I'm sick of relying on tabs

[Nixtro21]

Hi i was just wondering if anyone would be willing to lend me some advice on learning how to play by ear. Right now I generally look up a tab for the song i want to learn and listen to the song, then i add in whatever little fills and such based on the song.

My problem is i am tired of having to rely on the tab for the general basis of how to play the song.

Thanks in advance for any advice

[kesslari]

Listen to songs and try to play them

Seriously, that's about it. Find a simple short line or melody. Sing it to verify that you can reproduce it (you've had a lot more practice with your voice than with your bass, no matter how long you've been playing bass). Then find the starting note on your bass, and figure out the other notes around it.

Rinse and repeat...

[MonetBass]

Originally Posted by kesslari

Listen to songs and try to play them

Seriously, that's about it. Find a simple short line or melody. Sing it to verify that you can reproduce it (you've had a lot more practice with your voice than with your bass, no matter how long you've been playing bass). Then find the starting note on your bass, and figure out the other notes around it.

Rinse and repeat...

+1 to the above. After a while you should be able to recognize intervals by just hearing them. At that point, it will be easy to sit down and hammer out the licks. Good luck, and be patient!

[groooooove]

as far as learning by ear goes, just listen closely and keep pausing the song, one note at a time find it on your bass. if your having trouble try humming the root of the chord- try to sing the note that sounds "most important." even if the bassline is not playing just roots, knowing them will help you know where those other notes might be.

i think tabs are great for beginners, but i never "relyed" on them, and i think after a certain point theyre not worth using at all. theyre usually wrong, or giving wrong fingerings at the least. nothing is more valuable than a good ear, and this is the way to work on it.

also atleast a little knowledge of music theory will help with figuring out songs. if you know what notes are in what chords, it will limit the amount of guessing your doing. instead of searching through all 12 tones trying to find it, if your able to hear a major or minor triad, those are the most common "go to" notes for basslines..it will speed up the whole process, and make learning songs by ear fairly easy..

and so on, and so forth..

[SteveC]

TAB isn't good for beginners or anyone else. Listen, try, and repeat.

[ganga]

You're going to rely a lot on your ear rather than just being told where to put your fingers.
There's really only one way to do it and it's all been stated here.

You can train finding intervals by doing eartraining. Have a friend of yours play an interval for you on the piano (or bass - any instrument will do), state what interval you think it is.

Start out with learning the simple ones like: Major/minor 3rd, 4th and perfect 5ths and build out from there.

A good way of building a knowledge of intervals is to compare intervals with songs you know. For instance that the 4th (eg. the interval from C to F) is the beginning of Amazing Grace or the chorus from "My bunny is over the ocean" (Bring back, bring back, oh bring....) and that a perfect 5th (C to G) is "twinkle twinkle little star". You should also find music that fit intervals going from a high note to a low note.

If this is too theoretical, or confusing, I'll be happy to rephrase it for you of course.

... Oh and most important of all: Practice every day. 10 minutes every day is better than 40 minutes every 4th (amazing grace) day.

[scottbass]

I hate tabs, too. I start with the lyrics/rhythm guitar chords to give me the structure of the song. Then I listen to it to learn the bass groove, where the bass fills are (and, more importantly, where they aren't), tempo changes, etc., etc., etc.

[JTE]

Start with teaching your ear and your hands to work together. How? Sing everything you play. If you already know a bass line, sing it while you play it. As you practice scales and arpeggios, sing them. Sing the note BEFORE you play it. Don't worry about how well you sing (my singing was once described as "a duet with Linda McCartney and Yoko Ono), the idea is that you're fixing the sound you expect to hear in your head as your fingers reach for it. You're concnetrating on the sound of the distance between two notes.

Another exercise to use along with that is to pick something very very simple that you know cold. "Happy Birthday" is a great example. It's a simple melody that everyone knows. So, pick a note on your bass and use that as the first note. Now sing the first two notes ("Ha-py") and listen to them. That second note is either higher than, lower than, or the same as the first note. Decide which it is. If it's higher, try a note higher than your arbitrary starting point. Did you pick the right one? If so, then move to the next note. If not, then sing the two notes again, and decide where you're going.

