Deanol

You have said it... "most of us will struggle with some of the notes until we find the the ones that are the exact right ones." I'm not convinced with your argument that "most of us" will struggle with this. That seems like an argument from incredulity. Maybe most of us who know how to play scales on the neck don't struggle with this! Perhaps knowing where the scales are might actually help us to avoid struggling to find the notes. Scales give you groups of notes that sound good together, so if you know the scales on your neck, you might be able to get the "exact right ones" that much quicker. Which is important in composition, but more so in improvising. If the melody isn't sung by someone else, as in your example above, but is in your head, knowing the scales on the neck will almost certainly give you a good choice of notes to be able to play back that sound in your head. Even if the melody is sung by someone else, knowing your scales and the sounds they make on the neck will give you the best possible chance of getting the melody in relative terms, even if the absolute pitch is off. It is easier to then move the scale up or down until you get to the absolute pitch. I'm still not sold on the idea that practicing scales is an irrelevance. Let's look at it in a different way, the very fact that musicians down the ages have sat practicing their scales and arpeggios would seem to indicate they are useful. I'm sure JS Bach practiced his scales, but I don't believe he ever wrote a piece of music that was simply a scale played up and down the piano.

As I said though, I don't believe anyone is claiming they ARE used in playing actual musical pieces. It's a bit of a straw-man. You say you compose by playing notes to find ones that sound good. Other people short-circuit all that effort by learning their scales, so they know immediately what notes sound good without having to play a whole load of notes that don't sound good in order to get to the ones that do. I hear music in my head, and given my knowledge of scales on the fretboard, I can play what is in my head straight away. They also allow me to know immediately what the notes are in the underlying chords, and therefore I know that those notes will sound good as well, which is useful when playing over chord changes. That's another use for scales. Theory of whatever form is always useful. It saves time.

In the late 70's Abba were shifting millions of albums, dwarfing the number sold by the Sex Pistols! Disco shifted more records than punk ever did, and probably had a longer and deeper impact on subsequent music, and still influences dance music today. It wasn't ever an either/or situation, but rather both/and. I bought albums by Abba, Queen, Blondie, Eric Clapton, Ian Dury, The Clash, The Ramones, Meatloaf and Stevie-Ray Vaughan, to name a few, in the late 70's and early 80's. I'm currently reading Spike Milligan's wartime memoirs. In those he makes the point that in the 20's through to the 50's, jazz was the counter-culture music, banned by the Nazi's and despised by the middle-of-the-road public who preferred Joseph Locke and Gracie Fields to Duke Ellington. To paraphrase Frank Zappa - Shut Up and Listen To Loads of Stuff. There's good stuff in everything, in spite of the snobishness that pervades music. It's so ironic that punk garners its own snobs, who look down on, for example, Meatloaf, when Bat Out of Hell was objectively a fantastic album. The danger of such snobbishness is of course, that those snobs who sneer at Meatloaf whilst claiming that The Sex Pistols were better because they were more "real" or whatever, are in danger of being sneered at themselves by an even more select group who will claim that most Pistols fans are johnny-come-lately's, and that they did their best work before they were famous! There's always a bigger fish (or rather a smaller, more select group).

I don't think anyone is suggesting that scales can be played in a live setting as a solo piece. If I have given that impression please accept my apologies because I certainly didn't mean to. Scales are most commonly used to compose a piece of music given a particular harmonic progression. They shouldn't be played up and down in lieu of a properly composed (or improvised) piece of music. CDEFGAB is not a piece of music, it is a scale. I think most people would agree with you that scales in, and of, themselves are not interesting pieces of music. Are you saying that you didn't get any use out of the scales you learned when writing your music? If that is the case, how did you compose your music? I learned my scales as well, and I use that knowledge every day when improvising or composing my own music. It's like learning your times tables as a child. The rote learning that (my generation at least) instilled those 12x12 times tables were of no use in and of themselves, and were a drudge to learn, but they are valuable in real life, when I need to know that 6 packs of strings at £8.00 each come to £48.00.

I can't speak for Bilbo, but from my perspective, it is for you to decide whether you want to improvise and compose you own piecess of music, or whether you are content to play other people's compositions. If the former, you will need to know scales, if the latter, you can probably get away without knowing them. How original do you want to be?

No. It gives you the knowledge of what notes sound "good" (for a given definition of "good") over a chord sequence. Mainly useful when improvising or when composing your own solos. If you mainly read other people's basslines (tab or music), or work them out from the recording, then I guess scales (and arpeggios - let's not forget them) are not relevant. Being able to hear a chord in a piece of music, and then know which scales contain "good" sounding notes that you can use over that chord, is pretty much a fundamental improvisational skill. Learning scales informs you of the rules of music, which you can use to make good sounding music without having to peck away at the fretboard until you stumble on a group of notes that sound okay (which will probably be scales!). It's a cliche, but learning scales is akin to learning the rules of music, which you can then deliberately break. Breaking the rules when you don't know what they are is a hit and miss affair.

And what manner of technology is your wife nowadays? (Hee... I always like a dangling modifier). I used to love Rock School on TV. I first "got" blues playing from watching that programme.

Err... Big Mac, large fries, box of nuggets and a coke please.

No but I do know who acted in it, who wrote the feem tune, who sang the feem tune...

Double glazing, used cars, timeshares... ever thought about selling any of those?

You will have to forgive me here as I have played guitars for forty (now that is depressing!) years and bass since Christmas Day, but as I understand it, you lot call those wrong notes "chromatic passing notes". Hmmm... a feature then, not a bug!

