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methods book to help teach the neck

C

CherylTheSinger

Jul 19, 2013
66
13
somewhere in the woods in PA
#1
I read well. I have learned to play a lot of instruments. While I am sailing away in Simandl on double bass, I am struggling with the electric. When I read pitches or chord progressions, or walking lines, or simply told a progression with roots, it takes me forever to play them if they are not in half or first position. I am constantly second guessing what I am supposed to be playing. If I could know the neck past a few frets, I think my life would be so nice.

For the love of whatever God one chooses to believe it, is there a methods book out there that runs exercises and teaches one to move up the next slowly, identifying where one is with one's hand, like Simandl, or guitar books, or violin books, etc.? One would think I could transfer this thought, but nope, not me ack.

Help! I am sick of crying every time I pick up this instrument cause I just don't know the neck. I swear I could know this neck in a matter of a few hours, if I just had a little book of exercises that one plays defining where the pitches are in each position. I know my chords, I can spell them out, I am in the process of learning patterns, fingerings, progressions, etc, but not knowing the names of the pitches for certain past a few frets (I constantly have to check if that is really an "A" etc.) is making my playing life unhappy.

Oh, and if it's not too much trouble, if this book must be in tab, could it also have notation in it?

Is this instrument so new to the world that I have to write my own? Perhaps a guitar book that I type out everything in bass clef? Heck I can transpose treble to bass in my brain quickly I could even settle for a guitar book.
 
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#2
CherylTheSinger said:
....... I swear I could know this neck in a matter of a few hours, if I just had a little book of exercises that one plays defining where the pitches are in each position. I know my chords, I can spell them out, I am in the process of learning patterns, fingerings, progressions, etc, but not knowing the names of the pitches for certain past a few frets (I constantly have to check if that is really an "A" etc.) is making my playing life unhappy.
Click to expand...
There are many books that speak to this, however, I think the following information may get you started. Our fretboard is laid out in patterns. Once you know what the patterns look like you can then take them up the neck into many different locations. You already know first position. See if this helps:
upload_2014-8-24_6-54-41-png.png


Major scale box showing scale degree numbers and the root note on the 4th string.
G~~|---2---|-------|---3---|---4---| 1st string
D~~|---6---|-------|---7---|---8---|
A~~|---3---|---4---|-------|---5---|
E~~|-------|---R---|-------|---2---|4th string
I'm sure you have seen this box with dots. Adding the scale degree numbers caused the box to come alive for me.

Place the box's R (root note) on the 4th string, 1st fret. That placement puts the notes of the F major scale at your fingertips. R is now on the F, 2 is on the G note, 3 is on the open A, 4 is on the A#/Bb, 5 is on the C, 6 is on the open D, 7 is on the E and 8 is over the octave F note. Song in the scale/key of F; place the box's "R" on an F note and the notes of the F scale/key await you.

  • Want the G scale notes? Put the box's R over the G that is at the 4th string 3rd fret. Yep all the scale notes of the G major scale await you within the box.
  • Want the A scale notes? Put the box's R over the A note at the 4th string 5th fret.
  • Want the B scale notes? B is at the 4th string, 7th fret.
  • Want the C scale notes? C is at the 4th string, 8th fret.
  • Want the D scale notes? D is at the 4th string, 10th fret.
  • And E is at the 4th string 12th fret.
  • We start over at the 13th fret. Place the box and the notes of the scale await you.

What about placing the R on the 3rd string 3rd fret? Yep you now have the C scale notes. Learn the notes on the 4th and 3rd string and use that knowledge to place your major scale box. C @ the 3rd string 3rd fret or C @ the 4th string 8th fret, or C @ the 3rd string 15th fret. There will be at least three locations to play your C major scale.

