Learning Scales

[lfmn16]

Forget the apps, the books, the YouTube videoed. Go find a good teacher. In order to progress quickly, you need feedback on what you are doing right and wrong.

 

[gregouille23]

Plenty of great replies and valuable info so far. I would also recommend this exercise from Mark over at Talkingbass. It consists of playing the arpeggios of the diatonic chords in all major keys along the circle of 5th/4th (C major key = C Dm Em F G Am Bdim and so on). You can then do the same for minor keys etc... There is a video embedded in the link below explaining the exercise.
Awesome Music Theory Exercise For Bass - TalkingBass

Good luck! Enjoy the ride

 

[gregouille23]

One more thing... To learn the fretboard, it is important to also practice saying out loud the notes you are playing. If you do not do that, you probably will only learn visual patterns for each scale, arpeggio... and not really the notes themselves.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Get your major and minor scales down cold.

Perhaps this place might help:
Link Removed

Good luck,
Dirk

 

[Koshchei]

Scales describe the relationship between notes in western music. Different scales change the way these notes sound in relation to one another, the emotions they convey, and the musical narrative they tell.

At the very minimum, you need to know the modes of the major scale (ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian, locrian) and their respective qualities (major, minor, dominant, diminished/half-diminished), which will give you a stepping off point in understanding the music you're playing, and how to build bass lines/improvise over it. From there, there are a ton of modified scales and their respective modes, symmetrical scales like whole-tone and diminished, etc.

Demystifying both music and your instrument makes you a FAR better musician.

 

[Jeff Hughes]

Pentatonic scales can get you pretty far. They are easy to learn on bass. You can learn one or two positions by memory quickly since they are pretty square and have fewer notes. Like all scales, you can move them up and down the fretboard for different keys or different voicing.

Best of all, they usually leave out the notes that might sound wrong with the chord, yet they allow you to experiment with throwing in chromatic movements or color notes here and there.

There is only one scale: chromatic. (Humor) A great guitar player I know used to say that as a joke.

Jack Bruce said: "If you play the wrong note, just play it again and they will think you meant to do it."

 

[mrcbass]

I've been a musician for a very long time, and scales are just one of the building blocks of understanding music's structures. I just watched a video from SBL about scales and how they don't seem to apply to most "real" musical endeavors and he made a statement that made a great deal of sense to this old dog.

Paraphrasing: Music is a language, scales are the alphabet for that language.

While the actual scales that we practice are rarely used in traditional song composition, they do help us hone our ear's and finger's sensitivity to the science behind the tonality that we enjoy listening to. Scale knowledge can help with the absorbsion of deeper theory concepts that can ultimately lead to unconscious immersion in musical understanding. Scale knowledge leads to understanding arpeggios and intervals that work with in a tonal base.

In short, once you really know your scales, you don't really ever have to think about them.

Scales are also beneficial in learning an instrument. Practiced properly, they help you to familiarize yourself with your instrument's tonal range (in our case the full fret board), which, in the long term, allows you to easily find flexibility in creating music.

 

[Rib 13]

Spazz's quick TB Modes primer...This is for anyone wanting to start and quickly wrap their head around it...There is much more to this, not to mention advanced theory, but this below s a quick way to understand where its going....Remember, its called Music Theory, not Music Fact:

All Out of Key of C but can be applied to any Key

C D E F G A B C - Ionian - Note the E note is in a Major position, G perfect Fifth - this is a Major mode (I)
D E F G A B C D - Dorian - Note the F note is in a Minor position, A perfect Fifth - this is a Minor mode (ii)
E F G A B C D E - Phrygian - Note the G note is in a Minor position, B perfect Fifth - this is a Minor mode (iii)
F G A B C D E F - Lydian - Note the A note is in a Major position, C perfect Fifth - this is a Major mode(IV)
G A B C D E F G - Mixolydian - Note the B note is in a Major position, D perfect Fifth - this is a Major mode (V)
A B C D E F G A - Aeolian - Note the C note is in a Minor position, E Perfect Fifth - this is a Minor mode (vi)
B C D E F G A B - Locrian - Note the D note in a Minor position, but F is half step down from Pefect making this a Diminished mode (actually a half diminished, talk about that in a minute) (vii)....a flatted Fifth note is Diminished; if a sharp 5th note is Augmented

