Hey Reader,

I hear a lot of rumbling about how hard of a time many have putting theory into usable bass lines. If that's on your mind, you are not alone. I remember being there myself!

Here's why improvising feels so hard at first even after you've put in real work.

It's because you're actually doing several jobs at once. I like to call it "spinning several plates." There are many, but here are two:

One - choosing the notes. Notes aren't neutral. Every note carries emotional weight in the context of the chords. From the obvious root on the down beat to stable sounding chord tones to notes with tension and color (chromatics) - there are a lot of options and too much freedom can stop us cold in our tracks. And while it's an important bit, it's not the whole story.

Two - choosing a rhythm. Where to put what. Where to put nothing. How to work it all within the beats without losing the downbeat or losing track of where the chords land.

There are many more, but the goal of the whole thing is - making meaning from it. Right notes and right rhythm are a good start, but what you really want is to say something. Tell a story. A good story has a hero, an arc, ebbs and flows, riveting emotions, and an ending.
​
​So how to go about this? ​
Think of it like learning a new word in a language. You don't really know a word until you've used it in a sentence - until you've found where it fits, what it means in context, how it feels coming out of your mouth as you try to convey something.
​
The theory bits you learn are like words of a language. Scales, intervals, arpeggios - they are your vocabulary.
​
Everyone knows this, so they dutifully shed their scales and chords. But learning them "in theory" and stringing them together to make a cool story, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence (that's rhythm, for us!) with good articulation (that word works for music and language too!)... now that's a taller and taller order.
​
​And now you're juggling all of it at once: theory, rhythm, technique while the time keeps moving and the chords keep changing underneath you. Of course it feels hard: you're spinning several plates while the beat refuses to wait for you. If you've ever lost the downbeat entirely, or felt the chord change sneak by before you were ready for it - that's exactly this.

Here's the part nobody tells you: ​
you don't actually know that scale as well as you think.

We learn scales root to root. Up, then down. Done. But music never asks for it that way. Try this - take the last scale you learned and play it descending only, no ascending run-up first.
Try it on one string.
Try it in a different area of the neck.
Suddenly the thing you "know" gets shaky fast.
​
​And rhythm!

You now need to take that tonal material and add rhythm to make it interesting, to add phrases, meaning, pauses.

Song learning is one thing

Learning songs via TAB or ears trains you to reproduce but it does not stretch you beyond that. You'll pick some of this up through assimilation, sure. But it stays limited, because you're training reproduction, and the rest is hope, or accidental. Training it systematically gets you there faster, and more reliably.

The remedy is three things:

• Shed the foundations far deeper than you think you need to. Knowing a shape from our Pattern System is barely the starting line. We take it through every key. Top to bottom. Horizontally and vertically. Outer strings, inner strings. In thirds, fourths, fifths. Mixed motion. Connected across the whole neck. Systematic, deep, thorough.
• Learn to spin the plates with rhythm. Rhythmic templates. Feeling the rhythm in your body, not just counting it.
• Study technique so it all flows. So none of this fights your hands.

Now - before you panic...

and think you need all of that before you're "allowed" to improvise: you don't. We start improvising day one. Because meaning-making is quite innate in humans.

The trick is starting absurdly small. Not a whole scale. Not a pile of changes. Not a complex rhythm. Just one small rhythmic template, over one box shape. Small enough to actually feel what freedom inside a shape is like.

Nothing beats the first time you play an original sentence that actually means something. And you hear it. And you know you did it.

I remember when it happened for me

I had a little Yamaha QY 20 synth and had programmed a few simple changes. I had been doing my pattern system homework and was working on some pentatonics the way we do in the pattern system. And there was a moment where I got a whiff of freedom: I put an unexpected rest, I recall. And because I had practiced rhythmicizing a scale, I felt confident to let go of the hand rail so to speak. And the synth gave me the launch pad and it felt like I was an airplane taking off. It did help that Wolf (my teacher) passed by the room at that moment and said something like "Hey, that sounded nice!"

Announcement - July 23rd Live Session - you are invited:​
We'll explore just that. Wolf made us a cool jam track and we will head to the launch pad!

A free group session where we take one small shape, one small rhythmic template, and find out what it feels like to actually say something with it - not just play it in order.

• Bring your questions
• Play along, only you can hear yourself as you are muted
• Get into the 🔥💺 Hot Seat 💺🔥 if you like
• Learn from what comes up in your playing, and in your peers' too

This is a room built for that first real sentence. Come find yours.

Playing optional. Curiosity required.
​

Details:

WHEN:
July 23rd 1PM Pacific/4PM Eastern

WHERE:
​Zoom​

​
With groove,
Ari