How do you practice?

[Skinnyman]

2 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Everyone is still confusing learning scales (I already know scales and the notes that make them up and where they are on the fretboard and keyboard) which I agree is an invaluable skill, and learning how to play scales which I find of no musical use at all. 

No, I'm not confusing these two things. We just have a difference of opinion about their relative importance. We both agree that it's important to know them. I find it useful to practice them, you don't. Our mileages vary.

Er, that's it

Edited January 29, 2019 by Skinnyman

[martthebass]

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

But practicing playing scales only gives me the speed dexterity and muscle memory for being able to play scales. Not for being able to play anything of actual musical value.

Think we'll have to agree to disagree on this BRX.  If you do decide to employ playing scales to improve speed and dexterity then, for some, it helps in the general playing of basslines in general.  I accept that it doesn't work for you, but that's you, not everybody else.   

Edited January 29, 2019 by martthebass

[Bilbo]

59 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Would you care to expand on that... 

I hear note and phrase relationships based on knowledge of scale as learned through rote repetition. If another musician plays a phrase I can not only repeat that phrase but harmonise it or construct a variation based on the their theme. I also have access to the entire neck of the bass at all times. My capacity to do this comes from years of scale practice. 

[BigRedX]

1 minute ago, Bilbo said:

I hear note and phrase relationships based on knowledge of scale as learned through rote repetition. If another musician plays a phrase I can not only repeat that phrase but harmonise it or construct a variation based on the their theme. I also have access to the entire neck of the bass at all times. My capacity to do this comes from years of scale practice. 

Thanks.

I have found myself able to this through years of simply playing and writing actual music, as opposed to practicing scales and "musical exercises".

[BigRedX]

48 minutes ago, Skinnyman said:

No, I'm not confusing these two things. We just have a difference of opinion about their relative importance. We both agree that it's important to know them. I find it useful to practice them, you don't. Our mileages vary.

Er, that's it

Our milages obviously do vary.

TBH my comment was actually aimed @Deanol who posted at the same time as you.

[Phil Starr]

It's been interesting to look at how different people practice, I wonder sometimes if I have it all wrong and a lot of bad habits, probably. I practice for about an hour a day fairly consistently sometimes more, sometimes less. I do wonder if I'd started with a more academic approach ten years ago whether I'd be further on now. Would I have a better grasp of harmony and be a proper reader? If so would that make me a better bassist? Within a few months of starting I was already in a covers band and I've been on a treadmill of learning new songs ever since. Every new band seems to involve learning 20-30 new songs over a 3 month period and once I 'learned' 30 songs in a fortnight. I stopped counting after hitting my 500th song. I'm guessing that a lot of us have a similar experience in covers bands and the practicalities of doing the job takes over from almost anything else. It becomes about short cuts though, check if there is a decent You Tube video? Download chord sheets and tabs. Anything to shorten the time between choosing a song and gigging it. How many root notes can I get away with? I love it but it ain't art.

So practice routine? Load all the songs onto an Ipod (I know, how quaint) and listen to them on repeat in the car and out walking/working until the bass line is driven into my skull. Download any tabs/Chords, break down the song into parts and for any tricky bits make my own tabs. Then most of my actual practice is with headphones on playing alongside the originals. Nailing arrangements is usually more of a problem than the musical content of most cover band fare.

I must admit I sometimes feel the need to break out of this cycle. It has given me a lot of pleasure getting out on stage and entertaining people and this was certainly a very quick way of getting there. There's always the next song though....

[Deanol]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

Everyone is still confusing learning scales (I already know scales and the notes that make them up and where they are on the fretboard and keyboard) which I agree is an invaluable skill, and learning how to play scales which I find of no musical use at all. 

I don't think anyone is suggesting that scales can be played in a live setting as a solo piece. If I have given that impression please accept my apologies because I certainly didn't mean to.

Scales are most commonly used to compose a piece of music given a particular harmonic progression. They shouldn't be played up and down in lieu of a properly composed (or improvised) piece of music. CDEFGAB is not a piece of music, it is a scale.

I think most people would agree with you that scales in, and of, themselves are not interesting pieces of music.

31 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Thanks.

I have found myself able to this through years of simply playing and writing actual music, as opposed to practicing scales and "musical exercises".

