🎸 Note to Self and Bassists: I don't knock short-scale basses. I knock bad practice habits.
Published about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Notes to Self (and Bassists)
Dear Reader
Got a one-star Amazon for the Pattern System Book.
The complaint: I warn against using short-scale basses in the Pattern System book. The reviewer read that as snobbery toward shorties. I get why it landed that way.
But here's what I actually said, and why it matters.
The Pattern System asks you to do several things simultaneously: say note names, identify intervals, hear scale degrees, visualize the fretboard without looking at it, and let your fingers land there. All of that is being wired together at the same time. That wiring depends on physical consistency. Your hand is learning distances. Your brain is mapping positions. Your ear is connecting what you imagine to where your fingers go.
Switch scale lengths regularly during that process, and you're not just changing an instrument. You're changing the map while you're still drawing it.
The extreme case: practice dutifully on a short-scale for months, then show up to a gig with a 34-inch house bass. Hand fatigue. Pattern slippage. If it's fretless, intonation off. Not a system failure. A consistency problem.
Once you're proficient, switching is easy. I move between electrics and Ubasses with a quick two-minute calibration. But that's on the other side of the learning curve, not the beginning of it.
The note to self: the instrument is part of the training. Pick one scale length, stay there through the learning phase, then bring in your other basses. This applies to the Pattern System specifically, but it's a good general rule for anything that involves building deep muscle memory and fretboard visualization together.
Practice Spark:
Next practice session, before you pick up the bass, close your eyes and visualize where a specific pattern lives on the neck. Visualize the diagram like the one below. See the shape on the actual fretboard. Imagine playing it. Try hearing it inside - it's a minor Pentatonic plus a few notes on top to add all the notes you can reach without shifting. Then pick up the bass and check yourself - What did it feel like? What did it sound like? Can you say fingerings, note names, scale degrees?
If you own multiple basses, notice whether you're defaulting to whichever one is closest. Decide which one you're using for focused method work, and be intentional about it.
