Two octave scales

[thepurpleblob]

Anybody got any good excercises for 2-octave scales? The only one I know is the 2-octave major. I guess pentatonics are more use for some up and down the neck fills.

[Oscar South]

I'd just figure out intuitive fingerings for more scales and practise them up and down chromatically, when you're confident with each individually practise up and down in keys diatonically.

I'd work through the major and pentatonic modes first. 7th arpeggios in all inversions are useful as are dim and whole tone scales. Melodic minor modes are fun but less used. I prefer to treat harmonic minor as an alteration rather than a key but modes of that can be useful too.

Start slow and thoughtful, build it up until its clean and effortless.. standard fare.

[XB26354]

Try four fingers per string (well, three on the G but you can go a tone above the second octave to make it loop).
In one of his videos the jazz guitarist John Scofield recommends playing more horizontally (i.e., up and down the neck instead of across the fingerboard in one position) to open up the possibilities for even the most mundane exercises.
Chord Studies for Electric Bass, a Berklee book by Rich Appleman and Joseph Viola, is a fantastic look at getting up and down arpeggios over wider ranges. Not scales per se, but a 13th arpeggio is just the corresponding scale in thirds.
After playing two octave scales try all the intervals over two octaves - thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths and sevenths (if you have enough strings/frets). Then go up the first interval and back down the second etc.
Most bass solos are mind-numingly boring because of a lack of interesting intervals. Chord tones with approach notes and intervals relate more to everyday conversational music than just running up and down scales...

[thepurpleblob]

Thanks guys... there's some stuff to think about there. Interestingly, I don't really understand inversions - well, I know what they are I just don't see how they are applied or used.

I'm really trying to get a lot more fluent around the fretboard.

[Oscar South]

[quote name='thepurpleblob' post='791486' date='Mar 31 2010, 06:49 AM']Thanks guys... there's some stuff to think about there. Interestingly, I don't really understand inversions - well, I know what they are I just don't see how they are applied or used.

I'm really trying to get a lot more fluent around the fretboard.[/quote]

They're exactly the same as modes, just for arpeggios. There's no big harmonic secret to all that stuff, its just a way of mapping out the notes of a key to your fretboard.

[thepurpleblob]

[quote name='Oscar South' post='791664' date='Mar 31 2010, 11:00 AM']They're exactly the same as modes, just for arpeggios. There's no big harmonic secret to all that stuff, its just a way of mapping out the notes of a key to your fretboard.[/quote]

I've been around the houses with modes too. They seem to make perfect sense to some people and appear completely useless to others. My only observation is that the Dorian and the Mixolydian seem to turn up quite frequently in "popular music" but are otherwise mostly confusing. I still can't get my head around "what key is this in" when the scale used is some mode or other.

[XB26354]

The key of a piece is almost always determined by the melody rather than the chords (which can belong to several key centres). One other reliable method of finding the key is to look at the first or last chord. One or the other is likely to be the "key" chord. The fact that that melody may use a certain mode doesn't alter the key. So if the mode is Dorian or Aeolian, the key is still minor.