Hey folks,

Jonny here.

The minor scale is your ticket to playing some the fiercest riff jams there are.

Not only that, it will enhance your abilities and understanding in any style of

music. Once you get the note patterns down, it doesn’t take long to develop your

speed and power. It just takes some practice with a drumbeat or metronome click.

If you need beats to practice with, just lemme know in the bass vids contact

form on the upper left side of this page and I’ll make some more up.

The first thing you wanna do is get the notes under your fingers – just get used

to playing through the scale – up and down. Then fire up a drum machine or

metronome click and start playing it in time – slowly at first, and then

gradually push the envelope. But speed isn’t the primary goal right now, that

will happen naturally. Just focus on picking the notes cleanly,clearly, and in

time. If you do this, it will massively accelerate your learning process in a

few different ways:

1. You’re learning the fretboard note layout

2. You’re building dexterity in your fretting hand

3. You’re getting better picking hand coordination

4. You’re developing rock solid time

Once you know the Major and minor scales, you can start to completely map out

the entire fretboard. The minor scale is actually one of the “modes” contained

within the Major scale. If you play a Major scale starting from the sixth step -

that is the scale’s “Relative minor.” For instance, if you play a G Major scale

starting on the E (or sixth step of G Major), then you are playing an E minor

scale – and the E minor scale is the “relative minor” in the key of G ( or G

Major). In C Major the relative minor is A. If you count up six letters from C ( or

down three letters ), you get to A.

You can play through the exercises to gain total dominance over the minor scale

note patterns. These are note sequence exercises so you get to know the patterns

every which way. It really builds up your dexterity, muscle memory, and the

muscles themselves.

In the first exercise, play from the root note up four notes. Then play

four notes off the second step, and just keep going – all the way through each

scale step. Then do the same thing descending from the top note. This is a

sequence pattern that you hear violin players doing really fast in classical

music, and its a rock guitar solo staple. It’s really great to learn to play fast,

then mutate it for soloing.

In the second exercise, start from the root and play three notes up then thefirst

note again. Then start on the second step and do the same for each scale step

going up and coming down.

The third exercise is breaking the scale into thirds. A third is an interval. An

interval is the distance between two notes. If you play the root note, then play

the third note of the scale – that’s a third. If you play the first note of a

scale and then the sixth note – that’s ( you guessed it ) a sixth. In a Major

scale that would be a Major sixth – root to sixth in a minor scale is a minor

sixth, since it is a half step ( or one fret ) smaller. Same goes for seconds,

thirds, and sevenths. Just play from the root and go to the third note. Then the

second note to the fourth. Then the third step to the fifth, and so on.

This s**t really works! Try it.

Jonny.

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Wanna be able to shred over 90% of the most commonly played bass lines ever?

It all starts with the Major scale. The best part is – its easy! It may take a little practice to get used to which finger goes where – but it’s a such a familiar sounding pattern of notes that your fingers should take right to it.

Just get set up so that your fretting fingers cover one fret each for four frets (in a row). If its hard to make the span at first, move up to a higher fret until your hand gets used to the motions. Soon you’ll be able to cover the first four frets. I play through this as a little warm up in the video – and its something I regularly do when I first pick up my bass to practice – just to wake the fingers up.

The most common way of playing a Major scale in one “position” (four fret span) is to start with your middle finger playing the root note. Then your pinky goes down two frets up from the root note on the same string. Then move to the next string up and fret the notes under your index, middle and pinky. Then up to the next string to finish with index, ring finger and pinky.

Its a completely movable pattern so you can start the scale on any note. Its the arrangement of whole and half steps that gives the scale it’s sound, and the fingering pattern gives it a visual shape on the fretboard that you can remember and refer to. It’s a good idea to play through the scale in time with a drum machine at both slow and faster speeds. Just practicing through a bit will develop muscle memory astonishingly fast.

Playing effective bass is mostly about organizing note choices. Learning the Major scale pattern is a huge help in that department, since its used so commonly.

Be sure to check out Part 2 of this video next time where I go over some really awesome, simple exercise you can do to completely own the Major scale and build up some soloing chops too.

Have fun!

Jonny

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