Learn to play by ear

[phnod]

Hi everyone,

I want to progress with the bass and especially with the transcription.

How do you manage to play what you hear? What are your tips? Do you have a list of song where I can start?

Thank you

[Earbrass]

My advice would be to start by learning to recognise the different musical intervals. It can be helpful to have memorised examples of each (eg perfect 4th - first 2 notes of Away in a Manger, perfect 5th - first 2 notes of Thus Spake Zarathustra (2001: a Space Odyssey theme) and so on). Good luck!

[itu]

This depends a lot on what you want to play. Marc Sabatella has a nice list of songs to learn, but the level may be very high. My choice is to play with radio. It has helped me to follow quite many styles. It is feasible to play also stuff you do not like so much, because there are things you probably would not learn/play otherwise. Classical, jazz, lounge every now and then. (I hate metronome, radio has been far better.)

Transcribing even simple stuff is very good way of understanding, what and how you hear stuff that you are playing.

Edited May 15, 2020 by itu

[phnod]

23 minutes ago, Earbrass said:

My advice would be to start by learning to recognise the different musical intervals. It can be helpful to have memorised examples of each (eg perfect 4th - first 2 notes of Away in a Manger, perfect 5th - first 2 notes of Thus Spake Zarathustra (2001: a Space Odyssey theme) and so on). Good luck!

A perfect 4th is always between the root note and the other note?

[Earbrass]

Just now, phnod said:

A perfect 4th is always between the root note and the other note?

No. It's just the size of the gap between 2 notes. The "root" changes with the key you're playing in, but the size of the gap between any 2 given notes is independent of the key (at least in equal temperament tunings, which is what we overwhelmingly use). A perfect 4th is a 5 semitone (or 5 fret) gap. 

[phnod]

Thank you for the clarification!

Edited May 15, 2020 by phnod

[Geek99]

The “perfect” comes from its use in old church music I believe 

[TKenrick]

17 hours ago, phnod said:

Hi everyone,

I want to progress with the bass and especially with the transcription.

How do you manage to play what you hear? What are your tips? Do you have a list of song where I can start?

Thank you

The best way to progress with ear training and transcription is to start singing everything you're trying to play - start with a bassline or melody that you know really well, but have never played, and break it down note-by-note. Sing each pitch and find it on your bass. Learning the correct names for all the intervals can come later, but the thing that takes the most time is building a link between your ears and your fingers.

Sight singing is also an excellent way to develop your ears, as you really can't sing anything accurately unless you're hearing it in your head first.

For learning intervals, the most effective thing that I've found is training yourself is an app called Functional Ear Trainer - this teaches you to hear how each degree of the scale sounds in context.

As someone who does a lot of transcription, it's worth noting that many of things that make the process easier and more enjoyable have nothing to do with ear training - working on your reading is the quickest way to speed up the process of writing things down.

[lownote]

43 minutes ago, TKenrick said:

The best way to progress with ear training and transcription is to start singing everything you're trying to play - start with a bassline or melody that you know really well, but have never played, and break it down note-by-note. Sing each pitch and find it on your bass. Learning the correct names for all the intervals can come later, but the thing that takes the most time is building a link between your ears and your fingers.

 

Jay Metcalf (Better Sax) teaches sax by ear alone and offers similar advice.  if you check out some of his free stuff you may find that helpful, transferred to bass.  But on sax it's easier as you're looking for the melody line, not the underlying chords or bass line. Over the years I have taught myself to improv bass lines to songs by listening, then applying licks and little tricks to find a bassline of my own that works.  That's OK until someone asks me to play the original bassline, at which pint I head for the bar.   

[chris_b]

18 hours ago, phnod said:

How do you manage to play what you hear?

By doing it a lot. Like anything, the more you do it the more you'll improve. Always start with the original bass line on the record. This isn't about you being original, it's about you understanding the relationship between notes. It's easier to start with an existing bass line that you can replay as many times as you need.

Listen carefully. Start with songs you like and know then move on. Notice how the notes follow each other. Notes are either higher, lower or the same as the last note. First you'll start to hear the direction of flow and the patterns(12 bar, pachelbel, 1,2,5 etc), then you'll start to hear the intervals, then you'll anticipate the notes and be playing on the hoof.

[phnod]

Alright! Thank you all. It's pretty clear that I have a lot to listen to.

1 hour ago, TKenrick said:

Sight singing is also an excellent way to develop your ears, as you really can't sing anything accurately unless you're hearing it in your head first.

For you "sight singing", does it mean playing the note and sing along?

[PaulWarning]

always worth remembering that some people are naturally better at some things than others, I always struggle but our guitarist just listens to the CD at normal speed and can pick things up, he can't write songs though,

[TKenrick]

21 hours ago, phnod said:

Alright! Thank you all. It's pretty clear that I have a lot to listen to.

For you "sight singing", does it mean playing the note and sing along?

I should have said 'solfege' rather than 'sight singing' - the idea is you get a simple piece of music, use an instrument to get the first pitch then sing through the rest of it; this means that you have to be able to work out all the interval sounds in your head to sing them accurately.

[stewblack]

On 16/05/2020 at 07:57, TKenrick said:

working on your reading is the quickest way to speed up the process of writing things down

This. And I have found it goes both ways. My reading and ability to hear intervals has improved through writing. 

[Petey]

Over the year I have found the best way to train your ears is to start playing familiar melody lines that you already know - even kid tunes, the National Anthem, etc - this way you will get to know - intervals - and how they relate to each other (then try the melody line starting on another note = its called changing Key, you'll get to know your fingerboard also , and then try to play along with the radio as has been said and your favourite recordings. Check your results with a decent on-line source (Bass tab site) that you got it right....it can be slow progress but you need to stick with it and it will come to you and you'll get better and quicker ...

[Reggaebass]

There’s a video here by Josh fossgreen  you may find helpful , I’ve also got a good one on intervals, I’ll try to find it 🙂

 

[phnod]

17 hours ago, Reggaebass said:

There’s a video here by Josh fossgreen  you may find helpful , I’ve also got a good one on intervals, I’ll try to find it 🙂

Great video! Thank you

On 17/05/2020 at 08:40, TKenrick said:

I should have said 'solfege' rather than 'sight singing' - the idea is you get a simple piece of music, use an instrument to get the first pitch then sing through the rest of it; this means that you have to be able to work out all the interval sounds in your head to sing them accurately.

Alright, I understand what you are saying. That's great because, at the moment, I'm working on "Ain't that pecualiar" by Marvin Gaye and I'm training to read the transcription from Standing in the shadown of Motown book. I'll try to "sing" along when I read it. It is a great exercise to understand which notes are used in the chord as well