Learning by ear....

It's called "ear training".

Start here: can you hear a song and SING IT after you've heard it? I'll bet you can sing a number of TV themes, commercial jingles, etc. pretty well.

You have to be able to do this FIRST before you can thing about playing it. If you can't sing it, you can't play it.

Once you get to that level, the rest is the mechanics of how to play on an instrument. That involves learning your scales and chords cold and knowing how they sound so you can recognize them when you hear them.

 

The single most valuable thing that I learned during my brief stint as a jazz major at the University of North Texas is without a doubt ear training - it brought me to a new level as a musician. I was also surprised to find out that it wasn't as nightmarishly difficult as I had imagined! It's a very attainable and worthwhile goal for ANY kind of serious musician.

Brian is exactly right - singing is the key ingredient to effective ear training.

Another component that is extremely useful in learning to sing, intervals, scales, and chords is a keyboard/piano. You don't need to be able to play the Bartok Piano Concerto No. 3, but having that reference is critical when training your ear. If it's a piano - make sure it's in tune!

There are also a number of helpful books on sight-singing. I know - you want to enhance your bass skills. But learning to sight-sing a piece of music (little or no preparation, with or without a reference pitch) will do wonders for your ear as well. Once you get some of the basics of ear training down, there are resources available for learning more advanced harmonies such as modes and complex chords.

 

To learn to play by ear - some basic pointers:

1) Make sure you can hum in tune - this makes a world of difference - play a note eg. E, and hum it, and make sure you can hum what you hear FIRST - some musicians are tone deaf, which is a disability

2) Listen to a lot of music - not just hear, but LISTEN - listen to the bassline, THINK about how the notes relate to each other - are they 5ths? Are they octaves? Have you played that pattern before? What is the chord progression? Once you become good, what is the key? Where are the key changes?

3) Play live with other musicians - not just play, but JAM and IMPROVISE - play within the scales, play within the chords

4) As you listen, hum along to the melody, then the bassline.

5) Improvise something on your bass, then hum the tune. Then improvise something by humming with your voice, then play what you have hummed on your bass. Keep doing this again and again. Then HUM and PLAY at the same time an improvised tune (ie. anything) - soon, you should be able to play what you hum - ie. build a connection between your imagination and your finger - this is a valuable skill to have when you play with other musicians and when you improvise

6) Play or practice LOTS - the more types of music you play, the more chord progressions, the more riffs, the more bassline patterns, the BETTER you will be in recognising the same patterns in basslines you hear

Just my 2 cents, and how I learnt.

 

I agree that transcription is a worthwhile skill, but I don't think it's necessary to develope your ear. In fact, I think the mental picure that you speak of comes primarily from your instrument. I know when I transcribe, I see the melodic aspects of the music on the fretboard of my mind's eye (how's that for philisophical? )
What I mean is that the first step should be to know your instrument rather than to complicate the learning process with notation.
But singing is an absolute necessity.

Just my opinion.

 

I've been trying to do this. Sitting down with my bass and playing snippets I remember from songs. Indeed, you need to be able to sing the part, at least in your head. Then find the first note, find the second note, find the third note, etc.... Or sometimes, whole chunks will come to me when it's a common pattern. Other times, I will have to go out of order, like if the fifth note is very prominent and easy to peg, I can use that as a reference and backfill the blanks.

It works better with my fretless bass, since I can slide smothly to the note I'm seeking. Also, knowing enough theory to know what notes might be likely to show up is very helpful.

The guitar player I've been playing a lot with was a music major and can pretty much play any song he's ever heard, chords and all. It's amazingly useful, despite the fact that he never plays covers.

I took one musicianship course in college where we had to transcribe stuff and hear chords and stuff. For extra challenge, it was a jazz-oriented class, so we would have to say whether it was a #11 chord or b9 chord or whatever. I could somewhat do it at the time; it just takes practice.

 

I totally agree. I think that an understanding of rhythm and harmony is what separates the men from the boys. However, my point was that I don't believe a young player has to focus on notational skills in order to develope his/her ear. Yes, it provides an excellent tool and resource for visualizing harmonic and rhythmic structure. Yes it helps to define theorietical concepts. And yes, players who transrcribe well or even read well for that matter tend to be better players. But I still say that your notational/transcription skills cannot be thoroughly developed without a reference to your instrument. I witnessed this first hand by seeing vocal majors struggle with ear training in college. Instrumentalists had an easier time. Only those vocalists with piano skills could keep up.

Ideally, players should learn all of the above simultaneously (reading, harmonic theory, rhythmic theory, transcription skills, applying it all to your ax). I was fortunate enough to have, I'm assuming you have too. But that's not true for everyone. I feel for anyone who wants to better themselves as musicians and missed those essentials early on. And I think it's our job (as bassists) to break it down for them so that they can undserstand it all and improve their playing.

Again, I think everything you said is valid. I just think your suggestions to take on ear-training and transcription (especially if he doesn't know how to read) can take years to hone and it needs to be approached in a simpler fashion, starting with the bass.

 

I've just started trying to learn all my intervals perfectly by ear on a website, good-ear.com (I have no idea how it compares to other ones, its just the first one I found). So far I've already noticed a difference.

How important is singing though? I mean I can sing but not well. Do I need to be a good singer or just hum the notes? I can do that but I can't project or actually sing a song well. Is it possible to just hear it in your head and not actually sing it?

 

I think singing goes without saying if you HEAR it in your head. If I've remembered how something sounds, whether I imagined it or heard it before, I can sing it, which means that I can also play it. What kills me is that there are some melodies or snippets of melodies, that stick to your brain like velcro even the first time you hear them, whereas others are slippery like grease.

 

thanks for the tips everyone!

 

I agree that being able to sing the part is critical. The next thing is to recognize intervals and know their patterns on the fretboard. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

 

listening to mass amounts of music all the time, and playing along with and practicing a lot also helps.

 

I'm going to have to go and agree with everyone that being able to sing the song (even in your head, but vocally is better) is best. Also, sing notes so you know what one sounds like, so when you hear that certain lick and go to learn it, you are kinda able to narrow the note down within like 1 step of the actual note. As someone said before, learn what chords sound like, intervals, and popular chord progressions (you see A LOT of some progressions...5th-2nd-3rd-1st is very common for example). Basically, just get more familiar with notes, intervals, and chords, and be able to sing whatever you wanna learn.