Question about how you go about learning a new song

[Manticore]

I don't read music.

I truly wish I could read music, but when it comes to bass I have not been able to wrap my head around translating those black dots into notes on my fretboard. I typically rely on tabs or charts. I know where the notes are on the fretboard, but musical notation continues to elude me.

Therefore, in order to learn a new tune I typically look up the tabs, find the song on youtube, and then break it into bite sized chunks that I'll play over and over again until I can link all the chunks together.

My question is, does anyone have a better or more efficient way to learn a new tune given my notational deficiencies?

Your first two sentences are what caught my eye. You don't read music, but wish you could. I hear this quite frequently, but have not ever heard of someone reporting they are glad they do not read music.

Reading well is an excellent way to be able to play a vast array of music, familiar or not, quickly. I just did a sub gig on short notice where I was unfamiliar with the material, but was able to do the gig without a band rehearsal because standard notation was provided and allowed on stage. Not everyone needs to be able to do this to enjoy playing; that said, if you want to increase your ability to play in a wider variety of situations reading is an excellent way to do so.

What you are already doing is precisely what needs to be done to learn how to read standard notation. Break the task down to bite-sized chunks and go over it repeatedly until you get it. It really is that simple. Anyone can learn to read music. Some will be able to get it faster than others, but if you really do want to learn I'd encourage you to do it. As I noted, I've never heard someone say they're sorry they took the time to learn how to read.

 

[devnulljp]

I truly wish I could read music, but when it comes to bass I have not been able to wrap my head around translating those black dots into notes on my fretboard.

I played classical guitar as a kid, so was used to reading treble clef. Couldn't get my head around bass clef as everything's out a minor 3rd and I would always default to playing the notes as though they were in treble. Don't know how piano players can hold both in their head at the same time.
Got a little app on my phone called Fretuoso and played with it whenever I had a lax minute somewhere. Wasn't really trying too hard, not really studying, just fiddling with it.
Then I got a call to do a theatre gig. Showed up cold and they put a chart in front of me in standard notation, not a chord chart. After the initial panic subsided, I just played through the whole thing, all from fiddling with that little app. Made a couple of flubs, but didn't have to hunt & peck my way through it like I would have had to do before -- you know the drill, look at the note on the page and go "bottom line G, count up B, D ... oh it's a D" play that one, next "bottom line G, count up B, D, F ... OK play F"
It helped it wasn't super complicated music.
Give it a try, there are lots of other apps and games, find one you like and try it. You might surprise yourself at how easy it is once you get over the initial hump.

 

[btmpancake]

One of these is what helped a lot of us learn. You did ask.

 

[kevindahl]

I dont have hours a day to work on songs so first I will search on youtube for "cover" or "bass lesson". This gives me a quick idea what the bass is doing. I try to be note for note but this can be challenging especially if the mix is bad. Nothing drives me more mad than trying to learn a bass line that is buried and has no top end. At this point I try 2 things. 1)isolate the bass and/or 2) Slow it down and remove all high frequencies.
I wish I had this technology when I started. Learning from records was cumbersome.

 

[Dr Zee]

Mostly do what everyone else does but the one thing that has been the most useful are lyric sheets with the chord name over the word where the change happens. Again, not always transcribed accurately but it links you into the "song" part of the song, and now that I'm singing while playing it's been a huge help.

 

[Scottgun]

Yes! Amazing Slow Downer is great for practicing songs. The Android app is not free but totally worth it. I stream Spotify. Slow down, loop, change pitch.... A great practice tool.

I should have mentioned it does cost. There are free ones, but they don't even come close.

 

[el murdoque]

I also can't read sheets well enough to actually work with them. I use a mix of ears (playing the song), tabs from the www and youtube. Most tabs are wrong to some degree, but that's where ears and youtube help out.
The thing with learning cover songs is to get the thing rolling. It'll gather momentum pretty quickly. Once you learned a couple of songs from a certain genre, you start recognising patterns and similarities and the next ones will be easier to learn.

 

[sedan_dad]

1st: Identify the key (that will give you a pallette of notes to work from)
2nd: Define the chord progression(s)
3rd: Break the song down into chorus, verse. bridge, intro, outtro, etc.
4th: Work on individual sections
5th: Put it all together

Thats sounds right. I've seen if you learn from tabs or what ever , you stay dependent on them for far too long.

