Best post on here.
It's surprising how often "bass players" around here tell begginers (or anyone for that matter) to "forget about scales, arpeggios are heaps better". Like what the!? Yeah jump straight into arpeggios - major triad - 1 3 5 .. oh. Um. What do those numbers mean ?
Wall of text coming, sorry.
They mean shapes - you don't have to know the scale tones to implement the shapes, but you can learn the theory later and it will be overlaying theory over something you already use, which is an easier way round.
If you have a student starting out with scales - say you teach them the major scale, and most of what they're learning is blues/ rock.
Ok so we're in the key of C. We've got our C major scale. So let's go through the scale tones. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
Great.
So the student wants to learn a tune - it's in C, as it's a a blues-rock tune the first chord is C7.
Oh dear, why is the seven flatted? Student is confused. So this nice shape we've taught this major scale which is so useful doesn't work with the major scale on chord one. So even if we talk about diatonic harmony and how there's 3 majors and 3 minors in a key that derive from a major scale parent we have to find a specific example tune to start with to make sure we can illustrate the point or chances are the first tune the student looks at, if it's rock or blues based, or jazz, won't make sense.
So what I choose to do is to teach the major and minor triad and dominant arpeggio as a shape, not a formula, and the same with the minor pentatonic scale (which applies to a huge amount of blues examples). The student can use this for a while (even if it's just a week or two) and it WORKS. They can get a tune with a variety of chords, chromatic and diatonic, and play the chord tones and it will sound fine, no nasty surprises. There's lots of choice in terms of tunes to work from.
If you have any experience transcribing the chords for a lot of pop tunes (at work I have about 600 in a folder) then you will know that apart from nursery rhymes, most tunes contain a mixture of chromatic and diatonic chords, not just straight diatonic harmony - sure diatonic harmony is there but it's a lower percentage than you might think - maybe 15% if that. Even I, IV, V tunes contain 7th chords usually instead of a Maj7 chord for chords I and IV. So major scale at this point won't help, or maybe it can but you need to choose your examples carefully. So I try to set up the student further before approaching the major scale.
So they learned the shapes, not the formulas, for the minor pentatonic, the minor and major triads and the dominant chord, and they've applied them to an example - and when you have this flexibility there are many tunes this can be applied to. (Try and find a tune with a bassline that follows the major scale absolutely consistently and you'll struggle- most grooves are in mixolydian or pentatonic from the chord 1 root, and most tunes that are in a major key use chromatic chords at some point and tunes that use major scale exclusively are hard to find and probably off the students's radar).
All this is practical and can be implemented immediately.
Once they've done it, moving to teaching the major scale is easy - they have the finger strength, they understand well the concept of applying patterns to root notes and can understand it's usefulness - and they've learned a fair amount of the fingerboard just looking for root notes. Because they've used the minor pentatonic scale they've even used a scale so they've got experience with one scale, so hopefully they're receptive to the idea that scales can be useful.
At this point I introduce the major scale AND diatonic harmony. I explain how major scales give rise to keys, and how using triads, the major scale gives rise to a series of 3 majors, 3 minors (ignore the diminished for now) within that single key. I explain how knowing the notes in the key gives you access to not only to the chords that work in one key, but to all the in between notes that lead to runs between roots, then give the student a specific example to take home that contains diatonic chords and tell them to work out short scalar runs to connect chords using the major scale.
Because they've learned the shapes of the major, minor and dominant at an earlier stage it's one less thing to think about, and it's fairly simple to show them how these shapes relate to the major scale once they know both. It also means they can handle it if a chromatic chord comes up in a tune - so if they're in C major and there's an F minor chord, they won't go 'what do I do, that's not in the C major scale'. As you explain what diatonic chords are, you can straight away explain chromatic chords and the student has enough of a pre-understanding of the components that it will make sense.
It's all the same information I just find that the order I teach it in affects the rate at which the student practices it and understands why it works. I just find if you start with the major scale it can lead to problems. For example - question - "why is this scale useful, it doesn't seem to be in any of the music I want to learn?" I find that by STARTING with the major scale, everything is new essentially, everything comes all at once and because music is actually not as simple as diatonic harmony, it's necessary to do some preparatory steps to really move through the material.
Sorry for the wall of text - I've actually simplified what I've written here because each student is different, but this is in general what I've found works quickest for getting people on board with the major scale and diatonic harmony. As usual on talkbass everything turns into a polarised debate - e.g. technique VS feel, or reading VS non-reading, or this case scales VS chord tones. My argument is not against scales, but it's about the order in which things are taught.
I think that saying something like 'I'm brilliant and I play scales so if you don't think I'm brilliant screw you and good luck with your life' is picking one component which is essential, yes, but it's ignoring the question of what order things should happen in.
We all find it hard to remember what we actually did in the early stages. Maybe scales are the thing that makes everything make sense, I know that for me scales pulled everything together. But I think it's important to remember we don't do everything all at once and the people here advocating chord tones are saying 'if you don't want to do scales NOW, then do chord tones and you will be able to apply them NOW'.
The step from that to scales is a natural one, IMO.
There are other ways of doing things - I've tried starting students with the major scale. In my experience, on bass, it doesn't work as well. Even Ed Friedlands bass method teaches 'the box shape' before any scales come up. There's no shame in a few shapes.
