Wow I'm going to have to start the TV up when I practice, sounds interesting I bet that helps.
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Jeff Berlin Chord Tone Article Bass Player Magazine 1998
- Thread starter Fergie Fulton
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Wow I'm going to have to start the TV up when I practice, sounds interesting I bet that helps.
You…you have to start up your TV? Sounds like a process. It’s just like the one button for me over here.
Jeff Berlin is serious about his art and believes in “paying one’s dues” by consistent practice and playing.
Social media clips show how to tap, slap, double thumb, in between countless videos of 7 year olds from all over the world wailing on blues guitar and flunking out on disco bass lines…
Learning and mastering what Berlin has laid out here — yup, simple chord inversions played as arpeggios — takes a lot more work and patience than passively perusing Tik Tok and Insta videos whilst on the loo.
Social media clips show how to tap, slap, double thumb, in between countless videos of 7 year olds from all over the world wailing on blues guitar and flunking out on disco bass lines…
Learning and mastering what Berlin has laid out here — yup, simple chord inversions played as arpeggios — takes a lot more work and patience than passively perusing Tik Tok and Insta videos whilst on the loo.
I'm not in the brilliant Ad Hominem crowd like you people are, it's hard for us simple folks over here.
Oh my, evidently I’ve more of Jeff Berlin in me than I’d realized. Just playing around here, man, didn’t mean to offend. My bad for escalating the banter too much.
I would add one piece of advice from Rufus Philpot that I find very useful (and challenging at first, at least for me) to learn all the notes on the fretboard - say the name of each note as you play it (not after you have played it).
I think there's a time and a place for tab. There are some passages in method books/etudes that are so littered with numbers for string, finger and positional indications that you (or at least, I) start to wonder "if only there were some simple way to show exactly where to put your fingers!"
That being said, the biggest deficiency it has (in study materials, especially) is that it's completely concrete, with no easy way to present the material in the abstract. These exercises of Jeff's are shown for a single four-note chord (C∆7); he expects you to take that pattern and, not only start it on each note of the chromatic scale, but also for every other four-note chord you can think of. This way he only writes it out once, rather than several hundred times, saving him time and forcing you, the student, to come up with dozens, hundreds, of finger patterns and hand shapes on the fly.
You can certainly do this with tablature, it just takes more work. To make this exercise work for you as intended by the author, someone reading the tab will have to do the extra step of really dissecting each interval as presented. That way, they can come up with alternate fingerings and take it to different sonorities successfully.
This is why they don't ask me to teach at the jazz camp anymore.
That being said, the biggest deficiency it has (in study materials, especially) is that it's completely concrete, with no easy way to present the material in the abstract. These exercises of Jeff's are shown for a single four-note chord (C∆7); he expects you to take that pattern and, not only start it on each note of the chromatic scale, but also for every other four-note chord you can think of. This way he only writes it out once, rather than several hundred times, saving him time and forcing you, the student, to come up with dozens, hundreds, of finger patterns and hand shapes on the fly.
You can certainly do this with tablature, it just takes more work. To make this exercise work for you as intended by the author, someone reading the tab will have to do the extra step of really dissecting each interval as presented. That way, they can come up with alternate fingerings and take it to different sonorities successfully.
This is why they don't ask me to teach at the jazz camp anymore.
You say that like it's a bad thing...
imho that's the strength of Berlin's approach to pedagogy: He doesn't spoon-feed the student, he gives the student the necessary tools and then demands that the student put in the work.
If someone were to look at that chord-tone study and say "Yes, well, that's all very 'concrete' -- it tells me what notes to play -- but A) I don't know how to find those notes on my instrument, and B) I don't know how to transpose those studies into other keys" then the teacher's response ...either Jeff's or, I would suggest, any responsible teacher's who is trying to challenge their students and help them to think musically rather than just parrot patterns of muscle memory... should be "Good! Now you know what else you need to work on."
[edit: I'm not suggesting the student should be on their own figuring out how to work on those other things; but a good teacher will guide the student towards understanding how music is constructed rather than just saying "put this finger here, now you know"]
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Second paragraph continues on from the first. That is, the "it" that has deficiencies being "tablature."
I'm actually praising the "extrapolate from incomplete information" approach to teaching–quite a bit, in fact. Jeff isn't the only one to do this, or the first; nor will he claim to be, as he fancies himself a part of the great legacy of "classical" pedagogues.
Do you know enough theory to construct specific arpeggios and inversions, given a chord symbol?
Then it would be simple to explain.
