As a bassist how do you work on hearing/feeling the changes?

[Bob_Ross]

If I really want to have the chord changes ingrained/embedded in my ear (head, heart, brain, etc., wherever a musician embeds chord changes) I will spend a long time without my instrument just listening to a recording of the tune. Get it to the point where I am intimately familiar with how the tune sounds, rather than how the tune is constructed.
Then once I pick up the instrument and/or look at the sheet music there are no surprises, and the physical mechanics of playing over (under, through, et al) those chords becomes surprisingly easy.

 

[GroovinOnFunk]

Same way non-bassists do it... With my ears.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

I've been trying to work on hearing/feeling the changes rather than viewing them as a sequence of chords.

Wondering how folks work on internalizing the changes. Do you use piano/guitar? Chords on the bass? Or do you just get to know them through playing appregios/walking bass? Or perhaps you're awesome and internalize them after listening to the song once.

Curious what people have found a useful approach, given the limited chordal range of a normal 4 string bass.

Thanks,

After hearing the song a few times I can usually feel when they are coming. I also set up chord charts for new music and use that to make sure I'm going to the right place. I'll often count the beats or how many times I repeat the run (usually a measure long) before changing to the next chord until it becomes second nature to move at the right time.

When I'm playing a I, IV, V blues, it's usually just a matter of learning how they do the turn around. The blues leave a lot of room for improvisation, but you need to get the forms and patterns of the lines you use with those chords under your fingers before improvising on them

 

[mambo4]

I've been trying to work on hearing/feeling the changes rather than viewing them as a sequence of chords.

I'm having trouble understanding the initial choice of words. I always want to know the sequence of chords as precisely and deeply as possible.

how do you then get that sound in your head through your hands on onto an instrument.

A better phrased question imho. my thoughts:

• I often advocate memorizing the sound of common chord progressions. I have found easier than memorizing all 12 intervals and static isolated chords.
• Learn functional 'roman numeral' harmony / Nashville numbers, so your grasp of changes is independent of specific chord/keys
• Analyze every song you learn in functional terms. You will find the same progressions used again and again
• Analyze every riff /part ins functional terms: know what chord(s) your bass line is supporting, and how to execute in another key.
• There is no hack or 'one neat trick': You gotta put in the work

Having a guitar or keyboard or both is a fine way to explore the sounds involved.
If you need to bone up on theory the PDF link in my sig covers the basics well.
This is work, and there is no hack

It's real slow and starts with a strict focus on chords and melody, but Ed Fuqua's sticky on "really learning a tune" really works.

Speaking of putting in the work
https://www.talkbass.com/wiki/jazz-really-learning-a-tune/

 

[ryco]

Listen and find the roots of all the chords in the progression.
Memorize the progression.
Listen for the chord qualities as you go (eg Major, minor, Dom, etc)
Listen for and recognize "odd" sounds/intervals in the chord.

I mostly play in original bands anymore (rock/pop/r&b dance, and a hard rawk metalish band). But have a '60s-2000s cover band, too. RockPopCountry is pretty easy as the chords are pretty simple to hear.
Jazz is more challenging. In the mornings will load up a classic jazz station < Classic Jazz - LiveOne - Music, Podcasts and more > and just start playing with whatever pops up.

Can read bass cleft fluently, struggle with treble, can "work" piano and guitars - certainly can't "play" them, but know chords, scales, arpeggios, cadences. Don't run through scales much anymore, for me after a few decades it became a little binding, kind of like hand shapes. Certainly good to know them all up and down the fretboard.
I guess my advice is learn lots of songs all the time in all keys. The more you hear progressions/changes and chord qualities the faster learning toons becomes.
Learning a lot of theory is super good, too, but a favorite saying is "theory is used to describe something after you've played it". Theory is just labeling sounds so you can describe what you are playing to yourself and anyone else who speaks that language - just a fast way of communicating - like reading. HAVE FUN!

