A fun and creative way to practice a scale

by Ari 15 Jul 2023 1 minute read

If you know a scale like this, you know it well.

Hint: It involves the diatonic cycle… Ready?

 

Free TAB and diagrams for you here 

#A4.

 

Video Transcript


A fun and creative ways to practice the scale, installment #2!

Play the scale one time to get yourself dialed in and then break it down into its diatonic triads and step by step play the diatonic triads. [ 🎶 Ari plays the diatonic triads 🎶 ]

You can say the scale degrees: 1 – 3 – 5 – 2 – 4 – 6 – 3 – 5 – 7 – 4 – 6 – 8 – 5 – 7 – 2 – 6 – 1 – 3 – 7 – 2 – 4 -1 – 3 – 5. You can play one up and the next one down. [ 🎶 Ari plays one up and one down 🎶 ]

It’s pretty or you can play them all down [ 🎶 Ari plays them all down 🎶 ]

You can play with the click as triplets or what’s even funner is if you play 16th notes two-e-and-a-go-e-and-a…
[ 🎶 Ari plays as 16th notes triplets 🎶 ]

Other helpful ideas for practicing scales:

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Hi. I'm Ari.

As a bassist, I have toured/played/recorded with a variety of rock, Jazz, and funk bands, I have worked with some incredible producers (Keith Olsen) and musicians (Paul Hanson, Muriel Anderson) and I toured Brazil with Stu Hamm as a duo.

 

As a bass teacher, I have taught at London Bass Day, Gerald Veasley’s Bass Boot Camp, SBL, Truefire, notreble… I even ran my own music school for a few years before gigs took me back on the road.

 

One thing to know about me is that I teach because I am absolutely fascinated with the learning process. And I am obsessed with helping others realize their musical potential.

 

When I started playing bass, I excelled very quickly because I had an amazing teacher who taught me using a powerful method. This method transformed my playing so quickly that I passed a bunch of high-level university auditions and even tested out of entire classes at university even though I had been playing for only a very short time.

 

That’s what, many years later turned into one of my books, co-written with Wolf Wein, called “The Pattern System for the Bass Player”. I created entire systems of learning based on some of these ideas and wrote books and created courses together with Wolf. Our bass books have sold over 30,000 copies and garnered rave reviews.

 

I started teaching online in 2009 and have embraced technology as a powerful learning tool since then, never losing sight of the importance of providing feedback and personalized guidance to learners.

 

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