If I could only recommend 2 scales to bassists, these are the 2. Major and minor pentatonic.
I gleefully wrote this article to showcase my 2 most used, most played, most loved scales in the bass world.
There is SO MUCH material in this article. It’s a few months worth of lessons (and I have taught through it with students verbatim - I’m writing my own instructional text through these articles! I love it!) so don’t worry about trying to devour it all in one go. There’s tons here, and I hope you all find something you can sink your bass chops into.
As always, holler with feedback as it all helps with edits, future writings, ideas and everything BassBuzz writing related!
Ha! Thanks to you and @fennario for catching that.
Back in those heady Napster days, I remember some Toast Machine fans telling me they found us because the songs were mislabeled as Primus on limewire or Napster or whichever music-pirate place.
Wild times!
No more Temptations writing Queen songs.
Y’all holler if you find this stuff! Helps to have more eyes on it!
Is there any way you could have a category for your lessons? I’d like them to be easy to find later - having them all grouped together would be a big help. @JoshFossgreen ? Plus, then I would know that I didn’t miss any, as I just can’t keep up with every post on here.
Thanks for considering it! And again, greatly appreciate the lesson.
I find it helpful to think about how it all fits together. Once you know the major scale, you only have to remove the 4th and 7th to make the major pentatonic and it’s the same notes that are removed from the relative minor pentatonic.
eg:
C major scale is C, D, E, F, G, A, B; the 4th and 7th are F and B
The relative minor is the Aeolian mode of C (the 6th note of the major scale) so it’s A minor.
The A minor pentatonic is the A minor scale with the F and B removed (the 2nd and 6th of the relative minor).
For the major and relative minor you can always use the rule of 9, eg counting back 6 is the same as counting ahead 3.
Good call.
I can heap them up under one category, I think.
Will look into it! But yes, in the meantime, they are on the bassbuzz main page under lessons.
Fully agree, but I think everyone has a different way of seeing it all fit together. It kinda depends on what you learned first. If you got major scale first, pentatonic feels like taking things out.
Which is weird to me, because the pentatonics are older and more culturally ubiquitous. So, in trying to create an easiest-point-of-entry article, I like starting from only pentatonics, and building from there.
But yes - I had the exact same view of pentatonics because of my learning order.
Also, cool to twig that the notes that are present in the major scale that are absent in the pentatonics are half steps! Take away the half steps, and your scale is a much smoother, more risk-of-terrible-clashing-notes-free scale!
