Carol Kaye http://www.carolkaye.com/

(One of America’s top session jazz and rock bass guitarists for 50 years).

BASIC THEORY. Basic theory starts with the formation of chords. I never teach any scale until much later, after you learn the right notes to use in chordal situations and get to playing right away, with good ear-training chordal arpeggios and some useful rock/funk lines as well as good walking lines to use. It's just as easy to teach the finest walking lines (like what Ray Brown uses) as not. The note-scale is numbered 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 and 8 starts 1 over again, then it's 8 (1) 9 (2) 10 (3rd). Chords are formed from every other note of the scale: R (for "root" same as "1"), 3 and 5 form the basic notes of the major chord, say like C, has R35, the notes of C E G in the chord. Cmaj7 has R357 C E G B in it - note: bass players NEVER (unless you’re walking) play the maj7th in their lines at all, you're only concerned with the 3rds and 5ths).
Carol Kaye
April 17, 1998

Plus, I cannot emphasize enough about the ear training that chordal tones improve. Your ears are literally hurt by all the proffered scales (which btw have made a lot of money for publishers). The experienced musicians will all tell you NOT to practice scales; that's not the way to learn to really play well, but rather to get your chordal notes together.
Carol Kaye
May 15, 1998

I have only just discovered this site today, 17th Sept `04.
I have taught clarinet and sax students this way for years, in my teaching of jazz improvisation. It works. Most of my 10 year olds will play simple and coherent jazz in 10 minutes. Because it’s much, much easier to hear how a simple chord (Root, 3, 5) will relate aurally to another simple chord, as opposed to the silly way of trying to teach improvisation through scales. I have played piano accompaniment for examinations where improvisation based on scales has seen the candidate all over the place, and not laying down any resemblance to the harmonic content of what is very much a tonal and chordal melodic structural test.
The teaching of scales in early jazz learning is therefore wrong and bad. Yet it still continues. It has become the norm. A lot of the U.K. colleges are now emphasising this in their jazz improvisation examinations. We may assume they prefer this way because ‘modern’ jazz seems to have veered away from conventional chordal structures (Gershwin/Ellington etc) towards freer jazz, which by it’s definition means that a common chord is forbidden. I know one reason for this, and that is a similar reason why in the rock`n`roll era, all guitarists preferred the 3 chord trick kinda music – because it’s easy to learn. Scales have to come later, once the ear has some kind of related and progressive knowledge of chord structure. Scales are only one aspect of technique, which allows us to move through chordal structures, no matter how vague they may be. So I would recommend that all teachers of jazz, and colleges get their acts together, and realise what bad teaching is happening here at present. The entire jazz exam syllabuses need to be scrapped, and re-thought. It is basically impossible to learn how to improvise using a scale.

I truly and sincerely do not offer any apology for what you may consider to be my (these) dogmatic thoughts, and for the way I have laid them out – I know that my way works, and so do my pupils. Please think again! Thanks. A.W.