set up questions

[kevins]

you dont need to really know theory per-say, remember that. to me, and this is going to probobly enrage some people: music theory is the biggest scam ever devised to get people to be framiliar with their instrument.


its so true, i learned a bunch of it in one year, then on purpose forgot all of it. however after learning and forgetting all of those modes,scales, and patterns i can figure out the notes to the songs on the radio that the bass player is playing and i can play in a band situation and sound good.

either way, whether you drill all day in theory or play all day without it, you'll get a knack for being able to speak with the instrument. you know how someone can sing a song and then you can pick out the notes and sing the same song with simple ease? well you're really framiliar with the capabilities of your voice. now its time to become framiliar with the capabilities of that bass to where you can pick out the notes in a song thats on the radio or something

 

[mynan]

 

[strummer]

you dont need to really know theory per-say, remember that. to me, and this is going to probobly enrage some people: music theory is the biggest scam ever devised to get people to be framiliar with their instrument.


its so true, i learned a bunch of it in one year, then on purpose forgot all of it. however after learning and forgetting all of those modes,scales, and patterns i can figure out the notes to the songs on the radio that the bass player is playing and i can play in a band situation and sound good.

either way, whether you drill all day in theory or play all day without it, you'll get a knack for being able to speak with the instrument. you know how someone can sing a song and then you can pick out the notes and sing the same song with simple ease? well you're really framiliar with the capabilities of your voice. now its time to become framiliar with the capabilities of that bass to where you can pick out the notes in a song thats on the radio or something

Does the word asshat feel comfortable to you?

 

[Jimmyb]

I lerned to spel then fogot orl of it.

Notice the irony?

 

[maddog]

to me, and this is going to probobly enrage some people: music theory is the biggest scam ever devised to get people to be framiliar with their instrument.

scam |skam| - noun informal:
a dishonest scheme; a fraud : [with adj. ] an insurance scam.

its so true, i learned a bunch of it in one year, then on purpose forgot all of it.

a. you can't piece together a scale now?

b. you seem to have forgotten the definition of scam in the process.

however after learning and forgetting all of those modes,scales, and patterns i can figure out the notes to the songs on the radio that the bass player is playing and i can play in a band situation and sound good.

which is made a lot easier when you understand Circle of 5ths and all that stuff...

 

[scottbass71]

My 2 cents
I don't think music theory is a scam I think it is another string to your bow (or should that be bass). Of coarse you don't need to know it but I guess being from a technical background i like to know stuff like that.

I see it as you can play the bass with fingers, a pick, pop and slap or tapping some people can't play with a pick doesn't make them any better or less.

I guess just another ace up your sleeve

Like they say there are many ways to skin a cat

 

[kevins]

woaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
caaaaalm down

i dont mean a horrible money scam or anything like that or music teachers are jackasses for teaching it. or that it should never be taught and we should instead play already written tabs or dick around on it till we 'get it' to get framiliar with the bass because that too is limiting in my opinion

i put the caveat in there because the necessity of music theory being mentioned on either side is usually grounds for a flame war, which no suprise has already started. i think its good for teaching people fingerboard framiliarity and helping people speak with their instruments. had i not done all those finger drills and modes and scales over 9000 times i may not be able to tell the spacial difference between notes on a fretboard nor would i have tried new and unframiliar progressions. i know how those old scales and modes work and what not, i just dont know their names anymore: ie i cant tell you what a dorian or ionic or anything sounds like but i can tell you how they work and i can pick a song off of a cd out and figure out the notes used or at least the progression.

so all in all i think theory both encourages growth but also limits people if they adhere to it dogmatically. in my opinion a note doesnt always have to theoretically work to sound good and its the deviation from theory and structure in all forms of art, not limited to just music but paintings, poetry and writing that leads to innovations and new movements.


and thats my opinion, whether i deserve to be called an asshat or what not for it is up to you, but i dont go around calling people names nor deriding them for their opinions, and as someone who saw this coming, i was hoping i wouldnt get derided or picked on for having one.

