Scale Drills for Fills – Applied Creatively!

by Ari 15 Feb 2017 2 minute read 43.6K views 2.2K shares

Scale Practice got you down? Try this and apply it!

Remember the “drills for fills episode” on notreble.com a while back? We got the question if I could demonstrate how to use these scale drills in fills. You ask, I answer. Here is the reply and a PDF to follow along and play those fills.

Practicing scales…

  • is a useful and powerful to gain understanding of how music theory works,
  • perfects your ears,
  • puts material under your fingertips that will then come out creatively.

So why not practice them in ways that are more fun and give you material that sounds better than the straight up and down scales?

 Here is how, with examples.

I recommend to incorporate the scale drills into your regular practice regimen. When you have them under your fingers, they tend to show up spontaneously in your playing. Nothing is more thrilling than to hear these fills and cool lines come out of you and surprise you. In order for that to happen you want to have them under your belt. A few weeks of regular practice will usually do. Then be ready to surprise yourself!

As always, let me know in the comments how you are getting on or if there are any questions at all!

Cheers

Ari

Here is the episode on no treble or watch and comment here:

Here’s another creative way to practice a scale

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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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