Bass cheat sheet

[owens hound]

I found this on talkbass and thought some might find it useful. As I'm diving into theory, anything that helps is great.

http://homepage.floodcity.net/users/neo/BCS.pdf

 

Here is the talkbass thread to go with it.

 

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=167181

 

 

Jason

[Ross Brown]

Cool. Thanks. I keep threatening myself to learn more. The urge to just play gets in the way. The need to keep learning new songs gets in the way too. (new band).

 

This will inspire me to devote at least some time to understanding this stuff....

 

I printed it out. That counts, right?

[Big Red 67]

That's what I did.

[Gruuve]

That cheat sheet is pretty good...BUT it would be so much better if the X's were numbers to identify which scale degree you're on. Jason, that sounds like a great exercise to do, doesn't it? (wink wink)

 

Dave

[Phil W]

Had a quick gander (look) seems to be bug-free. Be aware that the Harmonic Major Scale term used in the final sectio is sometimes used in more complex music to mean another kind of scale entirely - so just call it a major scale!

Also, although the major 11th is technically correct, and the strucure helps you to understand the theory, in reality this would hardly ever be used as it sounds horrible. Even dominant 11th chords are rare - but minor 11th chords are common. If that's confusing, ignore it!

Enjoy!

[Phil W]

If you know the names of the notes on the fingerboard though - you should make up your own patterns for scales and plenty of them - it's fairly straightforward. Guitarist Derek Bailey used to recommend also occasionaly playing scales jumping 'randomly' around the neck too, e.g. C on the E string, D as a harmonic, E 9th fret G string, F first fret E string and so on. This builds up your use of wider intervals and speeds up your fingerboard knowledge.

[Phil W]

OK, three consecutive posts - one last piece of advice. The one thing I wish I'd done when I was first approaching bass scales/argeggios/theory 20 something years ago (apart from ignoring tab) was:-

sing every note I played or an octave up as appropriate

My ear would be so much more advanced now and I'd maybe be able to sing in tune too. Why not kill two birds with one stone?

[Mike Bear]

Is it cheating if your just learning? I tell my students to memorize everything. So we go over something once and then 5 min. later they are trying not to look. I catch them taking a guilty glance. I say to them, look all you need, your not cheating, your learning.

[Stackimo]

great stuff

[Phil W]

Mike, the term 'cheat sheets' doesn;t realy imple cheating (at least to me). When studying languages and other subjects I often made my own cheat sheets - just condensed information to me used to aid recall. I entirely agree that they aid learning.

[jmrunning3]

This is some good, concise information. Thanks for posting it!

 

I've created some things on my own that I print out and work with too. It's really helping a lot.

[chubby]

OH SHIT you mean its ok to lean stuff

[chubby]

oh crap I MISS SPELLED LEARN NOW DONT i LOOK DUMD

[jeremy c]

I don't like those sheets at all.

 

They don't tell you what degree of the scale you are playing and they don't tell you the name of the notes.

 

They look like they were transferred from a guitar version.

 

I'd really prefer scale patterns that started on the root.

 

And I don't understand why bassists (and guitarists) are the only instrumentalists who seem to have trouble knowing the actual names of the notes that they are playing.....and many don't seem to care.

 

I have one student who wants to learn all kinds of songs and then when I write out a chord chart, she can't find the note names on her bass. We have a lot of work to do...but I will get her there (or die trying).

[TimR]

Fair comment Jeremy, but there are a lot of people who play by ear. I knew a fantastic piano player who could just hear something and play it back. Couldn't read music at all, let alone tell you where the middle C was.

Paul Mcartney was another one who never learnt music until it started hindering him when trying to do Orchestral arrangements.

Alternatively I know a lead trombone player who plays with big London orchestras who is lost if he doesn't have the music in front of him.

Personally I'll do it anyway as long as the job gets done, play by ear, memorise, read, tab, whatever. It's what comes out of the Instrument that is important and this is as much about mental attitude at the time of playing as it is about being able to read proper music.

With kids its the attitude you need to harness before giveing them hard concepts, but I agree its a basic requirement to at least know what the notes are called and where they are.

[Rocky McDougall]

Originally posted by jeremy c:

I don't like those sheets at all.