Are you saying that you didn't get any use out of the scales you learned when writing your music? If that is the case, how did you compose your music?

I learned my scales as well, and I use that knowledge every day when improvising or composing my own music.

It's like learning your times tables as a child. The rote learning that (my generation at least) instilled those 12x12 times tables were of no use in and of themselves, and were a drudge to learn, but they are valuable in real life, when I need to know that 6 packs of strings at £8.00 each come to £48.00.

[BigRedX]

6 minutes ago, Deanol said:

Are you saying that you didn't get any use out of the scales you learned when writing your music? If that is the case, how did you compose your music?

I learned my scales as well, and I use that knowledge every day when improvising or composing my own music.

It's like learning your times tables as a child. The rote learning that (my generation at least) instilled those 12x12 times tables were of no use in and of themselves, and were a drudge to learn, but they are valuable in real life, when I need to know that 6 packs of strings at £8.00 each come to £48.00.

I compose by hearing what I want to play in my head and figuring out where the notes are on the fretboard or keyboard. Once I've got a couple I'll have a reasonably good idea of what the key is going to be and therefore where I'm likely to find the other notes that I want. However I don't need to be able to play a scale in that key in order to be able to find the notes.

This whole digression started off because several people earlier in the thread mentioned that they incorporate playing scales in their practice routine, I wondered why they did this because they are almost never used in playing actual musical pieces.

[Deanol]

16 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

This whole digression started off because several people earlier in the thread mentioned that they incorporate playing scales in their practice routine, I wondered why they did this because they are almost never used in playing actual musical pieces.

As I said though, I don't believe anyone is claiming they ARE used in playing actual musical pieces.

It's a bit of a straw-man.

You say you compose by playing notes to find ones that sound good. Other people short-circuit all that effort by learning their scales, so they know immediately what notes sound good without having to play a whole load of notes that don't sound good in order to get to the ones that do.

I hear music in my head, and given my knowledge of scales on the fretboard, I can play what is in my head straight away. They also allow me to know immediately what the notes are in the underlying chords, and therefore I know that those notes will sound good as well, which is useful when playing over chord changes. That's another use for scales.

Theory of whatever form is always useful. It saves time.

[BigRedX]

11 minutes ago, Deanol said:

You say you compose by playing notes to find ones that sound good. Other people short-circuit all that effort by learning their scales, so they know immediately what notes sound good without having to play a whole load of notes that don't sound good in order to get to the ones that do.

I hear music in my head, and given my knowledge of scales on the fretboard, I can play what is in my head straight away. They also allow me to know immediately what the notes are in the underlying chords, and therefore I know that those notes will sound good as well, which is useful when playing over chord changes. That's another use for scales.

Theory of whatever form is always useful. It saves time.

But I have learnt my scales as theory. I just haven't learnt how to PLAY scales.

I also know that any of the notes in the key will fit over a series of chords and which notes make up any given chord, but playing those notes while technically correct won't automatically give you the best melody you could come up with. In fact IME they never give you best bass line or melody.

If someone sings a melody to you can you immediately play that melody back note perfect on your chosen instrument? I know some people who can but most of us will struggle with some of the notes until we find the ones that are the exact right ones. That's how I compose. I know whether I need to go up or down in pitch and I will know which notes are most likely to be right because of the key, but I won't always find the exact notes I want on my first attempt, but I can hear how the ones that could be better (they are not "wrong" notes but just not the ones I could hear in my head) are out and then I'll have a much better idea one what the best notes to use are more likely to be.

[Skinnyman]

59 minutes ago, Deanol said:

As I said though, I don't believe anyone is claiming they ARE used in playing actual musical pieces.

Unless they're playing Crazy Little Thing in which case it's handy to know the major scale at least twice during the song 😀😀

Edited January 29, 2019 by Skinnyman

[Deanol]

27 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

But I have learnt my scales as theory. I just haven't learnt how to PLAY scales.

I also know that any of the notes in the key will fit over a series of chords and which notes make up any given chord, but playing those notes while technically correct won't automatically give you the best melody you could come up with. In fact IME they never give you best bass line or melody.

