Can't hear the bass lines!

[bassdude51]

What are you using to listening to the music? Computer speakers? Cheesy ear buds? 2 inch speakers? Perhaps you can not hear the bass notes because the play back speakers or whatever are very sub-standard!

I have an excellent home stereo system. If my refrigerator and my stereo both broke at the same time..................the stereo gets 1st attention!

Ya wanna hear the bass notes? Ya wanna hear the music pretty much like it was done in the studio or live on stage? Get some fidelity! 20 hz to 20,000 hz.

 

[whero]

My first job in my teens/early 20s lead to pretty bad tinnitus. I live with the sound of cicadas inside my head 24x7. It mostly affects my ability to hear higher notes though.

This is "good news" in that I have no problem picking out the bass in anything I listen to as there isn't as much of the rest cutting through.

But it's "bad news" when I'm playing live as sometimes it's hard to hear what the guitar/keyboard are doing. Which is "good news" as everyone else has to follow me!

 

[madbass6]

I'm starting to dabble with bass after years on guitar. A good bass line is exciting to play and really makes me want to dance and sing. However …

I'm having a hard time hearing the individual bass notes. I use Transcribe! and can work out really fast & complicated guitar riffs, but the bass just sounds like thump thump thump to me without discernible notes. Thank God for bass covers on YouTube, or I'd give up right now.

Tell me it gets better …

maybe you've got to much Bass on your listening device , try adding a bit of midrange to your eq settings!

 

[Govner22]

I use an app called Anytune and play the songs an octave higher. It’s been a game changer for me not just in terms of learning songs but also in discovering how awesome the original bass lines are.

 

[StraffordMike]

I've always been drawn to the bass line in any song. It does get easier the more you do it. I'm getting close to the point now where I can hear the song in my head and start putting it together. Don't give up. Back off the videos and such. Plus some theory will help. Once you figure out the key of the tune, and know what notes/ chords are in that key you'll start knowing where the tune is going next. Try some easy stuff like ACDC or Judas Priest till you get familiar with popular chord structures. It'll give you some much needed confidence and that always makes it easier.

 

[Smooth_bass88]

I'm starting to dabble with bass after years on guitar. A good bass line is exciting to play and really makes me want to dance and sing. However …

I'm having a hard time hearing the individual bass notes. I use Transcribe! and can work out really fast & complicated guitar riffs, but the bass just sounds like thump thump thump to me without discernible notes. Thank God for bass covers on YouTube, or I'd give up right now.

Tell me it gets better …

I would avoid watching bass covers on youtube like the plague. Instead, just use your ears. The more you do it, the better you'll become at it.

 

[Hand slap]

I'm starting to dabble with bass after years on guitar. A good bass line is exciting to play and really makes me want to dance and sing. However …

I'm having a hard time hearing the individual bass notes. I use Transcribe! and can work out really fast & complicated guitar riffs, but the bass just sounds like thump thump thump to me without discernible notes. Thank God for bass covers on YouTube, or I'd give up right now.

Tell me it gets better …

IMO, a lot

I'm starting to dabble with bass after years on guitar. A good bass line is exciting to play and really makes me want to dance and sing. However …

I'm having a hard time hearing the individual bass notes. I use Transcribe! and can work out really fast & complicated guitar riffs, but the bass just sounds like thump thump thump to me without discernible notes. Thank God for bass covers on YouTube, or I'd give up right now.

Tell me it gets better …

Bass is buried with the drums, hides in the mix, quite often.

 

[Chad T]

I only learn songs with a good set of headphones. I use a set of MDR-7506. Any other method usually results in frustration.

 

[guy n. cognito]

I'm starting to dabble with bass after years on guitar. A good bass line is exciting to play and really makes me want to dance and sing. However …

I'm having a hard time hearing the individual bass notes. I use Transcribe! and can work out really fast & complicated guitar riffs, but the bass just sounds like thump thump thump to me without discernible notes. Thank God for bass covers on YouTube, or I'd give up right now.

Tell me it gets better …

Get good quality headphones.

 

[seamus bass]

Turn down your guitar

I'm starting to dabble with bass after years on guitar. A good bass line is exciting to play and really makes me want to dance and sing. However …

I'm having a hard time hearing the individual bass notes. I use Transcribe! and can work out really fast & complicated guitar riffs, but the bass just sounds like thump thump thump to me without discernible notes. Thank God for bass covers on YouTube, or I'd give up right now.

Tell me it gets better …

 

[JGbassman]

You have to train you self to hear the bass. As stated, it's not sitting in the mix like guitars, which can be heard with any smart phone or am radio, which has no bass response. To hear the bass, either get a good set of speakers, or use earbuds until you get those low notes in your ears.

Think of it this way, you spent years honing in to the guitar frequencies. Now it's time to listen for the bass, which will be inherently harder anyway.

After years of training, I can hone in on just the bass lines on or off stage, to the point o hardly hear any guitar. It's not a superpower, simply years of practice.