 

[DennisM]

The way I did it in the old days of record players was to keep moving the needle back about a hundred times until I got the line in my head, and then I would simplify notes and or rhythm if needed until I could play something that both fit and sounded good. It is even easier now that we have software to loop and slow down the parts.

Amen! That's how I learned too. Also,it gives ears good training. Now it's easy to hear a tune and get the idea. It's natural. Then intricate stuff you can listen and play over and over

 

[Cliff Colton]

Learn the fingering of the notes and the rhythm separately.

1. Obtain standard notation sheet music w/ tabs.
2. Practice playing the tab line (or standard line) in quarter notes only. Ignore note values and duration, and rest notes. The purpose here is to teach the fingers the order of the notes to be played.
3. Learn and practice the rhythm by playing the root notes only in time and duration with rest notes throughout the progression. (Before doing this, learn the entire rhythm progression on a single note e.g. open A).
4. Practice both parts together.
Attached is an example. Sheet music w/tab; Rhythm Right Hand only; Rhythm w/ roots.

 

[Mushroo]

One of the best tips I ever got from my ear training professor was:

Write down something--anything!

Staring at a blank sheet of paper is intimidating. So, what's the first detail your ear notices about the song? Whatever it is, write that down! Now you're not looking at a blank page.

So you're a little "tone deaf"? Big deal, so am I, and I'm here to help you work through that. Even if you can't name all the pitches by ear, there must be something you notice when you listen to the song, some detail. For example: What is the time signature? The approximate tempo? The style or "feel"? The instrumentation? The lyrics? How is the song divided, for example verse/chorus/verse/chorus or verse/chorus/bridge? Are there sections that repeat? How many measures or "bars" do you count in each section? Which sections are loud and which are quiet? When does the bassist play low notes, and when do they play higher up the neck? Are there sections where the bassist doesn't play at all? And so forth.

For example: I can hear that the song has a "12 bar blues" structure. I couldn't tell you what key, and I can't pick out the individual notes, but I can tell you it has a 12-bar structure and a "slow triplet" or 12/8 time signature. So I take my blank sheet of manuscript or staff paper, I write 12/8 time signature, and I divide it into 12 measures. I write the title and author of the song at the top, I indicate "slow blues feel," and maybe a few other details that catch my ear.

Then when I sit down to do the hard work of figuring out the key signature, chord changes, and individual pitches, which is the most challenging and tedious part of learning a song, for me with my "tone deaf" skill set, then I'm not just staring at a blank page. I've already laid out the "road map" of the song. I can count down the measures as I learn them ("One bar down; 11 to go. Two bars down; 10 to go." etc.) with a clear vision of the finish line. This process, of setting pencil to paper and giving structure to the song, takes the terror and anxiety out of ear training, for me. Even if the song is very complex, and the only thing I can tell you at first listen is that, "the bassist rests for 48 bars during the drum solo," I write it down, in pencil, on my first-draft chart, and that is 48 bars I don't have to worry about. My anxiety about learning this difficult tune is lessened by 48 bars, and I'm not starting at a totally blank page of paper.

 

[uwrossl]

Capo is the absolute easiest and fastest way I've found. Only catch is you have to have an MP3 of the song to drop in.

You can see the chords at the bottom and the individual notes on the spectrogram after it analyzes the track. You can change the key of the song. Slow down or speed up with a pitch shifter. You can also isolate frequencies meaning you can isolate the bass track pretty effectively. Then vice versa once I've learned the tune I drop that frequency down to use it as a practice track. You can also loop parts etc. Easy to use and extremely helpful. Takes about 15-20 minutes to fully learn a new song using this. It's about 90-95% accurate and the inaccuracies. are just a mislabeled chord hear and there. Use your ears and it's not a problem. You can easily change it to the right chord from the pop of menu that gives you related chord suggestions.

 

[vancamp]

You don't need to learn/copy someone else's improvisation note-for-note. Know the song and the style, but there are places that you can make it yours and still sound pretty much the same song.

 

[CoffeeLove]

Some by ear and others via YouTube, depends on the difficulty level of the song. Funk or jazz usually requires some YouTube support, but pretty much all things classics rock is by ear. And I agree with others, the "catch-phrase" notes of a tune are vital, but dont let the small nuances of a song take up your time if it is in short supply, most people in an audience dont have a clue

 

[DavC]

i read music ... could read music before i could read English ... classical piano

even when reading music that is beyond my site reading level , i still learn things about the same as you ...

work on bits , identify trouble spots , slowly put it all together ...

