Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Figuring out the chords in a song by ear
- Thread starter ics1974
- Start date
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
1. Learn basic music theory.
2. Recognize common chord progressions.
3. Break the songs down to smaller chunks. Learn each piece, then put the pieces together.
2. Recognize common chord progressions.
3. Break the songs down to smaller chunks. Learn each piece, then put the pieces together.
I put songs into Logic and let it detect the tempo. Then I can loop sections as small as I need them to be to figure out melodies and chords on a keyboard. Sometimes that's one bar at a time for complex stuff, but even the most complex songs usually aren't more than 32 bars before they repeat.
It's also helpful to compare your transcription to others found on the internet to see if you're in the ballpark.
Not sure what genre you're working in, but with jazz and standards it's common to do chord substitutions, especially at turnarounds. IMO as long as the melody is right and the chord supports the melody (and everybody in the band agrees on it) you don't have to worry too much about whether it's the "right" chord. If it sounds right, it's right.
If I were trying to do exact covers, I'd definitely be doing one bar at a time, note-for-note transcriptions of the chords and bass line using a keyboard.
Of course this all depends on basic working knowledge of theory and a reasonable developed ear, so start there if you haven't already.
It's also helpful to compare your transcription to others found on the internet to see if you're in the ballpark.
Not sure what genre you're working in, but with jazz and standards it's common to do chord substitutions, especially at turnarounds. IMO as long as the melody is right and the chord supports the melody (and everybody in the band agrees on it) you don't have to worry too much about whether it's the "right" chord. If it sounds right, it's right.
If I were trying to do exact covers, I'd definitely be doing one bar at a time, note-for-note transcriptions of the chords and bass line using a keyboard.
Of course this all depends on basic working knowledge of theory and a reasonable developed ear, so start there if you haven't already.
Chords are combinations of notes so getting to recognize the notes in a chord involves recognizing the sounds of pairs of notes. Ear training provides that and there are quite a few ear training apps and courses that aren’t spendy. Don’t spend a lot of time at one sitting but do 10-15 minutes faithfully each day. Then, when you’re listening or practicing try to pick out those sounds in the songs.
The thing that worked for me was memorizing songs. I started having to memorize songs for sunday worship since they didn't want to have any stands on stage. This kinda forced me to develop my ear.
I think memorizing songs forces you to learn what the 5th or 4th or root sound like. After about 2 years, I was able to pick up any song by ear.
I am now working on playing melody lines by ear, but since I play bass, I dont really practice figuring out melodies, so that is going to take me however long that takes me.
I think memorizing songs forces you to learn what the 5th or 4th or root sound like. After about 2 years, I was able to pick up any song by ear.
I am now working on playing melody lines by ear, but since I play bass, I dont really practice figuring out melodies, so that is going to take me however long that takes me.
OP disappeared again, but...
What song? What style? How many songs? Are they all the same style? Are they complicated jazz tunes? Are they easy jazz tunes (lol)? Are they formulaic rock or country or folk tunes? Are they atonal metal? Or regular metal, like classic metal?
Help us help you!
We're here to help, but you gotta engage.
What song? What style? How many songs? Are they all the same style? Are they complicated jazz tunes? Are they easy jazz tunes (lol)? Are they formulaic rock or country or folk tunes? Are they atonal metal? Or regular metal, like classic metal?
Help us help you!
We're here to help, but you gotta engage.
For me, it depends on what the song is and on the reason I need to learn the chords... Sometimes I will do a search online to see if any tab exists or if someone's worked out the particular element I'm needing to figure out and made a tutorial video... Sometimes I will just play it in Windows Media Player and slow down the playback to 75% or less... Sometimes I will find the best quality stereo version of the song possible, import it into SoundForge (a stereo soundfile editor), adjust the pitch of the song by whatever fraction might be necessary to get it to standard A440, and then listen if the element I'm trying to discern is more in one channel than the other, and I'll mute the channel it's less present (or not present) in.
I guess it's also important to know whether you mean you want to (a) figure out the chords, or (b) simply identify what the chords are named in standard western musical parlance. I'm assuming you meant (a)...
I guess it's also important to know whether you mean you want to (a) figure out the chords, or (b) simply identify what the chords are named in standard western musical parlance. I'm assuming you meant (a)...
If you really want to get your ears together then it’s a fairly long and laborious process but it pays off if you are consistent.
