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PLAYING SCALES DIAGONALLY

I hope that the intervallic studies we have worked with so far have inspired you to moveoutside of your technical comfort zone. Above all else, I hope that you have become moreaccustomed to hearing these shapes on your own, and likewise have become better able torecognize these sounds in the music you hear. This time around I would like to share with youanother approach to scales and modes that will take us out of a single position and allow usto move diagonally across the neck. This way we are able to cover a larger portion of real

estate on the fingerboard, and move to different ranges of the bass neck instantly using aminimal amount of movement.

Playing diagonally is really just a glorified way of sub grouping the notes from a scale intosmaller portions separated by intervals. For all of the exercises played in this lesson, we willbe using an interval of a diatonic 3rd to separate each scale fragment, and each scalefragment will be composed of three consecutive notes from each scale.

Written in a formula, the approach might look like this (each number represents its respectivedegree of the scale):

1,2,3, [shift starting finger up a diatonic 5th] 5,6,7, [shift starting finger up a diatonic 5th]

9,10,11, [shift starting finger up a diatonic 5th] 13,14,15, etc...

The only condition we will place on this exercise is that each 3 note scale fragment will beginwith finger 1 (the index finger) of the fretting hand. That forces the fretting hand to changepositions after each 3 note grouping, and this is the key to the exercise.

There are a couple of ways of looking at this. Lets take the ionian mode, for example, appliedto a 4 string bass. Using this approach, we begin with our hand in our typical 3 note per stringposition (fig.1). However, we will not be playing all the notes of the scale from this position:

Fig.1

Notice that your index finger is lined up with the root of the scale. Starting with this fingering,we would play the first 3 scale degrees of the pattern, 1, 2, 3. Then, we would shift our handto the next string in order to place our index finger up a diatonic 5th from our starting note(the 5th degree of the scale). We then would play three more notes of the scale starting withthe 5th, 5,6,7. Once again we would move our starting finger up a diatonic 5th from the 5,and then play scale degrees 9,10,11. Finally, we would move our starting finger up anotherdiatonic 5th from the 9 and then play scale degrees 13,14,5. In pattern form, it would looklike fig. 2:

Fig. 2ionian

Another way of describing this approach for ionian is as follows: Using 3 notes per string, firstplay the first 3 notes of Ionian. Then move your starting position up a diatonic 5th and playthe first 3 notes of mixolydian from the 5. Then move your starting position up another

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diatonic 5th and play the first 3 notes of dorian. Finally, move your starting position upanother diatonic 5th and play the first 3 notes of aeolian. On a 4 string bass, this would be ashigh as you could ascend before running out of strings.

The patterns for each of the remaining 6 major scale based modes are outlined in figures 3-8.Practice each of these in both ascending and descending fashion. Pay close attention to yourfingerings, as they will assist you in making clean shifts from string to string.

Fig. 3dorian

Fig. 4phrygian

Fig. 5lydian

Fig. 6

mixolydian

Fig. 7aeolian

Fig. 8locrian