I absolutely suck at ear training.

[Old_Noob]

My ear is pretty good. For a decent basic rock song (say, something like a Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin or U2 track), I can usually figure it out what I need to do by the end of the first listen, play it passably by the end of the second, and be pretty confident by the end of a third. But then I'm a terrible reader. Show me dots on lines and it takes me about half an hour to translate a page into finger positions on the fretboard.

Conversely, my father was tone deaf. He couldn't whistle in tune with the radio to save his life. However he was trained to read at a young age. If you grabbed a page of sheet music that he'd never seen before, put it down in front of him, he could pick up a saxophone or clarinet and play it first time, just like that [clicks fingers].

I work translating policy and legislation into business rules for IT projects, and play in bars on the odd Friday and Saturday night for fun. My dad was a professional musician his whole life. He played in military bands, and he formed his own big band in his spare time and got to back Shirley Bassey and Tony Bennett when they toured New Zealand. Now, I don't know which path you want to take, but I tell my story to say that not having a great ear is not necessarily an impediment to a rewarding musical career.

I was clasically trained on the clarinet and in my heyday could sight read almost anything my symphony or orchestra profs would throw at me.....

One day, the prof played a part on piano and asked me to play it back and I just stared at him agape and said 'how'? to much laughter by the rest of the ensemble. Switched majors shortly thereafter.

 

[whero]

I was clasically trained on the clarinet and in my heyday could sight read almost anything my symphony or orchestra profs would throw at me.....

One day, the prof played a part on piano and asked me to play it back and I just stared at him agape and said 'how'? to much laughter by the rest of the ensemble. Switched majors shortly thereafter.

Dad... is that you?

 

[JW56789]

Ouch. I went through a similar situation (including a C in Music Theory class because I couldn't pass the **** ear training portion of the exam). So I definitely feel your pain. Here are my three words of advice for you, just sharing what I've learned in my own journey:

1. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken or deficient. Your school failed you. It was the professor's job to teach you how to do this, and they let you down. It's not your fault!
2. I never had any luck with quizzes, flash cards, apps, or any other kind of abstract guessing game. The only thing that ever actually worked for me, was practical, real-world using the actual songs I love as my ear training material. I could care less "what is the interval between these two random pitches? beep. boop," but I'm highly motivated to learn the intervals that make up my favorite songs! For example I'm a huge John Williams fan, and find that his movie themes are great for ear training. For example both "Star Wars" and "Superman" feature 5ths and octaves.
   
3. I am utterly incapable of learning ear training on my own. If I hadn't lucked out and found the right teacher, I'd probably still be completely hopeless to this day. Your profile doesn't say where you live, but if you are Boston-area, send me a PM, and I'll give you the name of a great ear training teacher.

THIS !

Forget all the methods, ditch the apps, it hasn't worked and is not going to work.

Find songs you love (and here it's best if you start off with relatively simple stuff, 'Aja' would be quite the hill to climb . . . . ) and play along with the recordings. Figure out what key it's in ( and fine tune your bass to the recording if it's a little off to your strobe tuner, a lot of recordings are). Eventually you will begin to hear the chord changes (and if it's only 3 or 4 chords total, that's OK, we're talking simple tunes here), and once that picture forms in your mind, it will link to where those notes are on the fingerboard, and this will all begin to come in.

I had enough classical training to choke a horse, and the first time I joined the church choir, I couldn't even match pitch ! Yikes ! My classical ear training was an unmitigated train wreck, NOTHING worked, yet I could read the sheet music and play my ass off.

It was only later when I began to learn songs off the radio that it all clicked: No music, no teacher, no method, just me struggling with it until I began to hear the changes and know where they were going.

You're here to play music, and most of it isn't written out, or poorly transcribed if at all. It's mostly 'head arrangements', and stick with it and you'll get it, just like I did.

