How do you practice scales/arpeggios?

[Oscar South]

I've not practised theses for a while so I'm revisiting them a bit, am trying to mix up my practice methods though like rather than practice from the bottom of the neck playing the scales up then down playing from the top of the neck down then up, practising on 2 strings at a time playing one position then jumping to the next then next down and up the neck etc.

I'd be interested to hear what methods other people have dreamt up to practice these things.

[6stringbassist]

I tend to make it musical when practising, coming up with riffs and musical ideas, but thinking the notes/degree of the scale to yourself when playing.

[mcgraham]

I'm with 6stringbassist on this; make your practice as musical as possible so you are killing as many birds with one stone as you can, i.e. technical practice, ear training, and improvisation.

I rarely practice scales, but I like to play it in intervals, e.g. in 3rds (1 3 2 4 3 5 4 6 etc), in 4ths, in 5ths, in 6ths, some are more useful than others, 3rds and 6ths get my vote. Another way is to play a scale in one position (say B major) and when you reach the top note in that position (assuming 3 notes per string) come back down on the same scale but in a key a 4th up from before (E major), then when you reach the bottom note go back up in the next key up (A major) and keep doing that.

For arpeggios I run chord progressions whilst playing arpeggios on each chord. Specifically the crazily long and wonderful chord progression Joe Satriani came up with. It goes through every major and minor chord on all 12 notes (24 chords). I also do 7th arpeggios but moving down in 5ths (so in C major it's Cmaj7, G7, Dm7... etc). I also use Hanon exercises. I've also got a few more complicated patterns for the symmetrical scales in various time signatures.

Mark

[Cernael]

[quote name='mcgraham' post='283775' date='Sep 14 2008, 06:21 PM']For arpeggios I run chord progressions whilst playing arpeggios on each chord. Specifically the crazily long and wonderful chord progression Joe Satriani came up with. [b]It goes through every major and minor chord on all 12 notes (24 chords). [/b]I also do 7th arpeggios but moving down in 5ths (so in C major it's Cmaj7, G7, Dm7... etc). [b]I also use Hanon exercises. I've also got a few more complicated patterns for the symmetrical scales in various time signatures.[/b]
Mark[/quote]
I'm intrigued. Care to elaborate on those three?

[mcgraham]

Sure. The Joe Satriani progression is a progression he wrote for his students called 'Endless Rain'; he developed it to help his students learn to solo in all keys, and learn to mentally shift which key/scale/tonal centre they were in a more manageable and more rock-centric way. It's quite hard to type and get chord charts right on here but I'll stick in a text document and post it up. Essentially it cycles downwards in major/minors in thirds (or upwards in sixths?). So Bm - G - Em - C - Am - F - etc..... All of them are XX(add9).

The Hanon exercises are classical piano pedagogy exercises. Again, I can email people copies if they wish along with tips/advice I developed for making the most use of them. Essentially the exercises are more difficult on bass than the average chromatic practice regime, so they workout your linear playing, string skipping, phrasing, shifting, stretching, barring etc, all in just one or two exercises (though there are 60 of them; I only used 3 or 4) that is actually musical.

The symmetrical ones are for getting inside their respective sounds. I have one for the whole tone scale, I'd need to record it/notate it to explain it. Similarly with the H-W/W-H/Fully diminished symmetrical scale/exercise pattern. That particular one is in 9, or perhaps you could think of it as compound time of 4 and 5. Again, I'd need to record it or notate it, or show you it for it to make sense. If I can get to the bass bash I can show anyone who's interested.

Mark

[Cernael]

On the Satch thing, do you cycle through different inversions, so the bottom note is somewhat stationary, or is it always the root note?

On that matter, is it best to do it "arpeggios up and down the neck" in the usual manner, or should one try to play them in an improvised, melodical manner?

If you prefer to share the other stuff by mail, rather than attaching here, my adress is:
cernael (squiggle) hotmail (pixel) com

[johnnylager]

I get the guitarist to do it for me.

[mcgraham]

Re: The Satch thing - it's not inversions, they are 'stand-alone' chords if you will. Essentially you can split the whole 24 chord progression up into 'pairs' of adjacent chords. Let's forget about the (add9) quality for now. Bm - G is like playing in Bm then going to the 6th chord in Bm, being G. The next pair is the same but in Em, the next is the same but in Am etc. There are several reasons it works. Each time you start a new pair you 'essentially' modulate to a new minor key but it doesn't become definite until you finish the subsequent pair, i.e. Bm - G - Em is still in the key of Bm, but the complete progression of Bm - G - Em - C shows that when you hit the Em you have essentially modulated to the relative minor of the G, but it's not clear from the context of the progression at that point. The other reason it works is because of the (add9) quality; without that, Bm - G - Em - C is all in the key of G. The add9 helps cement each pair as a new key once they are complete.

Does that make sense? Note: this is just my way of internalising it, write the whole thing out and learn it, then fiddle with it to get your own understanding of it.

Re: arpeggios, up and down the neck is good, but try doing the add9 arpeggios on each of the chords of such a progression. Maybe start with the Bmadd9 - Gadd9 and just repeat that over and over to get the pattern and feel down.

Mark