I must make a concerted effort to go through the course again and see if this will lodge in my muddled brain.
It honestly just doesn’t sink in with me. I have mastered the C scale but feel this is so lacking in the education department. I’ve downloaded apps and even attempted the theory lessons on SBL but none of it makes a difference.
It’s like being back in physics lessons at school!
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I wouldn’t worry so much about memorizing the keys - like, all the note names in Bb major or something.
Just learning the scale intervals and scale shapes for bass for a few scales - major, minor, their pentatonics, maybe blues - that will take you a long way. And then being able to find the root notes on the fretboard. That’s enough to get serious benefit alone.
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Agree here. The language analogy is much closer in my opinion. But, even harder. Music theory at its core is a language. So you learn Italian, and now you can ask where the bathroom is or how someone is feeling. You are parroting back things you memorized. Now try to tell an elaborate story to someone in Italian, or write an essay or novel (song/album). You must master the language to do this, and then to invoke feelings in the reader - you must use YOU, through the language of Italian to do so. Same for music, plus, knowing the instrument cold (Vs already knowing how to talk).
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Yeah, language is a good analogy here.
You can even get away with not knowing the instrument cold, provided you know how to figure out what you don’t know. In fact many do, on many types of instruments. And that’s what learning the intervals and scale patterns gives you on bass. If you know the root note you are on and the scale shape, you can get by just fine even if you don’t know the names of the other notes in the scale - because you know the intervals. And the intervals are all that really matter.
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Sorry, should have added…for improvising.
Yeah I just have no motivation for that kind of practice. I may get an hour a day and I don’t plug the bass in thinking “oh good I’ll run through my scales for 30 mins”. Total buzzkill.
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This is so true. I can’t get with a lot of pop these days because it feels so overproduced - the sings have been scrubbed clean of any emotion they may have had. Apparently they can get AI to write music now …
this was a topic Adam Neely covered, but the really cool thing (his mother points out in this video) is that when a generation of singers listens to perfectly tuned songs….you get perfectly tuned music out of them, in essence, soul-less music. it’s the imperfections that matter, and how they are voiced, etc. Good video.
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The analogy is perfect because music IS essentially patterns and maths at its core. Everything in music theory is mathematical.
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Neely’s minor flaw in that video is conflating the use and availability of tools with overuse or misuse of the tools. Melodyne (the tool he uses there) is a wonderful thing… when applied correctly. When used to slam everything flat to spot on the notes, well, sure.
But the blanket “autotune is bad” kneejerk you see everywhere irritates me. It’s just another tool. Complaining about tools and technology… no thanks, I’m not a Luddite.
Or put another way, it’s not really a different argument than the language argument, because in a way mathematics is essentially a language for describing numerical relationships, with its grammar being the tough part 
No it is not. There are probably mathematical patterns in everything if you look carefully enough. However, unlike mathematics, music (like language) is strongly influenced by human psychology and culture. Different cultures have developed different forms of music. Different groups of people use music to define themselves. Music can arouse emotions and evoke memories, mathematics cannot.
More importantly, music theory only describes the phenomenon of music, while mathematical theory IS mathematics. If I change an aspect of math theory, it will change math.
Music theory, like grammar, is a useful tool for describing music. It’s essential for people studying Music, and a good teacher can use it to help someone learning to play an instrument to understand a point. However, improvement needs practice and IMO improvisation is based on imitation, not theory.
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I think the fundamental question here is: “Will learning at least the basics of music theory make me more effective at playing, improvising and performing bass?” and the answer is an unequivocal “yes”, because otherwise when you sit down to create something (as opposed to just imitating or regurgitating something), you’re going to be relegated to trial and error rather than having a sound basis from which to think about what you want to do.
And unless you are a prodigy with perfect pitch, that’s just gonna suck ass as a process, compared with having a basic idea of what’s goin on.
Put another way, do all of my musical heroes know music theory? No. But I am not them, and it’s a hell of a lot easier for me to learn the basics from instruction rather than fumble through them and discover them the hard way.
I guess it all depends on your goals. If you want to make original music, though, it’s gonna be way, way easier to learn some theory rather than stumble in to it one tiny bit at a time.
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Oh I agree that there is a place for music theory in learning an instrument but I think it’s not the be all and end all of becoming proficient. It depends on the person, their goals, how much time they can spend on lessons and probably loads of other things. I don’t think people should be declaring that you cannot have a rewarding time playing an instrument if you don’t sweat over music theory.
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In the end it depends on goals. If your goal is to make original music or improvise with others while jamming, learning basic theory will serve you really, really well. Knowing what notes to play when the guitarist says “Ok let’s do a 1-6-4-5 in E major” is going to help everyone, not just you
This is the basic level Josh covers in the beginner course. There’s a reason he put it in there
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“First you learn your instrument, then you learn music, then you forget all that $hit and just play” - Charlie Parker
Sure there is math in the ‘then you learn music’, but it’s the internalizing of the math, or structure, or language that allows you to ‘just play’.
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We’re talking about music theory here.
The theory is the basic rules that determine what is right and correct in music. That doesn’t mean to say that they’re the only way to make something musical. However, you need that theory for your improvisation more than anything else because you need to know the rules before you can break them.
Making up or copying any old nonsense hodgepodge of notes doesn’t work, in the same way that stringing random poetical-sounding words together won’t make you a poet.
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It worked for Bob Dylan
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This gave me a laugh.
It always seemed to me that as long as the words rhyme they are good for him to use 
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