Note playing - thought process

[ragetoca]

I am a bass player that started as a keyboardist and for the longest I have been playing bass always thinking about “piano notes” when I play bass.
I recently started taking some bass lessons and my teacher is having me learn to remember / memorize the notes as numbers, he calls them by their note function etc.
Let me see if I can ask this the way I am thinking of it: How do you think about the notes you play during a groove (enhancing a Chord) and or when soloing / improvising? Do you think of them in terms of modes, numbers, actual individual notes ??

 

[Lo-E]

I never really thought a lot about it but, now that you mention it, I do think of them as numbers. More specifically, I think of them as degrees of the scale (5th, flat 7th, etc…). I know the note names but I don’t really think about them when I’m playing; I think numerically.

 

[Bob_Ross]

If it’s a more or less “tonal” piece of music, I generally think of the notes I’m playing in terms of their intervallic relationship to the root note of the chord of the moment.

I probably think about note names also; at this point the two concepts are pretty deeply intertwined & interconnected.

 

[JRA]

any/all of the above. if i'm really familiar with the piece, i have no clue how to describe the process...it's not 'thought' as in "thinking about it."

 

[J Wilson]

I'm a classically-trained piano player who always wanted to play bass. I walked away from keys to bass in the 70's, but it did take a while to discard thinking as a piano player to thinking as a bassist.

You certainly take the musical concepts and theory from piano with you, but past that, they are very different, primarily due to the pitch overlap (strings tuned in fourths and the ability to play the same note in several spots instead of one) and it takes both hands to make one note. BUT there are no black keys, so every scale feels the same.

I think of notes as numbers, as this frees you of thinking in keys (most songs play identically by shifting up and down the neck; on a keyboard, C and C-Sharp finger VERY differently for instance), but once I'm in place on the neck, I simply play the song without much more to it.

 

[JenderBazzFass]

I just think of the note's relationship to the chord. This is the root, the fifth, the third, etc

 

[c-ba55]

I started on clarinet, which also has lots of special fingerings. And at least in school band, you don't really know what chord is happening or why you're playing the notes you are. On bass, all that is necessarily different.

It's a bit mixed up in my head now, since I have really internalized the notes and the scales. If I am playing a C and then I go for an E, I don't have to think about the #3 to be having all the thoughts associated with "major third". If that makes any sense. And also the fingering, if I am on the root and I go up a string and down a fret, that also makes me think "3"-related things without maybe thinking of the number per se.

Transposing is easy on bass and actually the less you think when you're doing that, the better! Especially when songs modulate. I played a song yesterday that had chords AM7 | G#m7 | F#m7 G#m7 | C#m7 | AM7 | G#m7 | F#m7 | B9. And then it modulates up a step, and rather than thinking about whatever notes those are, I just trick myself into thinking B is an A and go relative from there, with the same fingerings.

BUT, what I've recently been spending more time on is trying to actually explicitly think of the chords more as their function in the scale degree as I learn and play, so that I get better at recognizing chord progressions.

 

[SJan3]

I am a bass player that started as a keyboardist and for the longest I have been playing bass always thinking about “piano notes” when I play bass.
I recently started taking some bass lessons and my teacher is having me learn to remember / memorize the notes as numbers, he calls them by their note function etc.
Let me see if I can ask this the way I am thinking of it: How do you think about the notes you play during a groove (enhancing a Chord) and or when soloing / improvising? Do you think of them in terms of modes, numbers, actual individual notes ??

Not unlike any instrument, you have to know the fret board so you know how to get the tones you want to hear. Practice scales and arpeggios to train your hands and ears. Eventually you will learn what to play in order to produce the desired sounds. Get the diatonic modes and inversions down since, unlike piano, you'll be playing one note at a time, most of the time.

 

[Wasnex]

I am a bass player that started as a keyboardist and for the longest I have been playing bass always thinking about “piano notes” when I play bass.
I recently started taking some bass lessons and my teacher is having me learn to remember / memorize the notes as numbers, he calls them by their note function etc.
Let me see if I can ask this the way I am thinking of it: How do you think about the notes you play during a groove (enhancing a Chord) and or when soloing / improvising? Do you think of them in terms of modes, numbers, actual individual notes ??

I never really developed the ability to think numbers. I do think it's valuable as it makes it easier to analyze music and to transpose.

Playing music involves a lot of processes that should become automated. This information is stored in library and accessed with various archetypes that serve as keys to the library. When you see a note, ideally you simply play it without too much conscious effort.

Automated processes often involve integrating several tasks that you have to break into individual components when you first start. For example to play an E, you have to figure out where the note is and then think about fretting it with one finger while plucking it with another. At first you may need to press down the string with one finger and then pluck with another finger on the other hand. But soon you should be able to do both at the same time. As you develop more skill you will think about how much force to fret the note with and how hard to pluck it. You will also figure out how to apply aftertouch to control how long the note sounds and how it stops. All of these processes should eventually become automated. You might think about them consciously every now and then, but they should be mostly occurring in the background.

When I see a chord symbol it opens a wide variety of possible responses that are largely automated. However there is a conscious level also. For me the conscious level shifts constantly. I might think of a specific note, a specific pattern, chord tones, non-chord tones, key centers, mode, scale, etc. The choices are informed by what is going on around me. By this I mean I react to the music.

What may be going on with your instructors advice: You need to be moving to a place where you are playing the bass directly; rather than through the lens of the piano. It's going to take time.

 

[JonathanPDX]

As a bassist, our job is often to outline chords and, when nobody else is clearly stating their qualities, it's important that we can jump in and provide this context to the audience.

