Want to know how to practice scales on the bass guitar and what’s the best way?
In this bass lesson, I’ll show you some tried and true exercises that’ll:
- make your scales sound sound musical
- develop your technique
- ingrain the notes of the fretboard
- develop your ear for voice leading (helpful when you improvise)
- get you playing scales in a way that’ll become a part of your musical vocabulary
If you’re ready to go all in with practicing your scales on the bass, this is the lesson for you. And the best part is, you won’t be needing much music theory for this bass lesson.
Let’s get started.
TL;DR
If you’re short on time, watch my video on how to practice your scales on the bass guitar. If you do it right, you’ll learn the notes of your fretboard and you’ll also learn how to hear how to resolve these notes in the context of a chord progression or single chord.
Part 1: Practice Scale Exercises Over A Single Chord
The following exercises are for practicing scales over a single chord. Practice them slowly and explore your rhythmic phrasing. In other words, you don’t have to be confined to playing only 8th-note lines.
Pro Tip: Having a backing track, recording, or metronome to play over and create some context is super-helpful. This will help you hear the tendencies for certain notes of the scale in relation to the tonic center. For example, in a C major scale, the note B will have a strong tendency to resolve up a half-step to the root note C.
To keep my workflow simple, I like to use an app, called iReal Pro for creating backing tracks to practice playing my scales over.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that for all of these exercises, use the full range of your instrument.
However, for the sake of keeping these exercises concise, we’ll limit our range within 2 octaves in the key of C. When you’re learning your scales at home, start on the lowest fret of your low E string, then continue playing the exercise to the highest notes on the fretboard.
Warm-up by quickly refreshing yourself with the notes of that scale. Simple run up and down the scale along your entire fretboard (exercise 1).
Buckle up, because these exercises ramp up in intensity pretty quickly. And, you’re going to learn your scales fast.
Now, for exercises 2-9, what you’re going to do is sequence each exercise for each degree of the scale.
By doing this, you’re going to cover a lot of ground by working on each diatonic scale degree and really start to develop muscle memory for your intervals. Practicing your scales this way also helps ingrain the sound of each scale degree. Take every opportunity to always be working on your ears… even when your practicing your scales.
Exercise 1: Scalar Runs
Try not to spend too much time on exercise 1, because this is not the most musical approach to playing scales. The purpose of this exercise is so that you can familiarize where the notes are on the fretboard and get the collection of the notes of a scale in your ear. Spend more time on exercises 2-9.
Exercise 2: Broken Interval (2nds)
When playing broken intervals, keep in mind that there are a few directions to choose from. You can play ascending broken intervals, descending broken intervals, or a mixture of both. To keep these exercises concise, I’ll show you a mixture of both. Mixing up the direction is how you get your scales to sound more musical.
Exercise 3: Broken Interval (3rds)
I practice thirds a lot when I’m trying to learn scales. Thirds have a melodic sound to them. Arpeggios are often made up of a series of third intervals. It’s a quick way to get the sound of the scale in your ears and you’ll know when you’re playing a wrong note!
Exercise 4: Broken Interval (4ths)
I like the sound of fourth intervals. A lot of modern jazz licks use fourths. Since this interval typically requires string crossing, you’ll develop your dexterity across the fretboard in no time. Explore using one finger per note and also try another approach where you simply barre both notes. Both ways work well. For me, I prefer one finger per note for fourth intervals.