For the bass player who knows some scales, but not the whole fretboard.
Harmony-based scale practice built on 25 short etudes, and a method that turns any exercise into a lifetime of practice.
Featuring the Practice Multiplier Method
Taught by Mark Smith to 451,000+ subscribers on YouTube.
Launch Sale · 30% OffMost of us learned scales as shapes. Up an octave, maybe two, back down, next one. Get it clean, get it fast, tick it off. And it does help your hands.
But years later, you still live in the same couple of areas of the neck. You can name the modes, maybe even play them in one position. Change the key or the chord, move somewhere else on the fretboard, and the fog comes straight back.
That's not a talent problem. It's a practice problem. Most of us were taught scales as patterns, with the harmony left out. And without the harmony, a scale is just a shape.
You've probably tried:
"I didn't want to give you another book of scale exercises. I wanted to give you a method for getting the most development from any line you practice."Mark Smith
Pick any key and you know where you are, anywhere on the neck. A chord name stops being a word you've read and becomes a set of notes under your fingers: the chord tones at the centre, the flavour notes around them. Your hands move cleanly between positions without you having to think about it. And every time you sit down to practice, you know exactly what to work on and why.
One-octave, two-octave and complete-position fingerings, with position shifts built into the etudes, until the entire neck becomes familiar ground.
Ten chord scales matched to major 7, dominant 7, minor 7 and minor 7♭5 chords. You'll know which notes belong to a chord, why, and where to find them anywhere on the fretboard.
Clean shifts, even notes and control across the whole neck, built into every etude rather than practiced as a separate chore.
You stop thinking in shapes and start thinking in numbers, which is how you truly learn keys and understand what you're playing.
One etude can keep you busy for weeks. 25 of them, through 12 keys and 10 chord scales, add up to 3,000 lines, with graded routines that tell you exactly where to start.
The method works on bass lines, fills, licks and melodies too. Feed it anything and get a fresh set of variations back.
"The process is small; what it produces is vast. You will never again have an excuse for having nothing to practice!"Mark Smith
Learn a pattern, learn another, learn the modes as seven more. It keeps your hands busy, but it leaves you with a handful of boxes on the neck and no real sense of how they connect, or how they relate to the chords you play over. Scale Craft takes a completely different route.
A small amount of material. An enormous amount of practice.
Instead of endless pages of patterns, you work with 25 short etudes. Each one is a technique study, a fretboard map and a harmony lesson all at once, and the method shows you how to get years of practice out of every single one.
Every scale you practice is tied to the chord it belongs to. You stop seeing shapes and start seeing sounds: why a scale works over a chord, and where to find it anywhere on the neck.
The etudes are designed to travel. Through every key, across every position, with shifts built in, until the neck feels like one connected map rather than a few familiar boxes.
Once you've learned it, the Practice Multiplier Method works on any line you like: bass lines, fills, licks, melodies. You'll never again sit down and wonder what to practice.
It's the approach that transformed my own playing at music college. Now it's laid out step by step, so you can do the same.
Introducing...
Harmony-based scale practice for serious bass development. Two modules and 25 etudes that take you from a refresher on the major scale to running any line through ten chord scales in every key.
"I'd learned some scales and could see how they related to major and minor keys. I'd even learned the modes in one octave, but I couldn't use them with any fluency around the fretboard. Then I started music college, and my tutor made me play lines that moved over the entire fretboard, through all 12 keys and over a variety of chord types. It transformed my approach to learning the bass. From that moment on, every musical line became a vehicle for limitless practice, and my scale practice was forever tied to harmony."Mark Smith
Scale Craft is that practice, laid out step by step as the Practice Multiplier Method. A clear, structured way of working that builds your fretboard knowledge, your understanding of harmony and your technique at the same time. No tricks, no shortcuts. Just the kind of practice that changes how you see the instrument.
Everything grows out of the major scale, so Module 1 makes sure your foundations are rock solid before you build on them. You'll strengthen your scale knowledge across more of the neck, get comfortable thinking in scale degrees and intervals, and meet the 25 etudes that sit at the heart of the course.
This is where the Practice Multiplier Method comes to life. You'll take the etudes far beyond where they started, see how scales connect to the chords underneath them, and build a practice routine that keeps you developing for years.
A 52-page PDF that follows every lesson, with all 25 etudes in major and minor, the ten chord scales in one and two octaves, and Etude 2 worked through every chord scale. Notation and tab throughout. Keep it on your music stand; it's the reference you'll still be using years from now.
25 etude recordings so you can hear exactly how each line should sound, plus 48 static chord practice tracks. The practice tracks are pad chords with no drums, so you can learn the lines without pressure, then hear how each chord scale sits against its chord. Download them and keep them forever.
The members site tracks every lesson you complete and picks up where you left off. It sounds small, but it's often the difference between finishing a course and abandoning it halfway.
Try it. If it's not for you, you get every penny back.
Take a full 30 days to work through the lessons and play the etudes. If you don't feel your playing developing, if the course isn't giving you something real to work on every time you pick up the bass, just email me and you'll get a full refund. No questions, no forms to fill in, no friction.
This isn't the fast track. There isn't one. But this is the most direct path I know to becoming a better bass player through your scale practice: by seeing every scale through the harmony.
Honest answers, no spin.
You can find plenty of scale patterns. What you won't find is a structured method that connects them to keys, chords and real lines, in a sensible order, with a workbook, recordings of every etude and practice tracks to play over. Scale Craft isn't a collection of patterns. The Practice Multiplier Method is a way of practicing that you can use on any material for the rest of your playing life.
There's theory in here, but only the theory you need, and it goes straight onto the bass. Scale degrees, intervals and chord scales are all learned by playing the etudes, not by reading about them. The quick chord primer covers just enough chord construction to make the chord scales make sense.
The lessons are short and focused, the members site tracks your progress, and the practice routines break everything into manageable steps. You only ever work on one etude, in one scale, in one key at a time. And if it's not working for you, the 30-day guarantee has you covered.
Knowing the modes as shapes and being able to run a line through them on demand are two very different things. Module 1 moves quickly as a refresher, and Module 2 takes you through ten chord scales, including Lydian Dominant, Phrygian Dominant and the Altered scale, in every key. Most experienced players find plenty to work on.
As much or as little as you have. A focused 15 to 20 minutes on one etude in one scale is a genuinely useful session. There are no deadlines, and the course is designed for you to stay on a single etude for as long as you need.
It's not a beginner course. It's ideal if you're comfortable with the basics, know at least one major scale fingering and want to take your scale practice much further. Everything is written in notation and tab, so you don't need to be a strong reader.
The video lessons stream on the TalkingBass members site at members.talkingbass.net, on any device. The workbook and audio tracks are downloadable via links in your welcome email and the course menu.
Yes. One purchase, lifetime access, for as long as the site runs. That's been over a decade and counting.
Email me within 30 days and you'll get a full refund. No questions, no forms.
I'm a bass player and teacher from Yorkshire, England, and I've been teaching bass online at TalkingBass since 2013. Over 451,000 players now follow the lessons on YouTube.
My approach has always been to get you playing real music as early as possible. Scales have their place, but on their own they're not where your development happens. It's what you do with them that counts.
I built Scale Craft because the practice that transformed my own playing at music college is something most players are never shown. This is that method: a small set of lines, and a way of carrying them across the whole fretboard, through every key and every chord you'll ever meet.
That's Scale Craft. Scale practice built around harmony, with 25 etudes and the Practice Multiplier Method to turn them into a lifetime of practice. If it sounds like what you've been looking for, the link's right there.