 

[logdrum]

It's not easy and we are primarily a visual oriented society and this is an auditory skill. Piano helps. Joining a choir even better

As a bass player we need to think in terms of counterpoint not just root notes, acapella groups are a good sources of inspiration. Listen to Boyz II Men or Naturally 7 and learn how the bass lines are created with counterpoint in mind

 

[4stringmf]

Noob. I'm was in the same boat as you Bro. I was a failed music major as well. I took music theory for four semesters and after working my ass off, I could never squeeze anything higher than a C. I started with the trumpet in the 4th grade and dabbled with the baritone and tuba. All the Baroque, resolving the tri tone, counterpoint just left me feeling discraced as musician trying to grow. And for goodness sakes, I absolutely sucked at ear training. When I went in for an ear training test one day, my professor sold me his child daughter was better than me. From that point I knew I was done with colloquial music and walked away. Which reminds me, a couple of years ago I took a bass lesson just to brush up on things that I have lost from Jack Gibson, who is the Bass player from Exodus. I explained to him my frustrations with trying to be a music major..... He himself went to the Musicians Institute, and he explained that there was nothing wrong with me and that it is pretty much the the institution that teaches how music should be taught. I felt better about myself after that...... 20 years later!

 

[Tazziedevil]

You can absolutely get better at it. If using an app hasn't really helped, then you need to try something else.
Use a tuner and sing pitches (Do Re Mi, etc) I found it easier to internalise intervals if I can sing them.

There's lots of approaches out there. Don't give up on improving because you can't get a good score on a random app.

 

[jamro217]

It's called ear training, not ear preening. Keep working at it until you get results.

 

[Robscott]

The first thing is, some people are naturally better at this than others, though all can improve. The second thing is, there are a ton of different skills and knowledge bases involved in playing the bass, and people who are on the "not so good" side earwise are often much hotter on the theory end or maybe they are technically more dexterous. So rather than beat yourself up over the things you find more difficult, make sure you are taking a balanced view of your overall ability and give yourself some credit. Also, remember that different people have different ways of learning. So when someone says "you need to do this, you need to do that" they are often just saying what worked for them. It may or may not work for you, so don't get downhearted just because you haven't found your best learning route yet. Regardless of what you are starting off with, you can improve through repetition and familiarity, and if you stick at it you will eventually hear the same things turning up in different songs. One thing you might try, which I haven't seen mentioned yet, is if you can get access to some kind of a keyboard, because then you can see the intervals all set out before you, and when you play them you get the visual and aural feedback together. You can also see visually how scales and chords are constructed. It might just prise the door open for you a crack. Keep working, and remember to enjoy your music, it's the language of love not a test of character

 

[Claymore]

There is an app for ios called "Auricula" that has been very helpful to me. Interval testing and recognition. Not sure if it's on Android.

 

[roswell1965]

Sorry for the rant.....but this is making me want to give up again.

I highly recommend that you read "The Music Lesson" by Victor Wooten.

 

[onda'bass]

you need to sing everything, not to be a singer but to make the relation to your ear. Forget the book and ear courses, sit down with your bass and pitch match at the basic level moving on to scales and chords. Play to a drone and feel the relation of the sounds clashing or harmonizing. There is no trick just put the work in, and always keep your ears open.

 

[TheAnalogKid]

...but today I was flummoxed, trying to tune a 2nd string to D with a clip-on tuner, & had to switch over to something more verbose to let me know if I was Over or Under the desired pitch, because it wasn't registering on the clip-on & I wasn't sure whether to go up farther or down, & I just had a string breaking free incident yesterday.

To KBD and others: I found a work-around for that, almost purely by accident. See if this works for you: Listen to the song "Lateralus" by Tool. In case you aren't familiar with it, there is an interlude, after Maynard sings the lyric "Reaching out to embrace whatever may come!", Justin Chancellor plays open D with little to no accompaniment, for (I guess) 27 bars. I somehow internalized that, and made tuning by ear easier. Go directly to D, then the other 3 (or 4) based on harmonics. I find using a clip-on tuner a PITA sometimes; I go back to playing Lateralus.

 

[ToneMonkey]

Interval recognition - Wikipedia

Brilliant. Thanks for sharing.

 

[lfmn16]

I know it's not a popular opinion in the "everyone gets a trophy" society we live in, but everybody can't do everything. I couldn't run a four minute mile on the best day of my life, regardless of how much training I had. I went to college with a girl who studied hours a day and got all C's. I hardly ever hit a book and got all B's. I had a friend who was even more lackadaisical than I was who got mostly A's. He was good at everything he tried.