If the chord chart starts with C major and a guitar is strumming away, we can play C or G and let the guitar cover the rest. But that guitarist goes to solo and now, if their solo doesn't revolve around E, the audience can hear a bit of an ambiguous situation, where the quality of that C chord could be anything because nobody is clearly stating the third. So, as the bassist, when that guitar switches over to soloing I want to incorporate that E into my bass line to remind everyone of the quality, that the C is in fact a major chord.

It doesn't just have to be chord tones, either. Let's say the next song is FMaj7#11. That's an F major with a B natural, which gives it a lot of color. When the soloist goes to do his thing over that chord I may want to make sure to pass by that B natural on my way to, or from, F, to provide that texture and context. It's going to change the vibe of the solo even if the soloist himself doesn't play B natural.

 

[Shenron]

How do you think about the notes you play during a groove (enhancing a Chord) and or when soloing / improvising? Do you think of them in terms of modes, numbers, actual individual notes ??

Despite my quite extensive music theory knowledge, when I play I think of notes basically only in term of sound.

 

[Pocket Dave]

I think in numbers. For instance, if I want to enhance an A major chord during a part, rather than consciously playing around A, C# and E, a major triad, I think in terms of 1, 3 and 5. While it's still important to know all the notes on a fret or fingerboard, developing a numbers mindset gives you a useful shorthand.

It also allows for instant transposing on a gig or recording date. We were doing a festival support slot Saturday for a large crowd (legacy act headlining). The BL had given us a few new songs to learn for the gig earlier in the week, and I dutifully charted one particularly complex arrangement. As we finished a quick sound check with only enough time to eat and clean up before downbeat, the BL turned to me and said, "hey can you transpose that song from C to F? I sound terrible singing it in C."

I told him, "no problem". Then I went to get a bite to eat and get cleaned up in plenty of time to take the stage without giving it another thought.

If I had charted that song using notes, I would've spent my dinner time re-charting/transposing. Since it was charted using numbers, there was no need to transpose, just make a mental note of "F instead of C".

Singers do that all the time, BTW. Maybe they're getting over a cold and need to lower the key a step, maybe they're just not feeling it, but they almost always wait to tell you until either ten minutes before performance, or right before you play the song in the middle of a set. "Oh by the way".

Even on simple songs you've maybe played hundreds of times, getting into the habit of thinking in numbers allows you to quick-transpose in your head if and when the need arises.

 

[Smallmouth_Bass]

I never really thought a lot about it but, now that you mention it, I do think of them as numbers. More specifically, I think of them as degrees of the scale (5th, flat 7th, etc…). I know the note names but I don’t really think about them when I’m playing; I think numerically.

If it’s a more or less “tonal” piece of music, I generally think of the notes I’m playing in terms of their intervallic relationship to the root note of the chord of the moment.

I probably think about note names also; at this point the two concepts are pretty deeply intertwined & interconnected.

I am the same. I think of the notes as scale degrees in relation to the chord. Sometimes, on a more basic level I am just thinking general fretboard shapes.

 

[Ritter667]

If it’s a more or less “tonal” piece of music, I generally think of the notes I’m playing in terms of their intervallic relationship to the root note of the chord of the moment.

I probably think about note names also; at this point the two concepts are pretty deeply intertwined & interconnected.

Same...

When I do think about what I am playing, sensing would perhaps be a better word though, I think of the notes in as how they relate in intervals to each other.

More so in terms of the actual sound of those intervals though than their names.

You can't play music with names.

And don't forget (in terms of performance at least):

"You think, you stink!"
- Billy Sheehan

&

"I always like to say that I try not to think too much because I think thinking is evil"
- Julie Slick

 

[Dust2Dust]

I'm pretty stuck on the root note being a note and then the rest is numbers within the scale

 

[brianrost]

I think in numbers. Helps a lot when transposing!

In keys I don't play much like F# major I have to think for a second what the scale notes are by name. That can make reading difficult, especially when there are no chord markings.

F# major is F# G# A# B C# D# E#
Even worse: G# major is G# A# B# C# D# E# F## Thank goodness we have flat keys

 

[Bob_Ross]

Despite my quite extensive music theory knowledge, when I play I think of notes basically only in term of sound.

Composer Charles Ives once famously asked, incredulously, "What does sound have to do with music?!?!"

But I think that's right up there with Igor Stravinsky's "Music is incapable of expressing anything" quote; neither composer was saying what those quotes seem to mean literally. Rather, they were coyly and rhetorically pointing out how the word "music" can refer to many different things on many different levels...at least one of which makes no sound at all (until a musician executes the instructions).

 

[Ostie]

I don’t really think about numbers. It would probably help me if I did it more. I’m familiar with Nashville numbering and I can figure it out, but I think more about notes than numbers. I started on guitar, and that was all notes in chords: major, minor, seventh, ninth, etc. So when I switched to bass I had that background, but now now I think more about notes in a pattern, or a walking line, or runs up and down. I haven’t had any real formal training since band class in middle school. I know it would help, and I really should get some instruction, but I also play guitar, mandolin and percussion, so I’m not sure where to start.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

It sounds like they are teaching Nashville numbers which is a great way to think of arrangements and transposing.

Lately I've been tending to think more in intervals and bass motion, not numbers or keys.

 

[dmt]

I mix and match numbers and note names and intervals. Shapes. Plus of course there’s "autopilot".

Other times, I’m thinking more about my right hand. Or the other people involved, the music, the groove. Or my tone, lol. Equipment issues… Etc.

But anyway, yeah, the number system is very useful for bass (and guitar) playing. Very. Transposing (as has been mentioned), but also understanding chord progressions, chord spelling, theory, being able to communicate with a guitarist… you’ll want to know the number system for referring to notes, for sure (not that it is absolutely required, but it sure helps). My main point: your bass teacher isn’t crazy or a proponent of some obscure path