 

[dreamadream99]

It’s a very easy two step process:

1. Play the Jazz standards you want to, and try to learn the changes.
2. Do this for three or four decades

 

[Lefty Joe]

I guess my question is more a technical one. Like how do you then get that sound in your head through your hands on onto an instrument. As a bassist do you go to the piano first, or bass chords? Or do you just start walking along?

Different people do approach playing in different ways, just as they approach talking in different ways.

Having played a variety of instruments over several decades, I've gone through different phases, each of which had value, and any of which I might use now:

1. Playing written scores in school orchestra. Any questions answered by correctly reproducing those notes.
2. Listening to recordings to figure out what someone did. Bass lines largely determined by identifying lowest notes heard. Patterns noticed in different songs.
3. Formal education. Structures of harmony and composition are road maps to music.
4. Improv (both structures and free). Music accesses the brain like speech, so how to talk? when in doubt: don't. Wait for the right thing to add, then add it. And wait some more.
5. Dialog/Listening. Choosing what to play and how to play it because of what others are doing or not doing. One may prepare in advance, but also abandon all expectation and be 'in the moment'.
6. When in doubt, ask: what do I want to hear? And figure out how to play that.
7. Contribute intelligently using any of these (remembering that silence or a single note can be the peak of intelligence).

 

[pepj]

I've been trying to work on hearing/feeling the changes rather than viewing them as a sequence of chords.

Wondering how folks work on internalizing the changes. Do you use piano/guitar? Chords on the bass? Or do you just get to know them through playing appregios/walking bass? Or perhaps you're awesome and internalize them after listening to the song once.

Curious what people have found a useful approach, given the limited chordal range of a normal 4 string bass.

Thanks,

Well, everything is a sequence and you can help yourself by being familiar with conventional songs formats and typical progressions.
Then its more a question of registering what is not conventional and paying special attention to that.

Much popular music is in measures or counts of 4 and multiples of that.
More people will then automatically hear 8 or 16 or 32 measures which out even counting it...so really that becomes a 'given'.
Therefore, you then note the 32 measures, plus 2 as the attention grabber.

Then you get typical sequences. So root, 4th, 5th and 6th features in various orders of a huge amount of popular music.
So after much much repetition, with decent ears, you will have an internal clock. If you can't feel measure lenght, tap it out. 8's are easy to 'feel'.
So learn the short cuts so you aren't overloaded on basic often repeated passages.
To learn intervals..you have to play them over and over.
These are all buildings blocks we've built on from when we first started.

 

[pbass2]

I find it's vital to hear intervals and know what I'm hearing, to string the changes to gether into a song.

A fourth sounds different than a fifth sounds different than a flat third or a flat seven or sharp fifth. If I can hear the intervals in concert with the chord changes, for the things I'm likely to play, it comes fairly quickly.

Yep, this is after decades of playing mind you, but I can hear intervals in my head. I very often write my charts (numbers charts) with no instrument in hand. That said it certainly does speed up the whole process of learning a tune and crafting a bass part simultaneously if I have a bass on my lap at the time.

 

[Major Seven]

Yes, agree with all this. It's good advice.

I guess my question is more a technical one. Like how do you then get that sound in your head through your hands on onto an instrument. As a bassist do you go to the piano first, or bass chords? Or do you just start walking along?

I hum or sing whats in my head and try to match the pitch of the melody/bass roots/powerchords whatever. Not always easy. When I establish a key I know there is mostly a fixed set (usually) of chords native to that key. Then practice the arpeggios. If a piano is handy thats nice for reinforcement.
Random walking doesn't work for me and just gets me frustrated.

 

[Major Seven]

This right here. I used to play with a drummer in college(jazz small group) who would learn the melody of the tunes and sing them to himself while playing. We would be playing through the solos and he would be over there still singing the melody while playing off of what was going on around him. That guy was deeply musical and definitely knew the material.

I think Keith Moon did that with the melody too.