You do your best and that's all you can do.

 

[Chrome Dome]

Never took music lessons,or theory. Only way I learned to play bass was by ear. Probably drove the piano,and organist crazy at Church! Been playing over 45 years. Usually can follow most songs. Southern Gospel mostly,and Country. All them music sheets,looks like chicken scratching to me.

 

[Kentos]

It is always tough to develop your ear by your self. I love “The real easy ear training book” so much. https://www.amazon.com/Real-Easy-Ear-Training-Book/dp/188321761X

I could work on it by myself and I could tell my ear getting better.
Not only you gonna be able to follow the bass motion and chord progressions ,but also you will be able to hear how inner voices changed
Like when you hear C major to F major, you gonna hear also do, mi,so to do,fa,la.

worth to try this book!

 

[nonohmic]

I suck too. So I learned to read. The ear will come eventually, or it won't. Whatever.

 

[azureblue]

If I can offer help - I think you're issue is you are not hearing (internalizing)) pitches. The problem I have with most ear training is that it is like the relationship between playing scales and playing a song. IOW, it's taken out of context. I had success with this - Sing a part of a familiar, easy melody - don't worry about pitch, the idea is to get to the point where you hear it in your head in the original key. It can be a three note phrase, whatever, but keep it simple. Once you can hear it in your head, then play it on your bass, guitar, piano, etc. Do that with a few more until you can hear them in your head, then quickly find the notes on your bass. Next, pay attention to the intervals in the melodies. Find the ones that move up or down a step, and focus on that. Then the ones that move up or down a third, etc. The point is to associate an interval with a familiar melodic passage. The same can be done with bass parts - like country, blue grass, some zydeco, etc bass is often a 1 to a lower 5. Sing it as you play it. No doubt you have some favorite bass parts you can hear in you head. Or a chord progression like a blues 1 - 4 - 5. I think the hardest part is to find a beginning point that you can lock onto. For me, I had a really hard time because I tried to do too much too quick and it made the task frustrating. When I broke it down into small steps and got comfortable with that, I made progress.

 

[muggsy]

I'm in the same boat. Didn't start playing bass until I was in my mid-30s, never played an instrument as a kid (six months of piano lessons don't count). I have tried Tenuto and other ear training apps and failed miserably, every time. Tried to learn theory, both with a teacher and on my own. I know part of the issue is I haven't worked hard enough at it, but this is a hobby for me, so I'm not inclined to beat my head against the wall. I stopped worrying about it. The most helpful thing for me is trying to learn songs by ear. If I know the key, and it's a simple progression, I can sometimes figure it out. That helps me to hear the changes in other songs, but when I (infrequently) play with friends, I usually need the guitarists to tell me the chords. Playing is still fun though.

 

[Bassryder]

First post here - have been lurking for a while, but ear training is a big issue for me too. the ability to transcribe for me is tied in to the whole idea of musicality. It seems like every decent musician can do this.

I self taught guitar a couple of years ago. tried all the apps (admittedly not for long) and failed to make any progress and eventually gave up on reading tab. when I took up Bass (which I had wanted to before I took up guitar) I decided to start from scratch. No tab. Any songs I learn, I learn from a youtube tutorial so I see and hear the sounds rather than read tab. I write notes using the note names, not tab.

Before I look for a youtube tutorial I make an effort myself. Its not pretty, at all, but once you can hum the first note, and find it on the fretboard, hearing the next note and searching through the intervals dosent take too long. so seven nation army, you really got me know by the kinks, bad guy by billi eilish are songs with clear bass lines that I have been able to work out. The most important tool (other than bass) is software to slow down the song so you can hear bass lines, especially when they are very busy.

To see if I could even do this in the first place, I downloaded a tuner app to my phone. Playing a note on the bass and then humming it, I could replicate the note. Also I can hear when a note is wrong.

so in summary, this is a big issue for many people, and I think all the apps available (IMO) are making it harder to do what should be a simple task - matching your inner voice, to your actual voice and instrument. At least I hope that's the case. Im also working through an ear training book at present which hopefully will speed up the processs.