Go to the Getting Started string How to get started? and scroll down to post #4 and 14 for more information on all this R-3-5-7 stuff. R-3-5-7 is spelling used in a maj7 chord. R-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7 are the generic notes of the natural minor scale. Where you place the R note takes it out of being generic and assigns it to a specific scale. My point the generic pattern can be placed to make specific scales, chords, arpeggios, etc.

Good luck.
 
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#6
I recently started working with a book called "Daily Warmup Exercises for Bass Guitar", by Steven Mooney. Basically its scales (all seven degrees) and arpeggios in two octaves for every key. Gets me from low E all the way up to the high e on the g-string. Also has the bonus of burning all of the chord scales into my old brain. I've been using one key per week as a warmup; takes about 15 minutes to go through all of the exercises in a key, so its just about the right amount of time. Its in notation (but it has tabs below); frankly I find the tabs annoying, as my eyes keep thinking of it as fingering, which its not.
 
#7
I also agree on doing Ant Wellington's stuff, but would like to add another suggestion - you just can't go wrong with Gerry Willis' "Fingerboard Harmony for Bass". It may be somewhat tedious and slow to go through, but his method really focuses on the APPLIED command over the fingerboard and how to connect it in a meaningful manner, with harmony and supporting it in mind.
 
#9
BassChuck said:
Not to be an ass, but how do you 'sail away' with Simandl on DB and have difficulty with EB? Why don't you play Simandl on EB? Somehow someone put the idea in my head that DB was harder to play.
Click to expand...

I wondered about that too, but then I know a couple of DB players and they never move their hand out of first position which, I suppose, works for the type of music they do. Could be the case here.
 
#10
GastonD said:
I also agree on doing Ant Wellington's stuff, but would like to add another suggestion - you just can't go wrong with Gerry Willis' "Fingerboard Harmony for Bass". It may be somewhat tedious and slow to go through, but his method really focuses on the APPLIED command over the fingerboard and how to connect it in a meaningful manner, with harmony and supporting it in mind.
Click to expand...

I usually don't have much trouble getting through method books, but that Willis book is pretty tough.
 
#12
"OP if you want a fun challenge to help you really learn all your scale positions, here's a fact: in a 5 fret span across 4 strings on a bass, every note in the chromatic scale appears at least once. So a cool exercise is to pick a 5 fret span (say 4th fret through 8th fret) and play your major scales in all 12 keys (and whatever other scales/modes you want) all inside that fret span, without every leaving it. You obviously can't always complete every scale in the sense of running up and down an octave (for instance, in the fret span I cited earlier, playing an E major scale straight up and down an octave is impossible). What I'm suggesting is finding all the notes in the E major scale that occur in that fret span and playing them. Then move on to a new key, like B for instance. This really helped me learn the fretboard."

I just quoted myself from another thread. This an exercise that really helped me to learn the fret board. I would apply this exercise to the changes of jazz standards and also run arpeggios in the fret span as well as scales. Great practice. For books I like Chuck Sher's Improviser's Bass Method.
 
#13
The method used.to learn the neck on the EB was to go through the circle of 5ths on each string.
At first I would focus on playing each note of the circle on only 1 string and only up to the 1287th fret. While doing so I would say the name of the note out loud. I would do this on each string until I felt relatively comfortable and made no mistakes.
I would then do the same thing on the next string, then the next etc. Once I got comfortable I would then do the same thing while using a metronome, slowly increasing the tempo as time went by till I could do it without losing time or making any mistakes.

In would then change it up amlnd play the circle of 5ths playing one note per string,.again only up to the 12th fret. In other words C on the E string, G on the A, D in the D, A on the G,.then either continue Fri the G string back to the E string or start again on the E string.
I would then do this exercise with a metronome.

Basically I'd make a game out of it and have fun.

Once this was comfy, l would do the same from the 12th fret up, and then finally using the whole neck.

After all that was said and done, I did the same with the Cycle of 4ths.

All of this would be just 5 or 10 minutes of my fault practice routine. It worked wonders!

I hope this helps.
 

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