First thing you have to do is make good friends with the major scale. Sing it inside out and back to front, ideally as both solfege and numbers. Solfege I find ensembles me to recall sounds and pitches without much thought as well as pick out other melodic details while the numbers allow me to contextualise the changes . Write some basic major scale melodies and sing them, or find simple melodies and sing them using numbers/solfege.
Once you’ve gotten that together then get familiar with the major triads, so that’s chords I IV V. Start with the root movement, and sing up and down. Write down a bunch of chord sequences like I V I IV or I IV I V or I IV V IV I etc and sing them. Get into the habit of singing the sequence above and below the root. Start transposing that sequence into other keys, transposing is a really great way of drilling the sounds into your inner ear which is what we are trying to build here.
This takes a while but even after a few days you’ll start picking out the sequences in records.
Next step will be to take those records and sing the root movements along with the record.
After that. Go back and add the major 3rd to each chord. Do the same over again singing 1, 3 of each chord.
Do the same thing with along with recordings. By now your ear should really start picking up on when it hears those changes. You might not hear many of the other changes but often when one of them crops into the song your ear picks it up. That is always a good sign!
Once you are really comfortable with that it’s time to add the minor triads. Go back to singing only the root movement and repeat what you’ve done before. Once you’ve got command over the root movements go back and sing the root min3. Do it in different keys and with recordings.
By this stage you should be well on your way to hearing fairly basic song progressions without needing an instrument or google to check the work.
This is also still only the very beginning of the journey, consider it building the foundations. I’ve purposefully stopped here because the post is long enough and that’s a good jumping off point that gives you enough to sink your teeth to move off the starting line.
First thing you have to do is make good friends with the major scale. Sing it inside out and back to front, ideally as both solfege and numbers. Solfege I find ensembles me to recall sounds and pitches without much thought as well as pick out other melodic details while the numbers allow me to contextualise the changes . Write some basic major scale melodies and sing them, or find simple melodies and sing them using numbers/solfege.
Once you’ve gotten that together then get familiar with the major triads, so that’s chords I IV V. Start with the root movement, and sing up and down. Write down a bunch of chord sequences like I V I IV or I IV I V or I IV V IV I etc and sing them. Get into the habit of singing the sequence above and below the root. Start transposing that sequence into other keys, transposing is a really great way of drilling the sounds into your inner ear which is what we are trying to build here.
This takes a while but even after a few days you’ll start picking out the sequences in records.
Next step will be to take those records and sing the root movements along with the record.
After that. Go back and add the major 3rd to each chord. Do the same over again singing 1, 3 of each chord.
Do the same thing with along with recordings. By now your ear should really start picking up on when it hears those changes. You might not hear many of the other changes but often when one of them crops into the song your ear picks it up. That is always a good sign!
Once you are really comfortable with that it’s time to add the minor triads. Go back to singing only the root movement and repeat what you’ve done before. Once you’ve got command over the root movements go back and sing the root min3. Do it in different keys and with recordings.
By this stage you should be well on your way to hearing fairly basic song progressions without needing an instrument or google to check the work.
This is also still only the very beginning of the journey, consider it building the foundations. I’ve purposefully stopped here because the post is long enough and that’s a good jumping off point that gives you enough to sink your teeth to move off the starting line.
There's also this cool resource: Invalid Link Removed. Not the only one, but probably the most popular.
Everything everyone has already said is really useful, accurate stuff!
The one thing that's important to remember is that with all of any "ear training" type exercises is that they're best done within the context of a song e.g. what does going from an A to a C sound like over the chords of this song - now you know that, you should be able to start recognising it and playing it.
Same goes for chords - you can pick out the notes by trial and error but if you start identifying progressions on some 12 bar blues songs, assume the first chord is I, you should hear the change to the IV and then you should hear the obvious change in tension when you get to V. From there, try it with different songs - "I Put a Spell on You" is a REALLY good one for this because it's almost 12 bar blues but not quite. It also starts in minor so it's nice to test whether you can hear the overall principals of how chord progressions interact without getting too bogged down in the details!
The one thing that's important to remember is that with all of any "ear training" type exercises is that they're best done within the context of a song e.g. what does going from an A to a C sound like over the chords of this song - now you know that, you should be able to start recognising it and playing it.