i tell everyone i know who is starting out that theory is good to learn but not crucial to apply, and that all in all it helps you get framiliar with your instrument and being able to speak with it, but if its adhered to dogmatically it can be severely limiting.

and finally whether you're a person who adheres to it dogmatically or not, you still can make a moving bassline that can make people feel something. its what you do with what you learn. einstein wrote an equation to help people understand how the universe works, some people made that equation into the most feared weapon on the planet. as with all information whether or not it will stifle you or hold you back is up to you. and that goes with any way of learning the bass

so whether you learn it by playing around with the thing figuring out what works and doesnt work by trial and error like folk musicians did way back when, or if you learn theory or if you learn by playing the tabs of every song under the sun. try to play what comes from yourself and you will sound good. and dont let anything limit your expression, whether it be the rules of theory, the influence of other musicians, or the things you haven't experienced yet.

 

[strummer]

To break the rules, you have to know them.

 

[kevins]

ill agree with you on that one, thats why all the generations of abstract expressionists after the first kinda sucked, they werent breaking away from the academic style of art, they were simply duplicating the people that did.

 

[strummer]

I know less about art than you know music theroy, so I have no idea what you are saying there.

But in all seriousness, when you originally posted you were bashing music theory, and since I've spent most of my life learning music in every way i can it really irks me when you step in and say you learnt a bunch of stuff in a year and then forced yourself to forget it?
What you did was learn some modes, scales and stuff, and I can't help feeling you come off as a real silly snob saying you forced yourself to forget it.
You did in no way forget it, I think you just got so used to it you don't have to think about it any more. And that is a good thing, but not to be confused with ignorance.

Saying you must know music theory to make good music is wrong, but saying you shouldn't learn music theory is just stupid. Sorry, but that's how I feel.

 

[oli@bass]

 

[strummer]

make room Oli, I'm done talking

 

[oli@bass]

make room Oli, I'm done talking

I was here first...ahem... second.... and I am done studying musicology...

 

[strummer]

I was here first...ahem... second.... and I am done studying musicology...

You're never finished, now you have to forget it all too

 

[kevins]

understandishable, sorry if i came off as a snob. as i said earlier people learning it and teaching it are far from being asses or suckas.

and i have no problem admitting im wrong, the way i worded it sounded asshole-riffic looking back on it and sounded like the same kind of elitist bastard that made me jaded towards theory to begin with.

and maybe its the teachers/students ive dealt with over the years that would make me slightly bitter towards theory. a lot of the ones ive dealt with scoffed at people who couldnt read music and roared in horror when a musician on the radio would change keys randomly or play a note out of the particular scale they were in. and there is a lot of people who are elitist on both ends of it. there are people who hate musicians that learn theory and feel like those people aren't speaking with their soul because they know "rules."

i find learning it to be incredibly beneficial but not required. theres plenty o' good musicians throughout history who could not read music and didnt know theory. they found other ways to figure out what works and doesnt. and likewise there are probobly tons of well schooled musicians out there who are just as moving knowing theory and how things do and dont work through it that are great.

as i said earlier no matter what road takes you to becoming a better musician its a good thing. you can be limited by any path to it whether you learn theory, play other peoples basslines until you figure it out, or just sit around playing the instrument all day till you can speak with it. all of those methoids could leave someone profficient at the bass but limited at the same time.

i think we actually agree here, its just my orriginal post was a lousy way of putting it and kinda dicktastic.

as for on a personal level music theory taught me fingerboard framiliarity, which makes it a good friend to me. the reason i "forgot" the names of stuff is because i didnt want to worry about what technically works and what technically does not. because i found on a personal level that sometimes stuff that doesnt work in a theoretical sense, sounds great in a song.

