making patterns musical.doc

7/29/2019 MAKING PATTERNS MUSICAL.doc

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MAKING PATTERNS MUSICAL, PART 1

by Adam Nitti

Hello again, folks! This latest installment from my "Deep Thoughts" column

will offer some insight on how to become a more melodic player simply bymodifying some of our approaches to practicing scale patterns.

At one time or another, each of us has probably been introduced to a scalepattern. For many of us, the major scale was the first scale we learned on the bass.Here are a couple of fingerings for it:

Here is what a one octave C major scale looks like on a staff in an ascending anddescending fashion:

Now play the C major scale, as it appears on the staff. Notice how the notes connecttogether in a rigid, orderly, and step-wise fashion. Sounds like you're playing an

exercise, right? It should. That's because any scale simply played up and down itsrange is purely technical in nature. In other words, a scale is like an alphabet. It'smade up of several key components that get combined together in different ways togive us unique words and phrases. Each note in a scale is like a letter from thealphabet. Without the scales, we can't communicate musically. However, just as withthe English language, the larger our vocabulary, the better we are able to speak! Theplayers with the largest vocabularies posses the most distinct and memorable musicalvoices. These are the players who have created their own STYLE. All that having beensaid, the obvious question becomes, "How do I keep my scale patterns from justsounding like exercises when I use them in a tune???"

For most of us, how we practice determines how we play on the gig. If we arecontinually working on our scales at home by just doing ascending and descendingforms like the example demonstrated, above, we are doing nothing but reinforcingthat "exercise-like" sound in our playing. Our hands will naturally go for that stalesuccession of notes that screams out the words "SCALE PATTERNS" to our audience!To break out of that, you need to force your mind and hands to do things they are notused to. By adopting much more unique and creative approaches to practicing yourscales, you enlarge your vocabulary and become more spontaneous a player... Inorder to develop this, however, we need to learn some (you guessed it) NEWpatterns!

Each of the following exercises can be used with just about any scale or arpeggiopattern. They are categorized into 2 main groups: SEQUENCING exercises, and


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INTERVALLIC exercises. For each of these exercises, we'll use a 3 note per stringmajor scale pattern which utilizes the following fingering:

We'll start this pattern on the lowest C note on the lowest string on your bass for eachexercise to give us the largest range of notes per pattern. For example:

For 4 string bass: start on the 8th fret of the 'E' string.

5 string bass: start on the 1st fret of the 'B' string.

6 string bass: start on the 1st fret of the 'B' string.

SEQUENCING EXERCISES

A sequence is simply a predetermined number of notes taken from a scale played inorder. For example, in a one octave major scale where the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,and 7 represent the 7 degrees of the scale, an ascending pattern for sequenced 4'swould look like this:

SEQUENCED 4's:

1-2-3-4, 2-3-4-5, 3-4-5-6, 4-5-6-7, etc.

(Notice that the commas separate each sequence of 4 notes played in succession.)

On a staff using a C major scale as the example, the same pattern would look likethis:

Sequenced musical approaches are very melodic and cyclical in nature, and theirfocused sound is a result of the smaller distances between notes. Jaco Pastoriusconsistently utilized sequenced approaches through pentatonic and modal scales inhis soloing style.

Here's another example using sequenced 3's:

SEQUENCED 3's:

1-2-3, 2-3-4, 3-4-5, 4-5-6, 5-6-7, etc.

Here is the same example as it would appear on a staff using a C major scale, again:


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The sequencing approach gives us the following exercises:

INTERVALLIC EXERCISES

Intervallic exercises, as the name suggests, are based on intervals. An interval is thedistance between any 2 notes. These exercises take a predetermined interval andapply it to each note of the scale, in order of the scale degrees.

For example, an ascending pattern for intervallic 3rds would look like this:

INTERVALLIC 3rds:

1-3, 2-4, 3-5, 4-6, 5-7, etc.

(Notice that the commas separate each interval of a 3rd played in succession.)

Here is the same example as it would appear on a staff using a C major scale:

Here's an example using intervallic 5ths:

INTERVALLIC 5ths:

1-5, 2-6, 3-7, etc.

Here it is on the staff:

Intervallic exercises exhibit a much more 'open' sound than the sequences, due to the

fact that they utilize larger distances between the notes. This less-focused sound isvery melodic in nature, and makes for some of the most interesting musical ideas.

The intervallic approach gives us the following exercises:


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Try working these into your practice routine and you will see some really neat ideasbegin to take shape in your improvisation. After you have developed and masteredsome of these exercises, you will want to start blending different approaches. Some ofyour best musical ideas will come from hybrid pattern approaches, which mix yourscales, sequences, and intervallic patterns together. We'll talk more about that in part2 of this series. Until next time...have fun, and keep practicing!!!

Adam Nitti

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