Note the Roman numerals in Capital Letters for Major and lower case for Minor...Remember, it can be applied to any key:
C Ionian is C D E F G A B C
but G Ionian is G A B C D E F# G.....same pattern, different notes

Now look at the positions of the other notes relative to each other. Pay attention to all, but the seventh note is one that usually winds up in one of two positions as well. If a half-step away from Root, it is a MAJOR 7th...if it is a whole step away from Root, it is a Minor 7th

SO, lets just look at the Ionian mode (I)....If you play its Root/Third/and Fifth (C, E, G) - that is a C Major chord or CMaj (or just abridged to C)....if you add its Seventh note in its position (C, E, G, B) that is a CMaj7 chord...Now get this: if you continue counting up from the Root to its Octave, the Octave is the 8th note....the octave of the Second note (D) is the Ninth note......So if you play C, E, G, B (CMajor7) and now add that higher D (C,E,G,B,D) you have just played a CMaj9....If you dont add the seventh (B) but still play the D, and just play C,E,G,D, you have played a Cadd9.......Heres where it gets tricky: If I play the C, E, G,B (root, third, fifth, and Major 7th) and play a Db a half step back instead of the D, this is a CMaj7b9

Look at Aeolian If you play A, C, E, that is Amin....If you add the Seventh note (G) in its position within this mode ( a whole step away from Root/Octave), it is a minor 7........So, playing A, C, E, G is Am7

Apply the logic as before: Octave of 2nd note is 9th note you would count, Octave of 4th note is 11th note, Octave of 6th note is 13th note you would count...this is where 9, 11, and 13 chords come from

Quick Rule of Thumb -
Major 3rd plus a Major7 is a Maj7 chord (i.e. C,E,G,B is a CMaj7 Chord...can be found in Ionian and Lydian)
Minor 3rd plus Minor7 is a m7 chord (i.e. A,C,E,G is an Am7 chord...found in Dorian, Phrygian, Aeolian, Locrian)
HOWEVER
Major 3rd plus Minor7 is a Dominant7 chord (i.e. if I play G,B,D,F...the G root, B third in Major position, F seventh in a minor position) is written as G7 with no Maj or m...Can be found in Mixolydian

Because Locrian has a half step flat fifth note and a Seventh a whole step away from the octave (minor position), that is called half diminished

WARNING: Its very easy to start learning theory and to start playing from your head instead of your heart...In the end, play what sounds right for a part, even if it doesnt make diatonic or theoretical sense...I use theory as a skeleton to compose or as a trampoline in case I get lost...Im still going to try to "sing" when I play even if the theory isnt applicable

 

[RabidMusic]

Practicing scales improves muscle memory, making it easier to finger notes and play.
Playing scales helps you understand and know the notes in a key. Thus you will get better at improvising.
Pushing those scales will help increase your speed.

 

[Killing Floor]

Yep. Pretty much all of it.

If you buy a bass and spend enough time noodling you can probably gather enough experience to memorize some songs. But if you invest the effort to learn how this stuff works you'll be able to play and work and communicate with other musicians and learn and write songs, etc. It's valuable to understand how music works in order to become a musician. I said it like that and excluded the word "better" because this is one of the many things that differentiates being an owner of an instrument who can bang out a few memorized tunes and being a musician.

Give a man a fish, he eats for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he gets to drink beer in a boat!

 

[SteveCS]

Plenty of great replies and valuable info so far. I would also recommend this exercise from Mark over at Talkingbass. It consists of playing the arpeggios of the diatonic chords in all major keys along the circle of 5th/4th (C major key = C Dm Em F G Am Bdim and so on). You can then do the same for minor keys etc... There is a video embedded in the link below explaining the exercise.
Awesome Music Theory Exercise For Bass - TalkingBass

Good luck! Enjoy the ride

There is an alternative to going through the diatonic arpeggios, which is the known variously as the Flesch/Galamian/Ševčík arpeggio sequences. I started using similar sequences for practice a year or so back as I feel they have 1) a more profound impact on ear development, 2) are more interesting on the ear, 3) have less tendancy to lock you into the usual pattern playing, but as always YMMV.

Essentially you take any note and play the arpeggii that include that note as any degree, but with that note always in the bass. Here's an extract of just one of a number of arrangements I wrote out for myself, using 'C' is the low note, and covering only triads and always over 2 octaves:

 

[two fingers]

There are two steps. You need to know both scales AND chords.

