Zitat:'I think that too much emphasis is placed on scales and hardly none place on getting chordal tones together. I decry the ignorant way they teach scales as "the only way", as they have not the facility to teach chordal tones, nor the teaching experience to do that. Even fine string bass teachers teach chordal tones, but hardly enough elec. bass teachers. I never teach scales until a couple years later on in the lessons. They should get their chordal tones together first, not the piano way of learning "scales first" on the elec. bass which plays according to "chords", not solo work, to back up a band, or even to play some blues lines for immediate jamming. You're correct in the sense that you do learn it all, but there is literally almost nothing out there about chordal tones and the reason being is ignorance. Have had so many students who can play a million scales and cannot play with a band, as they don't know what to play and surely cannot solo. This has brought this lack of chordal tone approach way of teaching to my attention in the later years. They need more pattern work for the rock-funk too, as very few have the multitude of ideas you need to create good funky patterns (speaking of notes here, not slapping which isn't done in LA much anymore, it's sort of passe here). In just a few lessons, one can get their chordal approaches together to function very well in bands, and that is the ideal. As I get them in either funk (notes) or jazz soloing, I do give them the necessary two scales (only) that they need.
The arpeggios, chordal tones, are where it's at, also the stacked triads. Modes are very limited, they use the ii6 chord exclusively and don't flow at all like the chordal scale notes, and audiences are now so tired of hearing that limited self-serving musician stuff, it's a good way to close a business up I think. Good jazz is from the subs, the patterns, the pivot b5 lines, so many creative chordal sub things, plus the flow of the communications, the silences, the statements/answers (some call this "call and response") it's an art form, not a show-off of fast licks, but a way of communicating with each other and the audience.
Bird took the classical studies and started playing the jazz around the chordal notes and mathematical substitutions from the altered chords: A7-9 has the same notes as Bbo, things like that. Blues and rock etc. have a slightly different theory setup, blues licks which are derived from the minor chord (Cm aka as Eb7 or Ebm) which is really is the C7#9 chord with passing tones, this is not jazz subs at all, nor the stacked triads of Jazz (i.e. G7 is stacked in triad form: G Bm-5 Dm F Am C Em etc., thus you use the Dm7 for G7, you use the Fmaj7 for G7 etc.) and all the mathematical genius that goes with that. Bird and others like Horace Silver, Hampton Hawes, other innovators like that would be in the class of Albert Einstein (or really Einstein's wife who did so much for Albert) if they had have been scientists, it's mathematics in jazz, in 2's and 3's, not hard if you know your chordal tones, but takes awhile. '