How do you do it?!??

[bfields]

Short term: my basic procedure is to listen to the bass line (or one tiny part of it), till I can sing it accurately from memory. Then find the notes on my instrument and/or write it down. Repeat.

Shifting the song an octave up, as others have mentioned, also helps sometimes. And slowing it down, though that's mainly just for very quick runs and such. If you don't want to buy Transcribe!, Audacity (free) will also do all of that stuff. The difference is really just that Transcribe packages up exactly the tools you need (labeling, looping, pitch-shifting, speed-changing) without the stuff you don't, and gives it a convenient interface. (Some of the things that sound like killer features--guessing notes and chords--turn out not to be as useful.)

Long term:
- keep learning songs by ear whenever you can
- sing a lot
- take a basic music theory course with an ear-training component.
- when your bass is in your hands, spend some time each day noodling around and trying to find tunes that you know well (nursery rhymes, TV theme songs, whatever).
- when you're away from your bass, also try to figure out tunes. It sounds sort of magic, but it's actually not that hard, if you start with dead simple stuff (frère jacques, twinkle twinkle little star,...). Hum the first two notes, think how far up a scale you'd have to sing to get between them, repeat. Maybe visualize where you'd fret those notes. Check your answer when you get back to your bass.
- there are lots of ear-training apps. I like "Functional Ear Trainer".

Be patient, just do a little every day, don't burn yourself out; you may not be any better at this next week, but you'll be better next year.

 

[David Jayne]

If you can hear it, you can hum it. If you can hum it you can play it.

 

[digbass]

Massive admiration for anyone working stuff out by ear!

But how do you do it?

Do you just listen and listen and play and listen till you hear it?

Is there software to isolate the bass?

I really need to work a song out and this is how I got to do it so any help is welcome!

Thanks

Like the rest of playing bass, or any instrument, it's a skill that takes time and practice. As you get better this gets easier and more fun. A good place to start is picking a song with a simple bass line or one that you really love and can sing. Then take it really slow and work on a bar or phrase at a time. When you can play that as it is on the recording move on to the next and do the same thing, then play them together, and so forth. It can feel daunting to look at learning a whole song at first but if you take it slow and really get each nuance down, before you know it you can play the whole thing.

I prefer to learn songs note for note, to me that's how it was written and how I hear and relate to the song. You can always improvise and change from there if you like.

 

[bfields]

The difference is really just that Transcribe packages up exactly the tools you need (labeling, looping, pitch-shifting, speed-changing)

By the way, I've been surprised how often *speeding up* is useful. When I'm doing that step Mushroo describes where you try to identify the different sections (verses, choruses, bridge...), there's a lot of boring counting to 32 (or whatever). My attention wanders, I lose count, I have to restart, argh! Speeding it up by a factor of 1.5 or 2 makes it a lot easier for me to get the struture. Maybe that's just my weirdly short attention span....

 

[Hahaha]

A good exercise is to practice interval recognition. Play a note, then place your finger over another scale note such as the major third, or fifth, etc., and sing it before playing it. It may seem impossible at first, but with practice you'll get to where you can recognize each of the scale degrees simply by hearing them. With further practice you'll be able to hear a bass line and play it without having to "figure it out". It takes time, but it's well worth the effort.

 

[bloobass]

The same way you get to Carnegie Hall....
Seriously though, IMO the more theory you know, the easier it can be, although it's not a requirement. The better you know the song structure, the easier it will be, and knowing the song structure is critical to playing it correctly.
Everybody's answer will be different, because the answer depends on their knowledge, experience, ability and overall facility on the instrument.
The very basic beginning: sit down with your instrument in your hands and hit notes until you find the one that matches what you hear coming out of your headphones/stereo/etc. Once you develop your ear, your over all playing ability should grow drastically.

 

[jamro217]

First I listen for the structure. For example let's say the song has a repeating 8-bar pattern, I draw bar lines to make 8 empty measures.

Next I listen for the lyrics and write them in below the staff.

