Four Ways of Learning

When I learned theory, I pretty much took an intellectual approach. This limited the benefits of the knowledge I gained, so I had to go back and re-learn using Anthony Wellington's approach. Anthony gives the advice to learn every musical concept four ways. Anthony says:

I try to teach students that for every musical concept you know, you should know it equally four ways: physically, visually, sonically and intellectually. If you learn a new concept, or a new scale or new lick, ask yourself, “Of those four ways, which of these ways am I the strongest? And of these four ways, which am I the weakest”, you’ll always know what it is you need to work on.

If I used the example of the A major scale, I need to know that concept physically; second finger on the fifth fret of the E string and so forth, so I can physically play the A major scale.

Visually doesn’t mean with my eyes, it means with my mind. I want to know where that A major scale is with my mind, meaning that if you needed me to teach you how to play an A major scale or you wanted to teach me an A major scale and there wasn’t a bass around, you should still be able to teach it to me. If I asked you to describe your wife or girlfriend to me, you shouldn’t have to have her in the room in order to that! You should know how she looks even if she’s not around and the bass is the same way. If I asked you, “What’s the 20th fret of the A string,” you should know that that’s an F. So that’s what I mean when I talk about knowing musical concepts visually.

Knowing things sonically is self-explanatory: that A Major scale has a certain sound and you should be hyper-aware of that meaning. If you go to finger that A Major scale that we talked and you trust that fingering, if I adjust one of the tuning pegs without you knowing, you should know that what you are hearing is not an A Major scale.

And intellectually means breaking down that A Major scale to the formula of whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. And I’ve found that there’s a cultural divide in learning. A lot of inner city players grow up getting good at the instrument physically and sonically; what we call ‘playing by ear’. And I’ve found that a lot of kids who grew up in a suburb, who grew up playing classical music or who were able to get lessons right away, get good visually and intellectually but they don’t develop an ear because they weren’t forced to drop the needle on a record and learn a part! So, Bassology is about really combining those four things and not having that divide. That’s one of the driving forces behind Bassology, to understand music and what we do on this instrument four ways, equally.