Talking Bass: course descriptions & study order

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Mark Smith of Talking Bass has created a frequently asked questions page.

Since many Buzzers have often asked those of us who have studied TB courses many questions about them, here is an excerpt from the TB FAQ page, where Mark describes courses and offers recommendations about study order.

From a complete beginner level, I would recommend the following set of courses to begin with:

  • Beginner Bass Guitar
  • Bassic Fundamentals
  • Groove Trainer For Bass
  • Technique Builder
  • The Creative Bassist

Beyond these courses you can move into more focused study. I would recommend:

  • Chord Tone Essentials
  • Scale Essentials

Chord tones should always be studied before scales.

Simple Steps To Sight Reading is a huge course devoted to reading music for bass. You can begin that course at any point after Bassic Fundamentals. It should be studied alongside all other courses and will provide lesson material for many years.

Simple Steps To Walking Bass, Slap Bass and Chordal Mastery are style based courses you can take at any point as a supplement if you want to follow those styles/techniques.

The Classical Study courses are aimed at intermediate level players and will greatly improve your technique and harmony knowledge.

Ultimate Music Theory For Bass is a deep dive into music theory for those of you looking to study from beginner theory all the way through to degree level .It is less practical than some of the other courses and features tests after every lesson. You will learn the basics of theory (intervals/scales etc) through to advanced Jazz harmony. It is degree level study for a fraction of the price. I would also recommend this course for any players looking to study at a music college.

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This is amazing @MikeC thanks for pulling this together and posting!

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Thinking seriously about the chord tones essentials course

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hunh. i knew mark has always said chord tones first, but i didn’t really realize he felt so strongly about it (“always”) before scales. i mention this because many people here did scales first and have advocated for it. i personally would say it probably doesn’t matter as much as mark says at the end of the day, but i would also lean towards doing chord tones first. simply because in mark’s eyes chord tones are the fundamental building blocks of music and should be learned first. and part of using these building blocks is to form scales. howevs if you do it the other way around it isn’t that difficult to wrap your head around the concept and won’t prevent you from following along.

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For the record, I have heard other respected teachers say exactly the same thing: chord tones study before scales. And for good reasons.

Arpeggios are the building blocks of harmony, hence, bass lines as well.

Scales add connective elements to chord tones, to flesh out fluid lines and provide opportunities for expression.

So, definitely, studying both is essential to learning how and why bass lines are constructed, but chord tones should always come first.

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The theory behind both are fundamental and key but chord tones and intervals work, stacking thirds, etc is more immediately useful.

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A simple triad (essential chord tones) is the tonal framework that fundamentally defines a chord type (e.g., Major, minor, diminished, augmented).

Extensions and alterations of triads (e.g., b7, 9, #11, 13) add color to the chord, providing texture and richer expressions of that chord.

Scales are comprised of chord tones and the interstitial notes between them. That’s why gaining an understanding of chord tones before studying scale construction is what many teachers recommend: Learn the underlying structure first, and then flesh it out.

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Yes, it’s all about the intervals and how they combine. And in more detail, in western music the primary chords are all made by stacking major and minor third intervals. The major triad is a major third plus a minor third; vice versa for the minor triad, etc. This pattern extends to extended chords and can be mixed for different kinds of chords.

Mark’s Chord Tones course dives right in to this and gives you immediate tools for how to apply this in practice, both for using chords but more importantly for moving around the fretboard in thirds and other interesting, pleasing sounding intervals. It’s theory that translates to other instruments as well and is much more fundamental and valuable than simply learning scales (which is also important and dovetails nicely with this once you understand interval fundamentals.)

When I learned theory/intervals/etc on other instruments, it was always scals first, and flipping the order is much better. Everythign makes more sense starting with the intervals, which (in the end) are all that really matter.

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Yep, learning chord structure is the key to understanding harmony and music theory, in general.

That said, most traditional music teachers (piano, woodwinds, horns, etc.) fall back on emphasizing practicing scales more for teaching students instrument familiarity and dexterity than for learning music theory. Been there. Not fun.

It wasn’t until after I had studied rhythm guitar, and then music theory in college that I realized how fundamentally essential chord tones are to all western music. It was mind-blowing at first, and patently obvious afterwards.

Mark Smith has said many times that, while he could shred on bass when he entered music college, he had no clue what music theory was or how it worked. His courses are born of his experience and how he managed to have all concepts of theory make sense to himself. They are powerful.

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Well scales make more sense than chord tones for melody instruments.

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For classical music, very possibly. For improvisation and soloing, no.

Chord tones are the absolute foundations of harmony.

Interstitial tones can be chromatic leading tones, enclosure shapes that frame chord tones, or diatonic (scalar) lines — but all are in service of chord tones because they reinforce the chord and keep all other instruments harmonically grounded.

The point is that trad music teachers don’t really care much about teaching music theory. And, in my experience, they are usually instrumentalists who have not studied much theory beyond the required courses of their given degree curriculum (which are no more than freshman and sophomore level, if that much). Not a slam, just fact.

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I have 3 to finish from Talking bass but the Ă©tudes are killing me.

But yeah… my next will most likely be the Creative Bassist.