This. Since first getting a car with DAB about 5 years ago, I only listen to TalkSport. I can't listen to music radio because I hate modern music and that is what is played. News radio gets boring and depressing. I could play some music from my ipod that is connected to the radio system, and occasionally I do, but TalkSport is on 99% of the time. From knowing that you can present better than Alan Brazil, to getting annoyed at the supercilious Jim White, to enjoying H&J, and then shouting at the deliberately provocative listen-in-and-dial-bait that is Adrian Durham and Darren Gough. It's all good. Even the adverts are better than most ordinary commercial radio when you get adverts for carpet shampoo and washing machines; at least on talk sport they are adverts for combi-drills and plywood! Proper man's stuff!

Or a QR tag on each item, which you can scan on your phone which would give you the shops price. The prices would be held in a database and picked up when a scan was performed. Not everyone will have a phone of course, so for those (very few) people "Ask at the till" is the only option, because that's the way life is for you these days.

Knowing my wife, she would spend two hours on the phone with them, and at the end of it still won't have got to the point of the call!

She's put up with me for thirty years now (we were "going out" for five years before we got married, and in September celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary) so I think she's a keeper. Although I do keep threatening to trade her in for a newer model, and then she throws things at me. I think we are turning into George and Mildred. So now I have twice as many reasons for not doing the long list of jobs she has for me... (1) I need to practice my guitar, and (2) I need to practice my bass!

I awoke on Christmas morning to find Santa had left me one of these... A Fret King Black Label Esprit Bass! I wanted a bass and spent a few hours at the end of November going round a few guitar shops trying them out. I tries bases from £79 (a second hand Yamaha) up to £1500 (a Stingray) and thinking I can't tell any difference between these. The only one that stood out for me was the Fret King. It felt right and sounded great. But it was dearer than I wanted to spend on a first bass. Anyway, my lovely, sneaky, wonderful, crafty wife only went and bought it for me. And kept it well hidden until Christmas morning! So now I have a guitar that is too big and missing a couple of strings! How the hell do I play this thing?

A small mansion in the Peak District with staff. A Mercedes S Class with the ultimate optional extra - a chauffeur! The ability to turn left when boarding a flight to a warmer climate.

My son formed his first band in Year 9/10 (so 13 or 14 years old boys) at his school. The lads also, coincidentally played golf in the junior section at our local golf course. When they were casting around for band names I suggested "Queens of the Greens". Strangely they chose not to use it.

One name, one word - Animal.

It can work the other way as well. I packed in bands twenty years ago, but about eight years ago I noticed on JMB that a local band wanted a singer. Blues and rock stuff they said. ZZ Top, Clapton, SRV etc. Right up my street I thought, and I can sing a bit, so I approached them. Had a couple of auditions at it was apparent that they wanted to be heavier - Black Sabbath, Metallica and so on. Not my scene at all and I did struggle to learn the material and sing them (I loathe Paranoid to this day! It has too many words per bar). So if you are going to recruit someone, be honest about the material. I would never have bothered replying to the JMB ad had I known what their true focus was.

Great thread Ian. If you don't mind me asking, how did you get into theatre work? My daughter plays the flute in an amateur hospital orchestra. Don't let the word amateur bother you, they are very accomplished musicians, all grade 7 & 8 and very experienced (their day jobs are Doctors, nurses, medical students and the like). But my daughter has always wanted to play in the orchestra pit for musicals (even local amateur societies). My advice to her is to build up a CV of orchestra playing, and then write to the local theatre groups for them to put her in touch with the musicians. But I don't know if that is the right approach at all, just my guess. To be frank, I have a vested interest in that it would halve my bill having to pay for tickets for her and her mother to go and watch them. Musicals are not really my cup of tea (I love music and like a good play, but not together!), but those two love them, and it's a pricey business! If No. 1 daughter was playing and got to watch for free, I would be quids in. Well, half quids in at any rate.

A bass!

I must admit, I did see the film and enjoyed it. But then again I'm not the biggest fan of Queen, and only really know the big hits, which is what the film is based on. When asked my opinion the next day at work, I said it was "Mamma Mia" for blokes. Incidentally my daughter has just asked for Mamma Mia II for Christmas, which is fine, but she wants the two disc set, which contains the film, along with a singalong DVD. I got looked at with quite the disdain when I suggested to my wife that la daughter could simply put on the Abba Greatest Hits album and singalong to that!

When I played (finished gigging 20+ years ago now) guitar in bands we only did pubs and clubs, and we didn't get fed. But I must admit, these days if I was faced with a big meal before a gig I would be asleep on my feet! I do recall one memorable occaision at Barrow Hill club (I think - it is 30 years ago now) when half way through the second set we were blasting away through something when the power went off to our stage gear, only for the concert secretary (do they still have them?) to mutter through his mike "T'pies 'ave come!". Virtually the whole audience left the concert room whilst we were powering up the amps hoping they hadn't been shafted to go and buy pies from this block who brought trays of them in from a van. What a classy place that was. They did provide half a dozen "broken" pies and pasties in our changing room though, which we scoffed whilst they were doing the bingo and meat raffles between our second set and last set. The delights of working men's clubs and Miner's Welfare clubs. What pleasures they were.

No it felt and sounded fine to me with my limited experience. I don't know what model it was unfortunately, but I guess one of their budget ones that someone chopped in as part ex against something else.