 

[IvanHardy]

A couple weeks ago we were in the studio, and one song we did was a cover of Kiss' Modern Day Delilah, just for fun you know. Anyway, that song is originally in E, we tune to Eb and I play a fiver that I for this song tunded to drop Ab. Letting that B-sting (erm, Ab-sting) rumble made the drummer urgently need a break

IvanHardy: Get familiar with your fretboard, and don't think too much about what tuning you want to accept, just rock the hell out of your bass and remember sometimes (actually a lot of times) one octave highter might be the way to go.

i like what you said. i'm not gonna worry too much about music theory and all but i will get familiar with my fretboard. i dont know what rules Strumme rwas talking about though. i really have to find someone who teach me really well because all my friend had me doing was playing up down up down on the 3rd 5th and 7th fret to a metronome. plus th emajor scale and that was about it.

I'll admit im not confident with my bass playing alhthough many people think i'm good for my time playing. i will defienately check out that ed friedland book. i'ts really hard trying to come up with stuff on my own especially since i always thought i had to follow before. i always get ideas usually when i'm far away from my bass. what i mostly know is just covers from my favortie bands. but i gotta say my fingerwork has gotten better since i jumped from pete wentz stuff to johnny christ stuff. those 2 are my favorite bass players.

 

[maddog]

because all my friend had me doing was playing up down up down on the 3rd 5th and 7th fret to a metronome. plus th emajor scale and that was about it.

you are already learning some theory.

Theory isn't about right or wrong. It is about understanding the structure of the music. Understanding the structure and thus the interplay leads to being a better musician. People spend lifetimes pursuing such things. No reason to worry about knowing it all on day 1.

 

[IvanHardy]

you are already learning some theory.

Theory isn't about right or wrong. It is about understanding the structure of the music. Understanding the structure and thus the interplay leads to being a better musician. People spend lifetimes pursuing such things. No reason to worry about knowing it all on day 1.

oh ok then i have a tiny bit of theory experience. but like i said aside from that from that month of doing that and basically learning how to get used to fretting and such i'm all covers and my basslines to our song pretty much just came up at my singers house and i asked him if it was good.

 

[oli@bass]

[...]

as i said earlier no matter what road takes you to becoming a better musician its a good thing. you can be limited by any path to it whether you learn theory, play other peoples basslines until you figure it out, or just sit around playing the instrument all day till you can speak with it. all of those methoids could leave someone profficient at the bass but limited at the same time.

i think we actually agree here, its just my orriginal post was a lousy way of putting it and kinda dicktastic.

as for on a personal level music theory taught me fingerboard framiliarity, which makes it a good friend to me. the reason i "forgot" the names of stuff is because i didnt want to worry about what technically works and what technically does not. because i found on a personal level that sometimes stuff that doesnt work in a theoretical sense, sounds great in a song.

Great post, kevins. Totally agree on that.

And what I'd like to add is: Music theory is much more like "rules of game" than "science". About every epoche and style of music has their own set of rules, sometimes even contradicting those of other styles or times. And what you might think is "stuff that doesn't work in a theoretical sense, but sounds grat in a song" is just a ruleset from a different style.

To me it is important to remember that music theory is by and large just a collection of man made rules applicable to a certain style of music. It's about culture, not science (Well, Guerino Mazzola introduced a vast Mathematical Music Theory but that's above the heads of average musicians). This becomes very obvious with modern composers like Schönberg, Cage, Ligeti or Stockhausen who even invent new rulesets for each work. Which are all completely different from the diverse rules used by the Gregorian Chant, Palestrina, Allegri, Bach, Mozart, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, McCartney/Lennon, Monk, Davis, Gabriel, Hetfield/Ulrich or The Ramones. And this is just the western culture, without even considering such different approaches to music as African chants, Indian polyrythm or the Gamelan from Java.

Bottom line: It is important to have rules, because the rules are what distinguishes music from noise (total lack of rules). But it is not important whether the rules are those made by someone else or your own, they just have to be true to the style. And you can learn (or invent) the rules either theoretically, or by playing and copying as much music as you can.