Once you know those, you can be given nothing but a chord chart and an overall "feel" of the song and make up a bass line as you go.

 

[two fingers]

By the way @DonH Welcome to TalkBass!!!!!

 

[Ric5]

I'm a beginner on bass and looking for suggestions about learning scales. What are the useful reasons to learn scales? I noticed in videos and books that scales are played in a sequence; however, I also read somewhere that the scale notes can be played in any sequence to create bass lines. How can basslines be created with scales? What scales are good to start learning? I already jumped ahead to learn rock and jazz basslines in a few songs that I like.

you need to know notes and scales … but once you learned the scale you don't need to keep practicing them.

 

[bherman]

Let me recommend 2 things on top of other's great advice above:

1) Learn to read music, it'll open up many doors to learning especially as you get more advanced. Think of it like learning a language - you could learn Spanish just by hanging around enough people who speak it and learn to converse, but it can read it you a) learn faster and b) have access to written materials. If you are new to reading, I would recommend Ed Friedland's method book, find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Leonard-Bass...WAZTY81J7FS&psc=1&refRID=H4Z5FKKSZWAZTY81J7FS

2) the best resource that I found for really learning scales, modes, and arpeggios is a book called "Daily Warm Up Exercises for Bass Guitar. It has scale studies written out for each of the 12 keys - scales, modes, and arpeggios, in two octaves. I use it frequently. When I was just learning this stuff, I set a goal of working through each exercise for one key starting with C, for a week (too me about 15-20 minutes). Then I'd move on to the next key - Db - for a week. All the way through to B, then start back at the beginning with C again, repeat indefinitely as a great warmup. Some of the exercises are hard at first, but as you get the hang of it they get easier. Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Warm-E...for+bass+guitar&qid=1596729913&s=books&sr=1-3

Learning songs and bass lines is fun and all, but if you really want to become a versatile bass player, you really need to know your way around all notes in all positions on the bass.

 

[emmadangerheart]

Definitely learn the major scale. Make sure you can be able to play it up and down the fretboard, and learn to play it backwards and forwards. Scales are definitely the building blocks of music theory and creating bass riffs, etc. Also helps to find someone who could help you learn them and offer criticism as well.

 

[LeFunk Machine]

Chord tones (Outlining the chords) and rhythm will take you a long way.

 

[Yellow Bang66]

In its simplest form, songs are based on a key (scale). A scale provides you with a palette of chords that can be used within the key.



From a bass players perspective, the chord tones contained within the scale are the foundation for creating basslines. Other notes (diatonic, chromatic, approach. neighbor. etc.) can be used to add some "flavor."



The Major scale. Know it! Know the formula for constructing a major scale! Play it on one string, over two strings, over three strings, over four strings, one octave, two octave, starting from the first finger, starting from the second/third finger, starting from the pinky. Get the idea? Most every other scale you learn will be compared back to the Major scale.

Now, with all that said, I would highly recommend that you start with the basics -- intervals. From intervals, move on to chord tones (chord tones are the bread and butter for bass players). Once you have a firm grip on intervals and chord tones, then jump into the world of scales.

Welcome to the low end!

Edited to add: Re: playing songs. That is afterall, why we pick up the instrument. Playing along to songs should be a constant in your practice routine.

My tip, What helped me, Play the Major scale, Knowit forward, bacward,& sideways. learn what it sounds like, know/learn to identify it by how it makes you feel and how to manipulate it(make it feel a certain way). also really helps to know the relative Minor scales too, then the corosponding pentonic scale. Play it against a droned chord or note, get to know it while listening to the radio too. it also really helps to learn all the different positions too, all over the fretboard. get to know the triads too,while your at it. GL

 

[SteveCS]

...
and 6 on B (if you have a 5-string);
...

Which I clearly don't, else I would have said 18, not 6!

 

[HolmeBass]

I know of diatonic and chromatic, but have not heard of approach or neighbor - I'll have to look it up. Do you use Pentatonic notes/scales? I have practiced intervals and okay with that. Are chord tones within chords? I thought chords is a bit rare on bass.

So you know intervals. Do you know why a “major 3rd” or a “perfect 4th” are called by those names?

Learn the major scale inside out. Most of musical nomenclature is derived from the relationships between notes embodied in the major scale.

You won’t really understand what “the five chord” is until you know the major scale. Seven notes, only 2 more than a pentatonic scale. Easy.