. "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" is 1 3 5 on the C chord, 1 and 3 for the F chord, etc . If you KNOW the arpeggios, you'll SEE 'em in the bass lines you know and you learn.

That's enough of the 8 points for now, but I want to leave you with this too.

SING everything you play. Playing music is about sound, not physical location. If you sing everything you practice (even if you sing like me- a friend described my vocal ability as "a duet with Yoko Ono and Linda McCartney") then every move your fingers make has a sound associated with it. So when you hear that Amin arpeggio in "Badge" your ear tells your fingers what it might be. So when you hear something similar in another song, you have a head start on finding it.

John

Dont really like this thread but just wanted to say thanks for this, I am trying to learn as much theory as I can and it sucks to start out in scales and chords (other than the real basics) and have been looking for ways to practice learning both other than playing them up and down over and over again.

I like a lot of these ideas even though I dont fully understand a lot of them yet, I hate how most books just throw a scale at you without actual ways to learn it instead of just memorizing the pattern.

Hope you write more like what you just did as it gave me a lot of ideas.

 

[JimmyM]

On a personal note, I find that too much theory puts you in a box, and you have to bring that box around with you everywhere you go and use it with everything you do. Kind of a restraint, wouldn't you say?

Only people who don't know theory very well say that. I know of not a single player who knows theory well and considers it a box. However, those who study only scalar theory will have a tendency to use only those scales in their playing, which actually is a box. That's why so many of us say to study chordal theory. But if you're a creative person, nothing you do on the academic side of music will stifle that creativity, and in fact, it will take creative people a lot farther than if they didn't know it.

 

[c4lvint1me]

which fingers do you use to play chords??

 

[JimmyM]

which fingers do you use to play chords??

The ones attached to my hands.

 

[Fergie Fulton]

The ones attached to my hands.

LOL.....such a straight answer for such an ambiguous question.....oh the joys of the internet.

 

[JTE]

The ones attached to my hands.

Yeah.

I tried using someone else's fingers, but it was really clumsy and problematic. I wound up having to write the bass lines out so they could read 'em, but they were musically illiterate. That's why I went back to my own fingers.

John

 

[vishalicious]

What are the best fingers to use for metal?