Same goes for chords - you can pick out the notes by trial and error but if you start identifying progressions on some 12 bar blues songs, assume the first chord is I, you should hear the change to the IV and then you should hear the obvious change in tension when you get to V. From there, try it with different songs - "I Put a Spell on You" is a REALLY good one for this because it's almost 12 bar blues but not quite. It also starts in minor so it's nice to test whether you can hear the overall principals of how chord progressions interact without getting too bogged down in the details!
When searching around trying to see what note/chord is being played, it helps to go higher on the bass. Meaning - try to find it on the G string instead of the E string. For whatever reason I do not understand, the higher pitch helps you hear whether you're truly on the correct note.
If you cannot find the bass TAB, the guitar chords are generally available online, which will help.
I use Audacity to boost the bass and cut the treble on some of the mp3's I'm working on. Then I save them with a modified file name and modified mp3 tag. This really helps on some songs.
If you cannot find the bass TAB, the guitar chords are generally available online, which will help.
I use Audacity to boost the bass and cut the treble on some of the mp3's I'm working on. Then I save them with a modified file name and modified mp3 tag. This really helps on some songs.
My recommendation is: A good teacher.
Most techniques on the bass are "visible" skills. For example, if I'm trying to learn a song and I get stuck on a difficult section, I can go on YouTube, find a live version of the song, and watch the bassist's fingers to copy how they played it. These "visible" skills are relatively easy for self-taught players because we can imitate what we see.
Ear training on the other hand is an "invisible" skill. It happens internally, within the player's mind. You can't really watch someone figuring out the chords of a song and copy what they do, because it is an internal mental process. So (at least for me) ear training was almost impossible to learn on my own, and I slammed my head against the wall for many years.
Finally I bit the bullet and asked around, who is the best ear training teacher? It ended up being not a bass teacher, but a piano teacher. I took weekly lessons with them for about 6 months and it made such the difference. This is a teacher who, through the years, has taught literally thousands of students how to play by ear. So he has a time-tested "curriculum" for teaching ear training, that really gets results!
So that is my recommendation: Teacher. (And it might not be the same person as your bass teacher.)
I can't really condense 6 months of lessons down into a few paragraphs, but if you want the cliff notes version of my ear training teacher's curriculum, it involved a lot of singing and transcription. For example: Sing "Happy Birthday" a few times, then grab a pencil and manuscript paper, and start writing down whatever musical details you can hear. For example if you can hear the time signature, write the time signature. If you can hear the key signature, write the key signature. If you can hear how many measures long the song is, draw some barlines to divide the staff into empty measures. If you can hear the chords then write the chords. If you can hear the pitches of the melody then write the pitches of the melody. If you can hear the rhythm then write down the rhythm. Eventually through practice and repetition, you will get really good at hearing all the musical details of the song, and notating them.
So if you aren't already good at reading and writing sheet music, that would be my recommended skill to practice right now, to give you the foundation to learn ear training. Most of the musicians I know with a good ear, are also excellent sight readers. If you don't have this skill set yet, then don't worry: find a book of easy children's songs, and start singing! Or if you go to a church that uses hymnals, that's another great way to practice sight singing each Sunday.
Oh yeah, and if you can afford it, take a few piano and/or guitar lessons. Great way to learn more about chord theory!
Most techniques on the bass are "visible" skills. For example, if I'm trying to learn a song and I get stuck on a difficult section, I can go on YouTube, find a live version of the song, and watch the bassist's fingers to copy how they played it. These "visible" skills are relatively easy for self-taught players because we can imitate what we see.
Ear training on the other hand is an "invisible" skill. It happens internally, within the player's mind. You can't really watch someone figuring out the chords of a song and copy what they do, because it is an internal mental process. So (at least for me) ear training was almost impossible to learn on my own, and I slammed my head against the wall for many years.
Finally I bit the bullet and asked around, who is the best ear training teacher? It ended up being not a bass teacher, but a piano teacher. I took weekly lessons with them for about 6 months and it made such the difference. This is a teacher who, through the years, has taught literally thousands of students how to play by ear. So he has a time-tested "curriculum" for teaching ear training, that really gets results!
So that is my recommendation: Teacher. (And it might not be the same person as your bass teacher.)
