Scales; Why You Should Stop Practicing Them

My view on scales and why you should stop practicing them as your primary focus to gaining an understanding of harmony, walking bass and soloing has been a long standing one and has been championed by much greater players/educators than myself although, at first, it may seem counter-intuitive.

Great educators such as Charlie Banacos, Garry Dial, Carol Kaye and Joe Hubbard espouse a view that is contrary to the popular model of becoming a “walking scales thesaurus” (often resulting in no real sense of how to apply those scales to the actual music being played).

Scales have their place

Of course they do but I feel the slavish focus on scales in music education can cause problems for the student down the line. I’m speaking from experience of the problems I have to “fix” for my students, some of whom have been playing for years.

The following example illustrates the problem and later, I will provide the solution to it.

The story is a very common one so you may relate to it.

I was teaching a student who is a pro player, classically trained and by all accounts, very solid and funky, playing with various function bands and pop artists for many years.

This player had come to me wanting to improve their bass line construction and soloing.

I admire and respect them for having the clarity to see what needs improving in their own playing.

We all need to be more self aware in that regard.

I certainly do!

Anyway, taking all this into account, I ask;

“Have you done much playing over chord changes in your practice?”

‘Not really. We covered scales and stuff like that in college but most of us were confused in the lessons and didn’t like to admit it at the time.The teacher was a great player and we were all blown away by his soloing but I, for one, didn’t understand how he got from the scales he was teaching us to actually playing the cool lines and phrases he was playing himself.

So I left college not really knowing how to tackle that stuff

Most of us did, actually…

…I figured that I just didn’t have what it took to be that kind of player so I stuck with what I was comfortable with.’

Sound familiar?

Now, this is just one student but I’ve heard this from so many students over the years…it’s not only a problem for novices.

I heard a top pro bassist and educator speaking about practicing scales at a recent “bass guitar show”.

He said that in college, he had become a veritable encyclopaedia of scales and modes in the hope of improving as a soloist and creating cool bass lines.

But practicing scales didn’t work for him

He would still go to jam sessions and suck like an Electrolux because, despite his encyclopaedic knowledge of scales and modes, he always found himself hitting notes that were… let’s say poor choices for the line or solo.

So it became clear for him that practicing scales was NOT the answer.

The “secret”, he found, was to focus on…

Practicing chord tones!

Let’s look at why this is the case;

Legendary bass guitar pioneer Jeff Berlin put it succinctly.

Scales only IMPLY harmony, whereas;

Chord tones SPECIFY harmony.

1. Lets look at a major scale (in the key of C for simplicity as there are

no sharps or flats (Sharps and

flats are also known as accidentals).

On the piano, the C major scale is played on the white keys only.

C D E F G A B C

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (1… the scale begins again an octave higher).

As you can see above, each scale note has a corresponding number assigned to it so we can construct chords using a formula.

This formula will allow us to work with the same scale type in any key (for example, F# major, B major, Eb major, etc).

There are other formulae for other scale types. (minor, augmented, diminished, etc).

Basic chord construction consists of the formula 1 3 5 7 . The first note, (first degree or 1) is also known as the root.

With that in mind, you could also write;

Root, 3, 5, 7 ).

The above formula represents the strong tones of the chord. These are the

notes that “spell” the chord out to our ears in the simplest, clearest way.

The formula comes from using every other note of the scale.

Below, you can see the full scale with the chosen notes from the formula in BOLD;

C d E f G a B

1 3 5 7

You can also use the notes in lower case (also known as tensions) to solo when the chord is played but the results are less clear in spelling the chord.

For example, playing the note f on a strong beat (down beats are strong beats, up beats are weak beats) in your solo (while the chord C E G B is played) will create a certain kind of tension in the solo; it will feel unsettled.

For most of us, it will sound like a “wrong” note.

In fact, f in the C major scale (the fourth note in the scale) is often

called an “avoid note” in this context.

In other words, a scale can offer the soloist almost too much choice in finding notes to play with the chord that give us consonance; a feeling of resolution, of coming home.

(Using notes that create tension isn’t necessarily a bad thing by the way…but that’s a subject for another post).

Would you rather use an approach where your chances of playing a “good” note are clouded by the options of other notes that might not “work” or would you rather go for a system that offers you the certainty of playing a note that “works” with the chord?

No brainer?

2. As the name suggests, chord tones are the exact notes that spell (make up) the chord.
If you focus on playing these notes, they will always sound good with the chord.

With this method, you essentially only have two jobs;

a) Familiarise yourself with playing the strong tones of each chord on the strong beats of the bar (down beats).

and

b) Explore various ways of approaching those strong chord tones. (Many ways of studying approach notes, including transcribing the great masters of improvisation from recordings).

So, where do I start with practicing chord tones?

Let’s look at a single chord to begin with.

If we take a Cmaj7 chord (no sharps or flats) and play the chord tones one at a time;

C E G B

If we play this chord on piano, into a looper or similar recording device, we will have a harmonic backdrop with which to compare our note choices.

By the way, on a 4-string bass guitar, we only need play the chord as C E and B because G (the 5th) doesn’t have to be played in the chord voicing in order to state the quality of the chord.

Now, just play the root (C) and listen to where it sits within the chord.

The key here is listening. How does that sound make you feel? Is there an emotion you could clearly ascribe to the sound of C on a Cmaj7 chord?

What does that sound remind you of?

Questions like these will help you remember that sound and recognise it when you hear it played elsewhere.

This, by the way, is the beginning of ear training.

Now follow the same process with the third of the chord (E).

Is this giving you a different feeling than the sound of the root played with the chord?

How would you describe that feeling?

(How you describe it is personal to you, by the way. There is no single right answer).

Now, do the same with the fifth (G) and seventh (B) of the Cmaj7 chord.

With each of the chord tones, really take your time and focus on the feeling each sound evokes for you.

Now that you’re comfortable with the maj7 sound, let’s add two more chord types to the mix;
minor 7 (or min7, as in Dmin7) and dominant 7 (or just 7, as in G7).

Dmin7 = D F A C

G7= G B D F

These two chords sound noticeably different from the Cmaj7 chord but all three chords are derived from notes extracted from the C major scale.

The Dmin7 comes from every other note of the C major scale starting from

the 2nd note (or degree) of the scale so it’s also known as the II Chord.

c D e F g A b C

I II III IV V VI VII I

The formula for min7 is;

1, b3, 5, b7

Apply the process we used for playing each chord tone with the corresponding chord played on a keyboard or looper. Remember to describe the feeling that each tone gives you when played with the chord. This is important because we associate feelings to the sounds we hear in music, not dry, technical terms.

Music is a listening art and often, it’s easy to forget that.

So should I stop practicing scales entirely?

As I mentioned earlier, scales have their place in the practice room, I simply suggest that a focus on chord tones on strong beats will help you achieve a clearer result in less time.

In art class, specifically life drawing, we are advised to focus on the subject’s skeleton (chord tones) first, in order to give the figure its foundation. We can then “hang” the muscles, flesh etc (scales, scale fragments, etc), on that frame to build a clear representation of the body we are drawing.

The figure will appear “grounded” because we built a strong frame to place the “decorations” on.

Once we clearly represent the skeleton of the chord (academically), the next task is to search for different ways to approach these chord tones.

This is where academia meets artistry

Once we’ve looked at the fundamental approaches (derived from passing notes and chromaticism, along with a healthy dose of transcription), our personal taste and artistry kick in to eventually give us our individual sound.