Eventually you'll learn to hear an interval and have a good idea of where the second note is from the first one. After you have a section of it down, work out an efficient fingering.

Repeat as needed. See, the process to figure out "Bernadette" or "Give Up The Funk" is EXACTLY the same as figuring out "Happy Birthday" or "Everyday People", just more notes to find in some songs than in others.

Do some every day and don't get discouraged, it's a process!

John

[EADG mx]

Originally Posted by Nixtro21

Hi i was just wondering if anyone would be willing to lend me some advice on learning how to play by ear. Right now I generally look up a tab for the song i want to learn and listen to the song, then i add in whatever little fills and such based on the song.

My problem is i am tired of having to rely on the tab for the general basis of how to play the song.

Thanks in advance for any advice

Find an online ear training software. Do intervals, scales, chords, and progressions (in that order) every day.

[sevenyearsdown]

Try to work your way through www.studybass.com if you can't get lessons. You will at least learn some very common paterns, scales, chord progressions, etc.

[BigOldHarry]

learning to "learn by ear" is a bit of a chicken/egg thing. I recall that as a beginner, my process was to listen to the beat to make sure I knew where the 1 was, then, while the song was playing, slide my finger up the string until the note I played matched the song (That's how I'd find the key).

What *really* helped me was learning about common chord patterns and how guitarists think/write music. Try to remember that in rock music, songs are very often written in E, A, D or G, and that they tend to change in the traditional 1-4-5 manner. If that sounds like Latin to you, you need to learn a bit about how scales are constructed.

It's stuff you gotta learn if you want to not suck. Bookwork - there is no escaping it.

[bobknowsbass]

+1 to all the above posts. Any old school bass guy will tell you that they just put the needle to the record and played along.
If you're looking for a good resource about how to get better at it, I suggest Ed Friedlands "The Working Bassists Toolkit" it has a really good section on the cd on ear training. It teaches you about intervals and scales in a very practical manner.

[greggster59]

I've been using a program called "Amazing Slow Downer". It allows you to slow down cd's and music files without altering the pitch. You can also loop any section of a song you want so until you learn it. It really has helped me with my ear training. In fact, I find I don't need to use it so much anymore though it still comes in handy when trying to learn a fast run.

Easy to find with a google search.

[dave64o]

What worked for me was finally starting to take lessons. Being 45 and having a job, family, and house make it tough to find the time to practice and make the most out of lessons. It also frustrates my 21 year old instructor who always seems to forget that I'm 30 years older than his second oldest student (15 years old) and and that I don't have several hours a day to practice like the rest of his "kids" do. However, I put in as much time as I can and in the year since I started I am suddenly making large and rapid strides.

It's definitely been worth the time and expense.

[Nixtro21]

Just wanted to say thanks for the all the replys. Alot of great advice that i'm definitely going to take.

[cliffbass]

try finding on youtube bass tracks

[Nixtro21]

Okay one last question. How can i tell what tuning i should be playing the song in? Alot of the music i play varies from standard to drop d, to half a step down.

[dave64o]

An easy answer it is to tune the way the guitars are tuned.

You could take that a step further and have additional basses tuned the way you need so you're not wasting time re-tuning between songs. All you have to do is quickly change basses. A problem with this approach is what to do about backup basses? You'd probalby just bring one backup and in an emergency situation you just tune that backup bass like the one that failed on you. Another problem is expense. You might need to buy and bring along a lot of basses!

You could also get a 5-string bass and eliminate many of the retuning/downtuning issues (unless your guitarists play 7 string guitars and downtune even further but, hoo boy, WHY do something like that?!?! ). Your backup bass would then simply be another 5 string bass.

[ganga]

Originally Posted by Nixtro21

Okay one last question. How can i tell what tuning i should be playing the song in? Alot of the music i play varies from standard to drop d, to half a step down.

If you can hear that it is played with a drop D you should do that of course. You can also try and experiment with tuning if you get the feeling that they're using a lot of detuned open strings (in your example of complete detuning).

[deckard]

Get a Tascam Bass Trainer & use it to slow songs down and use the looping option to learn them in bits/sections.

JMHO