I can't really condense 6 months of lessons down into a few paragraphs, but if you want the cliff notes version of my ear training teacher's curriculum, it involved a lot of singing and transcription. For example: Sing "Happy Birthday" a few times, then grab a pencil and manuscript paper, and start writing down whatever musical details you can hear. For example if you can hear the time signature, write the time signature. If you can hear the key signature, write the key signature. If you can hear how many measures long the song is, draw some barlines to divide the staff into empty measures. If you can hear the chords then write the chords. If you can hear the pitches of the melody then write the pitches of the melody. If you can hear the rhythm then write down the rhythm. Eventually through practice and repetition, you will get really good at hearing all the musical details of the song, and notating them.
So if you aren't already good at reading and writing sheet music, that would be my recommended skill to practice right now, to give you the foundation to learn ear training. Most of the musicians I know with a good ear, are also excellent sight readers. If you don't have this skill set yet, then don't worry: find a book of easy children's songs, and start singing! Or if you go to a church that uses hymnals, that's another great way to practice sight singing each Sunday.
Oh yeah, and if you can afford it, take a few piano and/or guitar lessons. Great way to learn more about chord theory!
Last edited:
Good stuff.
Iirc, Jeff Berlin has a couple of ear training vids that are good.
Otherwise, I'll second what's been said already.
Practice.
The more you learn by ear the easier it gets
You start to instinctively feel where a song is going.
Start with the first chord, establish what the key is. Is it major or minor? What's the next chord? Probably not something weird, probably predictable. Move on to the next chord until you have the pattern, and soon you have the song.
I enjoy learning songs from records, even if I am never going to play them. Keeps the ear in.
JeezyMcNuggles
Inactive
- Feb 23, 2018
- 14,723
- 20,970
- Disclosures
- I suck, but nobody really notices
the answer is an annoying but obvious one
overall music training leads to being able to quickly transcribe.
1. understanding harmony - if you know how certain things function, you can quickly match the harmonic movement you are hearing with what that is in the given key we are playing in. you can also predict what will happen next, or what 2-3 things are likely to happen next, which helps.
2. music theory - especially intervals. use the musictheory.net training tools to get really good at identifying intervals by ear.
3. proper ear training - solfege. if you get really good - and i mean really good- with solfege, your transcription skills will be insane.
often people who can physically play fairly well try and jump into transcribing things that are just way too hard. start really simple... 2 note intervals (ie the musictheory.net tools) and do 100 of them per day for 2 weeks (or whatever you like, just be thorough). after that move on to identifying chords... and then easy easy pop songs.. as many of those as you can.. then some harder stuff... etc.
overall music training leads to being able to quickly transcribe.
1. understanding harmony - if you know how certain things function, you can quickly match the harmonic movement you are hearing with what that is in the given key we are playing in. you can also predict what will happen next, or what 2-3 things are likely to happen next, which helps.
2. music theory - especially intervals. use the musictheory.net training tools to get really good at identifying intervals by ear.
3. proper ear training - solfege. if you get really good - and i mean really good- with solfege, your transcription skills will be insane.
often people who can physically play fairly well try and jump into transcribing things that are just way too hard. start really simple... 2 note intervals (ie the musictheory.net tools) and do 100 of them per day for 2 weeks (or whatever you like, just be thorough). after that move on to identifying chords... and then easy easy pop songs.. as many of those as you can.. then some harder stuff... etc.
Good luck..... been doing it for over 50 years. Recent things have helped. Check out an App called "Chordify". Seems to do pretty well, even the basic, free, no frills version. I've used it with a lot of success on things I had to work out fast in only a days notice.
Takes some digging into different versions of the songs, but can be a really helpful.
Invalid Link Removed
Takes some digging into different versions of the songs, but can be a really helpful.
Invalid Link Removed
Good points. Also....When it comes to improvising solos we can use any note of the pentatonic scale of the key over any of the 1-4-5 chords. Easier way for me to look at it is to play the major scale but leave out the 4th and 7th notes.
Yes that is my memory peg also. I let the major scale be my home base and I adjust from there. Want Mixolydian flat the 7th. For the natural minor scale flat the 3, 6 & 7. For Dorian flat the 3 and 7. Lydian sharp the 4.
I put all that to memory so pulling something out of the air is a little easier for me.
Happy trails.
I put all that to memory so pulling something out of the air is a little easier for me.
Happy trails.
Last edited:
