Major Scales for Bassists, Part I

[@youknodavibes9601]

man Kyle, I was at the gym yesterday feeling frustrated that I don't know how to express myself on bass as a beginner playing less than 6 months. then YT recommended your new improv video and I felt so happy with your calm and relaxed style of teaching. I had always wished that I had joined a band in high school so it is even cooler that you are a band director. with this video, I had a question or two. should I spend like one week or so working on a specific scale, like E major, such as shown in this video and then move on to the next? it just seems overwhelming to move around the whole fretboard with every single key and thinking that I will be able to memorize it all with only 30 mins a day. thanks a ton Kyle and really looking forward to the videos! hoping we get one in the Minor Scale too 😊

[@KYLETEACHESBASSYT]

Man that's really heartening to hear, thanks for the kind words brother! So, a couple things: first, do you know your whole fretboard yet? Like, can you identify all the notes on it without having to think too long about it? If not, that's ok, but I would start there before you tackle scales. If you're all good there, then... Yeah, I would recommend staying with one scale over the course of a few practice sessions, but you don't *have* to go as deep as I did here. This lesson is really to show how to thoroughly know a scale over your whole bass. If you want to just practice spelling the scale (so you know what notes are in it), and then move right to jamming to a track with it, go ahead! My philosophy is: if you make *any* progress, and you enjoyed it, that's successful practice. If that means working on a different scale every time, why not.y method in this vid is kind of the "if you wanna go HAM on it and learn all of your scales COLD, here's how you can do it." Hope that answer offered something!

[@KYLETEACHESBASSYT]

One last thing: if you do follow the method above, you'll notice that every scale will get easier than the last, so that's a plus.

[@perry37]

Hi Kyle, this was good information for me as I'm struggling learning the fretboard. This opened my eyes to the scales in relation to the fretboard. I'm going to try this practice and I'll let you know. Stay tuned. Thanks

[@caqueto3347]

Hi, I saw other video you made an d I like the concept to use the visualisation of the bass fretboard to memorise theory concepts. I need you explain me a concept explained by Billy Sheehan who shows that there always 3 scales having the same notes (G major, E minor and A Dorian Scale) and what changes is which notes get accented. So in this way we can learn 3 scales at once.

[@KYLETEACHESBASSYT]

Thanks for watching! So what Billy is talking about are what are called modes...actually, there are 7 modes that you can get from each of the major scales. Let's take the C major scale: C D E F G A B C. If I take those same notes, but use D as the root note, it goes like this: D E F G A B C D. It's a different scale, but uses the same set of notes. It has a totally different vibe and sound. You can do that for each of the notes in C major, giving you 7 different modes. Try em out! That stuff above requires you to understand "scale degrees," which I'm going to go over in the next video because it helps you understand those modes and A LOT more. Stay tuned for that one, I plan on releasing it next week!