I'd really prefer scale patterns that started on the root.

That is what surprised me about the charts. I have always thought of the Root note as being the first note. I know it does not have to be, Just seams a little strange.

Rocky

[Rocky McDougall]

Originally posted by chubby:

oh crap I MISS SPELLED LEARN

You only missed an "r" , no big deal, you were about 80% correct. That's good for a BASS player.

[owens hound]

To take Dave's suggestion of changing the X's to numbers, would these numbers be correct for Major Scale Pattern 1? I hear what you are saying Dave but am having a bit of trouble getting it straight in my head. I take it from these charts that the scale is in Cmaj.

 

Pattern 1

5|-|6|-|7|

2|-|3|4|-|

6|-|7|1|-|

3|4|-|5|-|

 

I totally agree with Jeremy that it is confusing and his comments totally helped make the patterns make more sense for me as I had been practicing scales from the root. I am still confused as to you would determine the degree of the scale?

Any additional infom would be great!!

I was hoping that this would be a useful tool to add to the many tools I have learned so far and I guess it has some value.

 

Thanks,

 

Jason

[jeremy c]

TimR, I didn't say anything about reading music.

 

I said that a player should know the names of the notes on their instrument.

 

Is that too much to ask?

 

I know a few brilliant ear players....who cannot read a simple chord chart....who have to have someone else play the song first before they can play it.

 

It would be nice to use that talent and take it a step further.

 

Most of the people I know can play by ear extremely well and can also sight read, not just chord charts, but actual notes.

 

These people go by the title of Musician.

[Rocky McDougall]

Originally posted by jeremy c:

TimR, I know a few brilliant ear players....who cannot read a simple chord chart....who have to have someone else play the song first before they can play it.

Jeremy, I could not agree with you more. I have been playing by ear for nearly 60 years. My "greatest regret" is not learning to read music. I am now taking theory instruction. I don't even take my bass to my music lessons. We just discuss theory. It would have been easy when I was young, now it is very difficult.

Cheers, Rocky

[Whacked]

A useful tool but yea, fretboard notes need to be learned.

[Whacked]

I think the author tried to keep it simple.

The scale of C is pretty standard for learning so thats what they used. by not naming the notes, it can be applied otherwise.

 

But he does have a diagram of the fretboard notes first thing

[Big Red 67]

Originally posted by Rocky3840:

Originally posted by chubby:

oh crap I MISS SPELLED LEARN

You only missed an "r" , no big deal, you were about 80% correct. That's good for a BASS player.

I htink the R was there, it was played as a grace note!

[TimR]

Jeremy,

 

Originally posted by TimR:

With kids its the attitude you need to harness before giveing them hard concepts, but I agree its a basic requirement to at least know what the notes are called and where they are.

I was only countering your claim that it was only Guitarist and Bassplayers who didn't know what the notes were called.

 

I think you misread my intentions, I wasn't trying to argue, just pointing out that people can get scarred by theory very quickly.

 

Musicians were playing music for many years before the language of music was written down. After all someone didn't decide I'm going to call something a C and then try to fit different sounds to it to see which one he thought was best as a C.

 

My example of Mcartney was to say that even if you're considered one of the best musicians, if you can't comunicate your ideas easily to others, you'll come to a brick wall at some stage.

 

But it is one of my niggles, it seems to me that l lot of proffesionals (not aimed at you Jeremy) often see the only way to play music is from the Dots. Even on these pages the word 'Tab' is considered Blasphemy.

[Cthulhu Fhtagn]

Originally posted by TimR:

Musicians were playing music for many years before the language of music was written down. ... Even on these pages the word 'Tab' is considered Blasphemy.

Oh, no. Here we go again! And people were conking each other over the head with large rocks and taking down mammoths with pointy sticks before they learned to draw pictures of them on cave walls in Spain. And people in Anatolia were digging up dirt and planting millet seed while someone in a chariot was beating them with a stick before cuniform was invented.