If you only speak TAB then @evanrunyon 's PDF will at least get you through the key of C major
It will fall apart on "practice in all 12 keys" though. Some of the arpeggios shapes simply won't transfer to a new root note
That said, these are not rhythm exercises, just learning the location of notes /arpeggios on the neck.
It is not that hard to decode which note is which in sheet music, and find a reasonable spot on the neck to play the notes
especially if rhythm is not a concern. And it's well worth a bit of effort.
Notation should not be feared or avoided as a learning tool.
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I would encourage you to take this as an opportunity to learn to read! It is one of the best things I ever did for my playing!
Jeff's base approach as offered up on MySpace back in the Y2ks, pretty concrete & inline with the OP
"" XMaj7, Xmin7, X7, Xmin7(b5), Xdim7, XaugMaj7,Xaug7 Xlyd7, X7sus4, and XminMaj7
represent pretty much most of the usable chord tones in music
Here are 4 typical notes C-E-G-B. (XMaj7 = CMaj7 )
You will notice that most music assignments are given in the key of C because obviously,
there are no sharps or flats to contend with. But, music includes much more than C
Just take one chord type and practice them.
Don't look for musical improvement.
Don't look to memorize anything.
Just review the music and over time, playing on chords will become an easier thing to do.
Practice slowly as well.""
A lil more advanced lesson from JB's BP daze. Chord tones, scales tones, leading tones.
"" XMaj7, Xmin7, X7, Xmin7(b5), Xdim7, XaugMaj7,Xaug7 Xlyd7, X7sus4, and XminMaj7
represent pretty much most of the usable chord tones in music
Here are 4 typical notes C-E-G-B. (XMaj7 = CMaj7 )
You will notice that most music assignments are given in the key of C because obviously,
there are no sharps or flats to contend with. But, music includes much more than C
Just take one chord type and practice them.
Don't look for musical improvement.
Don't look to memorize anything.
Just review the music and over time, playing on chords will become an easier thing to do.
Practice slowly as well.""
A lil more advanced lesson from JB's BP daze. Chord tones, scales tones, leading tones.
While Jeff is a pretty amazing bass player, heck probably one of the very best, he is very opinionated, and in my opinion have a very backward approach to teaching.
I'll take Victor Wooten every day over the Jeff Berlin, well over everyone, and I'd take everyone else than Jeff as a teacher.
Being talented in a field doesn't necessarily also make you a talented teacher.
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Agreed -been there
But, the student also gets a vote on how effective the teacher is.
Mismatches and synergy are both possible between teacher and student.
Do folks practice this by shifting every measure, or playing as much as possible in position? I've seen so many YT videos playing something similar starting each bar on the same string, but I have to question the practical application of this approach
This site is the poorer, for the absence of JB.
At the end of high school math classes the teacher would remind us to work through the exercise sheet in order. If one did, one would discover the reason why.
There is no leading a horse to water that doesn't want to be led.
At the end of high school math classes the teacher would remind us to work through the exercise sheet in order. If one did, one would discover the reason why.
There is no leading a horse to water that doesn't want to be led.
When I was in high school, my Algebra 2/Trig teacher would openly condescend to students that struggled, railing self-righteously against the system and other teachers that produced "weak minds" with whom he couldn't work. Many other administrators, teachers and students saw a bad ass that "told it like it was." I saw an extremely limited teacher.
Very rarely do I encounter someone that really doesn't want to do the work, but if I'm not willing to work through the steps to help someone get to the place they want to be then what am I really trying to do here? Shutting out people that feel overwhelmed by standard notation, transposition, theory, etc. just feels like needless gatekeeping to me. You can get them there if you're patient. The music world is filled with charlatans that want you to think what we do is some special mystical art, and if you're daunted and afraid to even start all the better for them.
But yeah, there's also lazy teenagers that don't really care, and retirees that just want a diversion for a few hours a week. I'll gladly take the money to hang out and talk about music with them. Better that then just mindlessly watching TV or doomscrolling.
Very rarely do I encounter someone that really doesn't want to do the work, but if I'm not willing to work through the steps to help someone get to the place they want to be then what am I really trying to do here? Shutting out people that feel overwhelmed by standard notation, transposition, theory, etc. just feels like needless gatekeeping to me. You can get them there if you're patient. The music world is filled with charlatans that want you to think what we do is some special mystical art, and if you're daunted and afraid to even start all the better for them.
But yeah, there's also lazy teenagers that don't really care, and retirees that just want a diversion for a few hours a week. I'll gladly take the money to hang out and talk about music with them. Better that then just mindlessly watching TV or doomscrolling.
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