Firstly, I'd like to say thank you for all the great musical advice and knowledge you've shared with us on TalkBass. I, personally, can only speak for myself, but, I must say that, I've learned bounds in the past few weeks. Be it from your inspiring posts, or from practice and research after the fact!
To better improve my memory of the fretboard and help build sense of movement when improvising/creating walking lines I've been drilling myself with various "scale"-based practices (a term I generally hate, but can't find a better one at the moment). I will select a key (generally G, C, or Bb for now (haven't really touched Harmonic or Melodic Minors yet either other then their basic shapes)), then, starting on the lowest string (B in my case), play the modes of said key horizontally across the fretboard and back (typically starting on fret one, and continuing until I get through all the respective modes of the key). I then go back through each mode and repeat, but this time I single out each arpeggio instead of the entire scale. Recently I've been trying to connect these various arpeggios vertically throughout each of the modes. For example, if I were playing the key of C, I'd take Cmaj7 (Not touching any extensions yet either) on the first fret and run through the horizontal arpeggio in the ionian mode (these are three note per string fingerings as well), I'd then slide to the last note of the arpeggio in dorian and go back, so on and so forth, down the entire neck.
Doing all this has shown great improvement thus far in my knowledge of where I am on the fretboard at any given time. My only issue is that these exercises seem, for lack of a better term, kind of simplistic to me. I feel as though there are different and more challenging ways I could be putting these shapes under my fingers and thus deeper into my mind.
I'd love to hear any ideas/practice suggestions you may have regarding memory of the fretboard and what I could also/better be doing to achieve such.
To better improve my memory of the fretboard and help build sense of movement when improvising/creating walking lines I've been drilling myself with various "scale"-based practices (a term I generally hate, but can't find a better one at the moment). I will select a key (generally G, C, or Bb for now (haven't really touched Harmonic or Melodic Minors yet either other then their basic shapes)), then, starting on the lowest string (B in my case), play the modes of said key horizontally across the fretboard and back (typically starting on fret one, and continuing until I get through all the respective modes of the key). I then go back through each mode and repeat, but this time I single out each arpeggio instead of the entire scale. Recently I've been trying to connect these various arpeggios vertically throughout each of the modes. For example, if I were playing the key of C, I'd take Cmaj7 (Not touching any extensions yet either) on the first fret and run through the horizontal arpeggio in the ionian mode (these are three note per string fingerings as well), I'd then slide to the last note of the arpeggio in dorian and go back, so on and so forth, down the entire neck.
Doing all this has shown great improvement thus far in my knowledge of where I am on the fretboard at any given time. My only issue is that these exercises seem, for lack of a better term, kind of simplistic to me. I feel as though there are different and more challenging ways I could be putting these shapes under my fingers and thus deeper into my mind.
I'd love to hear any ideas/practice suggestions you may have regarding memory of the fretboard and what I could also/better be doing to achieve such.