Then I listen for the rhythm. Is the time signature 4/4, 3/4, 12/8, or something else? I write down the time signature. Then for each measure, I write down the rhythm. I don't know the pitches yet, so I just draw the stems, not the note heads.

Then I listen for the harmony. Can I hear any familiar chord progressions like I-IV-V? ii-V-I? I-V-vi-IV? If so, I write the Roman numerals above the staff.

Finally I am ready to figure out the pitch of each note. This is the hardest part for me, since I am kind of tone deaf! But what keeps it from being overwhelming is to go note by note, and ask myself, does the pitch go up, go down, or stay the same? For example "Happy Birthday," from "Hap" to "py" the pitch stays the same, from "py" to "Birth" the pitch goes up, from "Birth" to "day" the pitch goes down, and so forth. I draw a line showing the general rising and falling contour of pitches. Then it is much easier to go back and figure out the specific intervals: does it go up a major 2nd? A perfect 4th? etc.

Absolutely brilliant.

By the way, I've been surprised how often *speeding up* is useful. When I'm doing that step Mushroo describes where you try to identify the different sections (verses, choruses, bridge...), there's a lot of boring counting to 32 (or whatever). My attention wanders, I lose count, I have to restart, argh! Speeding it up by a factor of 1.5 or 2 makes it a lot easier for me to get the struture. Maybe that's just my weirdly short attention span....

Yes. We used to speed up records and hear the bass as a guitar part, learned it and then transposed it to the correct key and register. The vocals sounded like The Chipmunks. Alvin!!!

I started out on violin in fourth grade, then became a guitarist at fourteen. Back then we had record players, eight track tapes and a few cassettes. By breaking down parts into snippets of information (rather than a whole chunk) you can focus on the next step. Learning intervals is like learning to walk. One step at a time or you'll fall. Internalizing the part by singing it definitely works because not only do perform the line using two different methods (which makes the brain attack the problem from two angles thereby doubling the effort), but you understand the natural pauses in the music left there for the purpose of breathing. George Benson used to scat sing his guitar solos simultaneously and it became his shtick. People don't seem to realize how the body processes information. It takes a bite, pauses, does whatever has to be done to the bite, repeats. Whether it's exercise, eating, speaking, singing or thinking doesn't matter, the body works the same way. If you wrote a song that had no breaks it would be nearly impossible to perform. The Gregorian Chant isn't a solo piece. How many times have you sat through a guitar solo where four bars in your eyes glaze over because of brain overload? Without a pause the information gets into a traffic jam and your ability to process it shuts down. Great composers understand this and write accordingly. OP, be glad you're learning bass lines and not guitar solos. Bass is child's play by comparison, because it is rooted in rhythm. Solos are fluid and float over the rhythm. That's what creates the contrast that is so important. I remember having to learn some of the most challenging guitar solos during the '70's using a record player and cuss words. Some of the hardest, yet most fulfilling were "Rikki, Don't Lose That Number", "Right Place, Wrong Time", "Kid Charlemagne" and "Midnight At The Oasis". Actually, come to think of it, listening to guitar or sax solos would be a good learning tool for bassists, because you can focus on what the bassist is doing during the solo and how their part contributes to the music as a whole.
Bottom line is that you only have three choices for notes: 1.) the same one repeated 2.) a higher note 3.) a lower note. Tapping out the rhythm using your hands will help to internalize that part. Learning intervals is easy if you use recognizable examples to jog your memory. Minor third? Think "Smoke On The Water". Perfect fourth? Tuning your bass. Find a piece of music that fits every interval and memorize them along with the name of the interval. Next time you go to learn an odd bass line, instead of hearing a string of unfamiliar notes you'll hear 1.) Jingle Bells 2.) Smoke On The Water. 3.) Theme from the movie "Jaws"... Sounds dumb, but it works. Sorry to be long winded (I did pause to breathe ), hope this helps.

 

[Liam Wald]

"Ain't never gonna do it without my Fez on, oh no." Fagen.

 

[brianrost]

Does Transcribe work with Spotify? How do you get the song in to it?

I have apps that can capture audio from any other app running on the computer. Are you on Windows or Mac?