When I started the record players were crappy, and stereos were not the best for bass response, and there was no internet. I had to train my ears to hear the bass. If I can you can as well.

Funny thing, it wasn't until years later and updated technology that I was actually able to hear some of the bass lines correctly and learn them the right way.

I was really into rush, and I think a msjor part of that was because of how the bass lines sat in the mix and were easier to hear.

 

[Kukulkan61]

What is transcribe? I need other tools also instead of using YouTube bass covers, is it a unit you connect to speakers like a drum machine, is it easy to use?

 

[DavC]

make sure whatever you're using to listen with is for " monitoring " .... regular hi-fi stuff , speakers , headphones , earbuds , have the manufactures favorite EQ built into their sound ...

listening to Real studio monitors for the first time is eye/ear opening ..!! you can hear everything, minus the mud and enhanced highs ..

 

[kartiste]

Sometimes when it's hard to hear the pitches distinctly, I have to figure out what notes they're likely to be. For that, you have to know what chord the song is on at that moment and what chord it's approaching (as mentioned above), and I can get those from the instruments I can hear more clearly. But when that's not enough, I have to figure out how the bassist must have been forming his hand in that passage to discover what notes likely were played. That's the "a ha!" moment - the easiest thing to play is often what was played.

 

[+6dB Dan]

I second the suggestions to 1) listen on good headphones or full-range speakers, and 2) practice listening to bass lines.

Sometimes, though, the bass is just really buried in the mix or otherwise hard to hear. In that case, pitch-shifting the entire track an octave up (as Govner22 mentioned) can be really helpful. I use a oitch-shift plug-in in my DAW to do this (one of many good reasons to practice through a DAW, IMO), and it can really help for some reason.

You could also try using a DAW plug-in that uses spatial processing to turn down the sides of the stereo field relative to the center, such as Waves’ Center. If the bass is panned center like it almost always is, this can make it more audible relative to other parts.

 

[Acoustic356]

I added a large subwoofer. I find that having the thump of a subwoofer helps add definition to the bass lines. I also try to notch out the line so I can hear it more clearly too...

 

[dairyman3833]

I'm starting to dabble with bass after years on guitar. A good bass line is exciting to play and really makes me want to dance and sing. However …

I'm having a hard time hearing the individual bass notes. I use Transcribe! and can work out really fast & complicated guitar riffs, but the bass just sounds like thump thump thump to me without discernible notes. Thank God for bass covers on YouTube, or I'd give up right now.

Tell me it gets better …

Sounds like you need some good monitors, or high end headphones and interface. 1st consider what source material your playing, is it CD quality, Mp3, or HD audio? Mp3's have only a fraction of info that the original wav file was recorded with, so that info gets lost and filled in with 1's and 0's which can cause things like a lesser bass quality sound. Don't listen to anything bellow CD quality for starters, HD Audio is better. Then look at your interface(where the music comes from), phone, stereo, computer speakers, etc. Is the interface good quality as that can dramatically affect your sound as well! Then your speakers. Are you using small little laptop speakers, or tv speakers or small little Apple earbuds? That won't do at all! You need at the very least to get some good Studio quality headphones, if not studio monitors. But getting good quality studio monitors is expensive and might be overdoing it a little.. I would recommend ATH M50's. With all that being said, I can hear the bass loud and clear, defined as well, with a pair of ATH m50's on my LG V30 phone. But this phone has a great quad Hi-fi DAC. Even still just getting a pair of good cans will most likely help you a great deal. If you don't wanna spend $150 on headphones, the Sony 7506's are a staple in studios around the world and are a great cheaper option, though not as good as the ATH m50's in detail IMO.

Remember when choosing headphones the larger the diaphragm the better the bass detail comes across meaning that a 50mm size speaker in the headphone will reproduce bass frequencies better than a 40mm speaker....98% of the time. Cheapo stuff that you can buy at Walmart doesn't factor in to this equation!
Audio-Technica ATH-M50x Closed-back Studio Monitoring Headphones
https://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDR7506-Professional-Diaphragm-Headphone/dp/B000AJIF4E

 

[JW56789]

Any time I can't quite hear it as well as I'd like, sometimes it's time for the headphones, sometimes I can hear it perfectly in the car, and sometimes I crank the subwoofer on the little 2.1 system hooked up to my desktop. Usually, one of them will reveal it where I can get it.

 

[Philibuster]

In my experience, it comes with time. For me, about a year after I started playing my ear opened up out of nowhere on a random Oasis song. No idea why. Paul McGuigan is/was no amazing bass player. The song wasn’t a hit I’d heard dozens of times. Something just clicked.

That was about 17ish years ago. Since then, all I hear is bass. I still have to make a conscious effort to focus on other instruments.

Focus and it’ll come with time.

 

[mmon77]

Lots of good suggestions. I'll add another vote for source audio quality. MP3's are horrible as far as bass is concerned. It only makes matters worse if the bass wasn't prominent in the mix before the MP3 was created.