I'd like to suggest to look up a couple of the names mentioned above and check out very different styles of music. Also, try to find a dictionary on music theory (there is a great German book called the "dtv-Atlas zur Musik" which is crammed with text, music examples, tables and depictions -- unfortunately I don't know of any similar English works). It will broaden your horizon and give you hints on what you can use and want to learn. Music is such a wide and exciting topic!

 

[kevins]

Great post, kevins. Totally agree on that.
And what you might think is "stuff that doesn't work in a theoretical sense, but sounds grat in a song" is just a ruleset from a different style.

yeah i also was going to throw in something about that, that theoretically, most things work and there is very few things that flat out dont necessarily work per say(that render as noise or just so heinously wrong that the floor stops). ill look up some o' that stuff, and i can speak german , poorly but would like to re-learn it. music theory and history is a fun subject out there and i did enjoy learning some of that. the history of modes is fascinating and its kind of funny how people used to during the dark ages (i think it was the dark ages), simply just play those modes note for note while chanting things, i swear when i was listening to those i could smell the church incense) but one of the cooler notes on them was a lot of those modes at the time were incredibly groundbreaking and they orriginated from different tribes of people if i remember correctly.

as for my personal pursuits of music theory, i just kind of did one of those "getting what i wanted from it" things with musical theory and just left it at that. it helped me a lot with fingerboard framiliarity and it is beyond excellent for that, and it helps you play along in bands a lot too because you develoup this ability to transfer any bassline you come up with in your head to the fretboard without the "um what frets do i hit for that?" pause.

and earlier by what i meant by "scam" when i was "assing" it up was, music theory helps you think outside of the box, a lot. a newbie who jams on a bass all day may not necessarily experiment with notes like that. same as a person whos played rock bass all their life. in other words music theory makes you do things on your instrument you wouldnt try by sitting around playing it a lot all day or necessarily learn from tabs. there are scales no one uses because they're odd to our culture and sound akward to our ears. dick dales use of middle eastern scales blew a lot of people's minds because no one heard that stuff applied to american surf music at the time.

before music theory, i, like many newbies played on two strings at a time, i didnt even think of jumping from an e string to a g string or an e to an d because honestly i didnt know what the results would sound like.

the reason i kind of stopped looking into it and started forgetting the names of modes and scales is i felt i got framiliar with my instrument enough to speak with it and i kind of resided to "eh most things work somehow out there and can be explained somehow out there"

i personally believe music theory is one of mans descriptions of something thats there, kind of like explaining how the body works or how come the sky is blue.
and music theory really is a fascinating subject that even breaches into the medical field. if you havent seen this i reccomend you do, it is amazing

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzOfHzaGZZE"]YouTube- World Science Festival 2009: Notes & Neurons, Part 1 of 10[/nomedia]


now back to on topic...

ivan you should definitely not be afraid to deviate from your guitarists rules because theoretically most things work. if it sounds like noise tinker with the line till it doesnt. the drop tunings as i said before aren't really for bassists and if you want to develoup fingerboard framiliarity and get the low notes you get from d you are better off just tuning the whole thing down two steps which would make it DGCF, this will sound like your standard EADG but it will be lower and if you wanna play something in EADG you will just move everything up two frets! and if you want it to play an EAD or G while open you can simply just buy a capo! and you can make a simple adjustment instead of dealing with the annoying keep everything in place but move everything on the e string up two frets. i find drop tunings frustrating like that but thats a personal thing, you may not find them frustrating as plenty of people play in them.

and learn fingerbaord framiliarity however you can cause its what helps you speak with your instrument, whether you learn it by theory, playing other peoples stuff or just messing around on the bass is up to you, i personally would do all three with mind that even stuff thats uncharted or unframiliar can work and sound good but you just have to make it work. i vaguely remember hendrix saying something about that subject, that a lot of the times he would play and that notes that didnt initially click he would make the guitar line evolve and make them click as he was playing.

however if your only playing in these tunings because your guitarists demand you follow them note for note do the mature thing and tell them to eat poo.