 

Jeremy was just bring up that (other than the keyboardist you know) it seems everytime there is a discussion on learning to read standard music notation, there are four or five people (usually younger people) on the forum that react as if they were being force fed Brussel Sprouts (my apologies to our Belgian members). I had a formal music education, so it is natural for me, and notation can transmit so much more musical information than numbers or square and round dots on a fretboard. Personally, I can't fathom the reason why someone who is serious about music would refuse to take the time to learn.

 

The flip side logic works with regular writing. Imagine how large your keyboard would be if you had to have symbols for 15 different buffalo? Try to write a formal paper using that IM shorthand?

 

...and I do have chord charts that are square and round dots, and I do have TABs printed out and in my book. I will not let notation snobbery prevent me from learning everything I can, but I won't let iconoclastic distain for notation prevent me from using that resource, too.

[Transcending]

Cool. Thanks.

[jeremy c]

My real concern is that people can't play chord charts because they don't know the names of the notes on their instruments.

 

If I yell out on stage, "the bridge goes to Eb" I would hope I don't have to walk over and explain how to finger the note.

 

I don't care how good an ear you have, you aren't going to know where the bridge goes without hearing it first.

 

I'm not that crazy about classical musicians who can't play a thing without written music in front of them, either. They should be embarrassed about that. At the very least they should have huge portions of the standard repertoire memorized.

 

My music professors at the University could improvise examples of the harmony they were teaching us.

 

They could also write something down after hearing it once and read orchestral scores like most people read books.

[TimR]

I think we are all arguing the same point albeit from different angles, and are in basic agreement.

 

I think the main point that has been raised is that most people have difficulty when starting out in learning where the notes on the fretboard are. It's much more difficult for guitarists because some notes can be played in three positions, and on a piano you only get 1 position per note. Coupled with the fact that they are all laid out in the same order and pattern.

 

Regarding whether people can read orchestral scores like books, written communication is still hard to convey the exact writers intentions. Take my clumsily written first reply. Its written in plain english but there are at least three different interpretations of what I was saying. If I had spoken it, you would all have seen exactly what I mean't.

 

That is one reason you have a conductor who will interpret the music and take time to make sure stacatto and legato notes are played at the length, and dynamics at the level that he wants (not neccesarily what the composer wanted). Different conductors will get a different sound out of the same orchestra paying the same peice.

 

When I teach kids, they believe that they will never be able to play by reading muscic, it looks very daunting at first, but when I learnt to read english, I didn't start with War and Peace, just Janet and John, Learning short simple words first. Of course you don't learn to speak by reading, you speak first and then learn how to read. I read to my own kids and they follow the words on harder books. The same could be applied to music learning.

[tnb]

Why do you think "we" have such contempt for singers? They usually can't read music (or tab) and they refuse to learn. It shows a lack of willingness to communicate effectively. Singers that can read music, knows theory and/or play instruments never seem to have a problem finding bands or work. Theses same singers are also a lot less prone to ego problems that plague a lot of other singers.

 

I know a dj who used to sit in with a blues band I worked in. He had played sax in high school and knew musical terms, theory and how to read music. I also know rappers with similar backgrounds and the same ability. It is great to be able to communicate quickly and succinctly.

 

There is no tab for woodwinds, brass, strings, vocalist or percussion. Those players are "forced" to learn a system that actually works and leaves them with the ability to communicate with others on different instruments early in the learning process. This is not an accident.

[Cthulhu Fhtagn]

I certianly don't disagree with any thing you said just now, Tim. And Jeremy and TNB are right, too. I started playing trumpet (in orchestra) so I started out learning to read music. I play bass because the first band I was in needed a bassist and I could read sheet music. That qualified me (riiiiight). No one else could read in that band. My son started guitar. They tried to teach him to read music but he's not interested. He'd rather work off tabs. I've chaired in his band a couple of times and none of them (kids) read music. A guy (30) I work with plays bass. I told him about a half a dozen carols I had transcribed and if he would want them for the holiday season and HE needed them in tab.

 

I found out the 55 year old guy next door did some old Stones covers in the day and noodles on the guitar when he's bored. Start jamming with him this weekend. HE reads music.

 

...Jeremy, what does that mean exactly. I've started playing some jazz lately and see some of that. Is the bridge being played in the key of Eb or is Eb the root of whatever chord the bridge is being played in?