 

[jamro217]

I usually do it by ear because it's the easiest and fastest way. I started playing back in the '70's, so it's almost second nature by now. Ear training is just the ability to differentiate a long series of intervals played rhythmically. Sometimes you have to work at a short passage that has you stumped. Learning how to read music is easy, too. The F or bass clef consists of five lines containing four spaces. Starting at the bottom the notes on the lines are: G,B,D,F,A. The notes in the spaces from the bottom up are: A,C,E,G. The same rhythmic notation as in the treble (G) clef is standard. The key and time signatures define those. Knowledge of the cycle of fifths will help with the key signature. Note and rest values are divided in halves. This means one whole note is equal in length to two halves, four quarters and eight eighths. Just like counting pocket change to break a dollar. (As a bassist and a musician, you probably will be broke most of your life, so breaking large bills may not be a useful analogy. ) An easy way to understand how complex parts are notated is to get the sheet music for a similar pattern and memorize what it looks like. For instance, if the part you are trying to learn is the opening line of Horace Silver's "Song For My Father", it may help to get the music for Steely Dan's "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" and see what the pattern looks like. When you compare them, you'll see that they're almost identical. Now when you see that pattern of written notes, you'll think of those tunes, and know what the rhythm is. The correct notes to play TO that rhythm is determined by where they are located in the lines and spaces of the staff. By repeatedly familiarizing yourself with this recurring pattern, you will eventually be reading music. The more complex the music, the more intricate the notation, so I'd wait before attempting to decipher fusion or progressive rock. Hope this helps.

 

[glocke1]

I don't read music.

I truly wish I could read music, but when it comes to bass I have not been able to wrap my head around translating those black dots into notes on my fretboard. I typically rely on tabs or charts. I know where the notes are on the fretboard, but musical notation continues to elude me.

Therefore, in order to learn a new tune I typically look up the tabs, find the song on youtube, and then break it into bite sized chunks that I'll play over and over again until I can link all the chunks together.

My question is, does anyone have a better or more efficient way to learn a new tune given my notational deficiencies?

Understanding what those black dots are in relation to the fretboard isn't all that difficult of a task. If you were to devote a few months to studying written notation you'd understand it well enough to look at something thats written out and figure out what you have to do to play it on your bass. (not to say you'd be able to do that at temp though).

In any case...if someone throws a tune at me i havent played before my current process is this.
1) Listen to it a few times, usually at the recorded tempo than at a reduced speed...usually 50-75% of the recorded tempo.

2) Play along with it at a reduced tempo. again this at 50-75% of the recorded version. Slowing it down helps your brain process whats going on with what you are hearing, and what you are trying to do on the fretboard.

3) If there are any parts I don't get at that point (and there almost always is), than I'll look up the changes, tab or notated part..

4) any parts that trip me up, either riffs or changes, I'll loop repeatedly, again at a reduced temp until Im comfortable with them.

5) Finally, after I think I have a pretty good understanding of whats going on I'll just play to the tune repeatedly to make sure that what im playing sounds right.

What I don't do that I should be doing is sit down with the lyrics to the tune in front of me, with no chord markings, and play the bass part with just a metronome going.

 

[packhowitzer]

Invalid Link Removed

 

[obimark]

Step 1- REALLY listen to the entire song- 2 to 3 times the whole way thru before you touch your instrument.
Step 2- Write down the basic structure- intro, chorus, verser, etc.
Step 3- Identify the chords (or look them up online, but CHECK each one to see if they are right(a lot of tabs are wroong- for instance I've seen several well known bass youtubers, claim WHole lotta love is single E notes- IT is note, it is bass chords played with a pick for the most part)
Step 4- If there are any signature riffs or fills work on them.
Step 5- Put it all together and play along with the song 3-4 times. Stop if you totally screw up any part.

I would not worry about note for note UNLESS it is a stand-out bass line that carries the song (like Something by The BEatles or Another One bites the Dust.)

 

[QweziRider]

does anyone have a better or more efficient way to learn a new tune given my notational deficiencies?

I do Nashville Numbers in most cases. Just the act of making the chart cements the song in my head better than playing it over and over.