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Wrapping up Volume 2 (module 6) of sight reading, and I’ve “completed” (are you ever really done?) chord tones. Debating whether to start Scales next or Creative Bassist. Mark suggested Creative Bassist to get more application of chord tones so I’m leaning that way. Also thinking I should hold off on Volume 3 of Sight Reading and do more practice before moving on. Volume 2 packed a lot in there. I really want to get to the Walking Bass course (I just completed a week long Jazz workshop at the local community college, post coming soon, and my walking skills are in dire need of work, as in I have none). This is why I had originally planned: Chord Tones → Scales → Walking Bass. I suppose I could run Creative Bassist and Scales in Parallel if I’m holding off on Sight Reading 3…

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If you have the bandwidth, Scales can be done alongside other courses.

Among many other things, Volume I introduces how to play one-string, two-string, etc. horizontal scale patterns over two (and up to three!) octaves, up and down the fretboard.

Creative Bassist teaches the processes required to create bass lines. It incorporates many concepts and techniques that overlap many TB courses. As with all of Mark’s courses, it starts at the most basic fundamentals, but things get more and more involved as lessons progress. It takes time, methodical homework, and application, i.e., bass playing. :joy:

With work and life commitments to juggle. I bounce around Mark’s courses, but walking bass has been my North Star focus, because i dig jazz.

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I’m right there with you @MikeC I am totally digging playing Jazz and my goal is to be able to play competent walking bass lines.

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As Mark indicated in his FAQ course recommendations, his Walking Bass course incorporates critical aspects of several of his courses: chord tones (arpeggios), scales, theory, technique (substantial shifts, stretches), reading, and more.

I’m glad I studied Scales and Cyborg Bassist workbooks before concentrating on Walking Bass as learning/practicing playing up and down the neck (up to and including the 24th fret) has been put to good use with playing the walking bass lines in both Walking Bass and the supplemental Walk that Bass workbook.

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@MikeC I own every TB course (except slap) so I’ve got both scales and the Cyborg workbooks, and Simple Steps to Walking Bass and “Walk that Bass”. So my question: did you use the cyborg workbooks as additional practice material for the scales course? It seems like it’s set up to be a great compliment. Additionally, it appears that the cyborg books focus on Major scale (vol 1), Minor scale (vol 2) and arpeggios (vol 3), so did you use the exercise routine from cyborg on the additional scales (example on the modes)? I just hit modes in theory and they were game changing for learning walking bass for me. And, did you use Walk that Bass during the walking bass course similarly as additional practice or after?

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Yep. Cyborg Bassist was released after I had bought Scales. Mark created them as standalone workbooks to augment Scales or, alternatively, to be used completely on their own as a separate technique-based scale patterns etude-ish study tool.

Same situation with Walking Bass and Walk that Bass: the latter was released after I had started Walking Bass. The workbook and its tunes are a great complement to Walking Bass or as standalone study for those with a working knowledge of theory, chord tones, and scales, as well as jazz.

Having previously played other instruments and studied music theory, my personal goal for studying B2B was to learn proper fingerstyle bass technique. Mission well accomplished there.

I’ve gone on to study Talking Bass courses to do deep dives into how music theory and expanded bass playing techniques mesh to work together. The journey has been fascinating and very rewarding.

Kudos to great teachers. :+1:

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@MikeC Warning, this will be a bit long winded, but looking for some feedback on my strategy. My end goal is to be able to hold my own in a Jazz music setting.

I am just wrapping up Sight Reading Vol 2 and about to move onto Vol 3 where we really open up the fretboard, and by the end of Module 7 I should have 11 major key signatures (and their relative minors for a total of 22), in both 1st and 2nd position “under my fingers”. Learning key signatures has been the easiest part of sight reading, with rhythm being the more challenging part. It seems to take me ~3 months to complete a SR module as I probably overdo the repetition and don’t move on until I’ve really got it.

I’ve “completed” chord tones, which I began after covering chord construction in the theory course. Chord tones was amazing and I reached out to Mark for advice on how to get more structured practice for Chord Tones beyond repeating the course material. He recommended Creative Bassist, more on that in a minute. I’ve also completed Vol 1 of Groove Trainer and I’m about 60% complete with Technique Builder.

Following the earlier Talkingbass “roadmap” I’d planned to move from Chord tones → Scales → Walking Bass.

I’m covering scales/modes/chord scales in Theory Vol 2 and feel ready to begin the scales course now that I have a much better theoretical understanding of this topic.

I was successful doing Chord tones in parallel with Sight Reading so I’m thinking I can easily add Scales and continue on with Sight Reading, so no issues there. I feel like being fluent in scales/modes is a prerequisite for walking bass so this is non-negotiable IMO for a next step.

However, it does seem like it would be smart to begin Creative Bassist, to provide more practical application of chords tones, scales, and modes, as the structure of Vol 1 of Creative bassist essentially follows this progression. It seems, from reading the workbook, that this course focuses on application and isn’t heavy on theory, which I’ve largely covered all of the theory covered in Vol 1 of CB at this point anyway.

Have you started Creative Bassist? What’s your thoughts on attempting this while also following the progression of Chord Tones → Scales → Walking Bass? I ask because it seems like you’ve followed a similar pathway that I’m currently deep in the middle of.

Hope you’re well and thanks in advance for the thoughtful reply I know you’ll provide :sunglasses:

As always, any opinion from anyone else is welcome.

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