 

[Kipp Harrington]

Massive admiration for anyone working stuff out by ear!

But how do you do it?

Do you just listen and listen and play and listen till you hear it?

Is there software to isolate the bass?

I really need to work a song out and this is how I got to do it so any help is welcome!

Thanks

Yeah, I listen and play. It was really difficult for me to pick up basslines on certain songs when I first began (and I still find it challenging on occasion). The "playback speed" option on YouTube has been a big help. But don't get me wrong... even with that feature, I have spent hours getting down some songs. Also, when you enter a search, specify "isolated bass" or "master" track. There aren't a lot of those out there but the ones I found were very helpful; like a couple of Doobie Bros tunes. Good luck and be patient. You will eventually get it down.

 

[okcrum]

It's also important to take breaks while learning by ear so you don't get fatigued. You've no idea how many times I've sat back down, started working again, and thought "Hey, I didn't hear that before!".

 

[ciaran_hughes]

I have apps that can capture audio from any other app running on the computer. Are you on Windows or Mac?

Windows

 

[bfields]

I have apps that can capture audio from any other app running on the computer. Are you on Windows or Mac?

Yeah, I've done that. But usually these days, if it's available, I just buy the track from someplace that'll sell it as a downloadable mp3. It's cheap and it saves some mucking around capturing audio. YMMV.

"Amazing Slow Downer" also claims some kind of Spotify integration, but I've never used it.

See also question 29 from Transcribe's FAQ, "How can I load tracks from streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, etc, into Transcribe! ?"

 

[jwr]

I can work out a lot of stuff by ear surprisingly. I'm honestly not sure how I do it. Usually I'll have a song stuck in my head and can't stop thinking about it so I just go to it. If I get close, I'm happy. There's been many times where I've figured out how to play a song, then look at tabs created by someone else and scratch my head. What they put versus what I hear is so different sometimes. LOL. I always prefer my way obviously.

 

[bfields]

By the way, I've just got to say, it's weird, but: this, learning songs by ear, is absolutely one of my favorite things to do.

There's a kind of taking-something-apart-to-see-what-makes-it-tick attraction to it. I sit down with my headphones and my laptop, and listen and listen and figure out all these different parts and how they fit together, and by the end I'm bouncing off the walls.

Or if I'm in rehearsal and on my first try, I catch a chord progression or a riff that someone else played--for a moment I feel like I have some kind of superpower. Even though honestly I'm not all that great at it.

Maybe if it wasn't a hobby, but instead something I did day in day out, I'd feel differently.

Hard to explain. Anyway, I hope you get as much fun out of this as I do, good luck!

 

[JZQuantum]

I throw the song in my DAW, Reason. I use a function it has called Blocks. It let's you visually mark the parts of the imported waveform in different colors, verse, chorus, etc.

So once I divide up the song I can make all verses the same color, all the choruses a different color, etc.

Then I play each part over and over until I learn it by ear. Most times I don't need to EQ the song to pull out/highlight the bass part I'm learning.

If I do, I sweep the song with a notch filter until I can grab most of the fundamentals of the bass line. Or I sometimes slow down the song, which Reason does without changing the pitch.

It usually turns out fairly well for me that way.

 

[jamro217]

BTW, welcome to TB.

 

[bassbully]

For me all songs have a pattern usually the standard start, verse,chorus,verse ,bridge ,chorus outro. Once you realize the song changes then find the chords for the parts of the song and your all good. Knowing the recorded key of the song will usually get you started in the right direction.

 

[mudpup]

YouTube has a function in the settings that enables you to slow the track down whilst maintaining the correct pitch. Just find a few versions of your song on there.

 

[Turbo Sparky]

Listen.
Listen again.
Listen.
Find the first note or two.
Play the first note or two.
Write it/them down.
Repeat until completion of song/piece.
Listen again.
Play it through at the speed you can accurately play it.
Increase your tempo until you start to make mistakes, slow down a tad and repeat.
Go crazy.
Walk away, then return one day and you'll know it forever just about.
Repeat.

Learn chord tones. (Makes it easier in long term.)
IMO.
Good Luck.