If someone sings a melody to you can you immediately play that melody back note perfect on your chosen instrument? I know some people who can but most of us will struggle with some of the notes until we find the ones that are the exact right ones. That's how I compose. I know whether I need to go up or down in pitch and I will know which notes are most likely to be right because of the key, but I won't always find the exact notes I want on my first attempt, but I can hear how the ones that could be better (they are not "wrong" notes but just not the ones I could hear in my head) are out and then I'll have a much better idea one what the best notes to use are more likely to be.

You have said it... "most of us will struggle with some of the notes until we find the the ones that are the exact right ones."

I'm not convinced with your argument that "most of us" will struggle with this. That seems like an argument from incredulity. Maybe most of us who know how to play scales on the neck don't struggle with this! Perhaps knowing where the scales are might actually help us to avoid struggling to find the notes.

Scales give you groups of notes that sound good together, so if you know the scales on your neck, you might be able to get the "exact right ones" that much quicker. Which is important in composition, but more so in improvising. If the melody isn't sung by someone else, as in your example above, but is in your head, knowing the scales on the neck will almost certainly give you a good choice of notes to be able to play back that sound in your head.

Even if the melody is sung by someone else, knowing your scales and the sounds they make on the neck will give you the best possible chance of getting the melody in relative terms, even if the absolute pitch is off. It is easier to then move the scale up or down until you get to the absolute pitch.

I'm still not sold on the idea that practicing scales is an irrelevance. Let's look at it in a different way, the very fact that musicians down the ages have sat practicing their scales and arpeggios would seem to indicate they are useful. I'm sure JS Bach practiced his scales, but I don't believe he ever wrote a piece of music that was simply a scale played up and down the piano.

[Bilbo]

My view on the concept of practising is that it is our individual decisions as to what we practice that determine what kind of player we become. There appears to be a belief, for instance, that 'educated' players lack feel, or that 'groove players' do not know theory etc. The reality is that we are all a mixture of all of the things that we learn and all of the different ways in which we learn them. The art, if that is the right word, is probably in establishing the most efficient means of learning our craft. There are a myriad questions we need to answer before we determine what it is that we need to incorporate into our 'practice' time (I put that into inverted commas for reasons that will become apparent).

 

Firstly, what is it that we are trying to achieve? Are we trying to be the best player that we can be or is our playing subservient to our ambitions as, say, a composer or entertainer? Someone like Stevie Wonder who can play lots of instruments to a competent level, may only need to be a 'good enough' bass player or drummer to meet his needs in terms of demoing his songs. A player like Victor Wooten makes his living by being the go to guy for clinics so will need to ensure that his bass chops are top drawer. Billy Sheehan has an approach that allows him to entertain the kinds of audiences that his playing attracts, as would (in their very different ways), say, Gene Simmonds, Les Claypool or Peter Hook.

 

Secondly, what are we practising? Are we practising playing the bass or are we working on composing tunes? Are we learning to play the bass or are we learning tunes? Are we learning to sight read or are we learning to play by ear? Most of us will be prioritising different things at different times depending on where we are or what we are doing at any given point in our career. Our choices at any given time are, over the length of our careers (to date and on-going), going to add up to a knowledge base that is entirely our own. If we spend a lot of time doing the wrong things (subjective) we will undermine our own progress whereas, if we spend our time doing the right things, we will be more successful in achieving our goals.

 

Looking at the music world over the four decades I have been playing, I have determined that I have probably spent most of my practice time poorly. I have a certain skill set but, compared to 'the cats', I lack polish in the detail. My problem, as I see it, is that I have a, spent too much time practising other instruments than the bass (guitar, bass, double bass arco and pizz, saxophone) or techniques I will not use (slapping or tapping), b, failed to decide whether I want to play well or compose well, c, have failed to 'deal with' extended harmony in anything other than a superficial way and, d, have failed to sustain the progress I have made in reading dots (I take two steps forward and one step back). In addition, I have always lived away from the best scenes so cannot find players (or teachers) to share my enthusiasm for that which I like and never had the courage to commit to the life of a professional musician so have only ever been able to 'snatch' time for practice. My shortcomings as a player are, to my mind, an absolute consequence of my choices including and especially my practice priorities. Scales or arpeggios? I think that the thing that matters is not what you practice, per se, but why you practice what you practice. If you know what you are trying to achieve, you just need to make sure that your practice regime is targeting the right things. And that takes wisdom.

 

 

Edited January 29, 2019 by Bilbo