Are there other scale shapes?

[bradejensen]

@Ruefus

You get good at playing…that exercise, or that line over that chord progression. Rarely does it translate to skills elsewhere. Its that lick or line in some regard.

Both hands have their function which can be applied in a different soundscape so it absolutely can be applied elsewhere.

I will say more of your time should probably be spent learning and creating arpeggio kind of phrasing. Start with the basic arpeggio, then go into more complex adds, and different picking pathways. Practicing both ascending and descending, as this will require quite a bit of technical challenge because even if you only do a one way escape, a half rest stroke is brutal in the gypsy jazz realm. And if you choose to two way directional economy it will still cause you a problem as now you will either have to learn to maintain the same pick slant, or learn your nemesis dark side unnatural red headed step child one way escape that you never use.

[Ruefus]

@bradejensen

Both hands have their function which can be applied in a different soundscape so it absolutely can be applied elsewhere.

Not unless you understand why it works at all.

We will agree to disagree.

[bradejensen]

@Ruefus

Not unless you understand why it works at all.

This is why I think there is a kind of time frame that it takes for something to soak in, and also limit to how much we can retain. I have heard Christiaan van Hemert say quite often he just isn’t able to remember all the phrasing. And I think it just boils down to how each of us enjoy the phrasing, and probably could have to do with liking specific soundscapes. Similar to how we might like a certain color so we buy most of our shirts in that color.

[tommo]

Quick moderator note: I can see that this discussion (technique VS musicality and so on) can be easily the source of disagreement / controversy.

I think a possible way to keep talking about these topics with minimal drama is to try and stick to the practical, e.g. what are possible things that a player can try to do in order to work on one or the other aspect?

Then, people can easily test the ideas and form their own opinion on what works / what doesn’t.

If we instead go the overly abstract route it’s way too easy to get entangled into academic arguments and disagreements.

That is of course just a suggestion and I hope it makes sense, thanks

PS: yes, there are always other scale shapes

[Ruefus]

@bradejensen

@Ruefus

Not unless you understand why it works at all.

This is why I think there is a kind of time frame that it takes for something to soak in, and also limit to how much we can retain. I have heard Christiaan van Hemert say quite often he just isn’t able to remember all the phrasing. And I think it just boils down to how each of us enjoy the phrasing, and probably could have to do with liking specific soundscapes. Similar to how we might like a certain color so we buy most of our shirts in that color.

I don’t disagree with any of that. It is entirely separate from the technical aspects. Trying to learn both at the same time - IMHO does not work well enough to consider useful.

[bradejensen]

@Ruefus

I don’t disagree with any of that. It is entirely separate from the technical aspects. Trying to learn both at the same time - IMHO does not work well enough to consider useful.

We were all beginners though, and this is why I don’t say that scale practice is not worth your time. Because there is no other way around it, doing it is beneficial. Do I hate saying this… absolutely!

I will say though I wish in middle school band I would have been shown what a scale really was on a finer detail. But alas my public school didn’t want to do anything but baby sit. But I probably wouldnt have really cared lets be honest to immature, and just wanted to get home to play super mario world.

And here is another way to look at it with so many people getting addicted to youtube shorts and tiktoks maybe we should just learn how to play scales really fast as people dont even have the attention span to even listen to anything for longer than a minute anyways. nor do they even find it interesting enough to try to learn something new we are being spoon fed snippets of garbage turning our brains to mush.

[Moje]

Honestly I think your approach is too arbitrary. You want to pick every note, it has to be economy picking, and not three note per string; but why? I’m reminded of the mantra from my fitness days: do not use a routine you invented yourself when starting out. In the beginning, any tried and tested routine will work. Only with experience is it worth making modifications.

The greats all (maybe I should say “mostly all”) took an approach that worked for someone they admired, and copied that. 3 note per string is a very effective approach for improvising; classical Segovia-style scales are very effective for avoiding stretches and adding chord tones; you need a scale approach that works for a particular purpose, that has proven effective for others.

We don’t know how fast you can or want to play, what level you play at, etc, but still the opinions come fast and furious; I haven’t read the whole thread so maybe you’ve already done this, but be specific . . . help us help you.