learning to play by ear.........?
I've been playing drums by ear now for about 15 years....
Been eying a bass for the last couple of years....
Question is, I'm not one for "lessons". I'd like to pick away and learn on my own, as I don't plan on being a serious bass player. I watch guitar players play by ear and wonder, "how the heck do they know which chords to play next?". I've asked the same question about piano players actually.
So curiosity finally got the best of me and I'm going to ask, which is the best way to learn this? Is it something your born with or a certain part of music theory that, regardless of instrument, you can learn?
Any insights most appreciated!
imho......
i learned by ear yourself on both guitar and bass..........i think it is something that if you have a musical talent you can with some effort lean to play most instruments.....to some degree......i know most things especially stringed instrument i can at least pick out a tune as my ear tells me what sounds good..........just my .02 tho
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Greg
http://www.youtube.com/user/BroknDreamsBand
Http://www.facebook.com/brokendreamsband
http://www.reverbnation.com/brokendreamsband
*and it harm none,do what thou will*
Hi Greg. Personally, I have
Hi Greg. Personally, I have very little innate musical talent. I still can't spontaneously play a bass line without some form of accompaniment. : (
I really can't say I've learned anything much 'by ear'. I took a few lessons to get started and then spent time jamming with a drummer friend and various 'pick up' bands. Even jamming I play more 'by eye' (watching the guitarist etc.) than 'by ear'.
What I can say is I'm mostly self taught. I learned to read music a bit by myself and I learned most chord patterns and progressions by reading chord charts etc. The lessons that I have taken serve to keep me on the right track and help me in understanding some of the more obscure points of musical theory.
I'd trade all of it for the ability to hear a good bassline in my head though. You're lucky in that you have a good ear. Hey, you have two, how about lending me one? hahahahahaha
First off, welcome to BP
First off, welcome to BP Andrew. It's always nice to have new members posting. I hope you can stick around. Also best of luck pursuing the bass. It's a great instrument.
Now to your question.
It's certainly true that you can learn ANY instrument 'by ear'. Some of the best bass players ever have done just that. It's also true that a certain amount of instruction will speed the process and perhaps contribute to you being a better player than if you learned 'by ear' alone. It's a very individual thing. Some people will gain more from instruction than others.
Your rhetorical question "how the heck do they know which chords to play next?" illustrates that perfectly. You could play along with music and gradually develop a sense of what comes next or you could get some instruction from someone who already knows. If you're a 'natural' and develop that sense quickly then instruction will be of less value.
My personal recommendation would be to take at least a few lessons to get started. A qualified bass teacher will show you how to tune your bass, how to adjust the action and intonation and how to maintain your bass. He or she will also teach you the basics of chords, scales and modes and the location of notes on the fretboard. He will also teach you the basics of rhthym as it applies to the bass (your experience as a drummer will make this a cinch). At that point you could continue to develop your playing 'by ear'.
Much later you might go back for more advanced lessons such as sight reading etc.
Something else that's important to a bassist is to have some accompaniment. Many of us practice to a metronome and/or a drum track. You could benefit from recording your own drum tracks and playing/improvising to them. It's often said that a good bassist needs to get into the drummers head. You'd have a real advantage there. hahahaha
Hope this is of some help. I'm sure others will chime in with their own take on this question.
Hey there mate and welcome
Hey there mate and welcome to BP.com :D
I know you said that lessons aren’t really your thing but I get students coming to me all the time with that same question and I think that is the best way to get an understanding of it.
Natural talent dose help but I think that it will only help the speed at what you learn something; you still need to know the formulas of music to really excel with it.
It is something you learn faster when you understand that music often has certain patterns and chord changes that make sense.
Things to learn about are; Turnarounds, Modes and intervals. This is what I use to play songs on stage that I have never played or heard before.
Also lots and lots of ear training with Intervals, chords and Inversions will help too.
Jaymie
Turnarounds, Modes and
Turnarounds, Modes and intervals.... hmmmm I'll have to look those up for sure!
Everyone is most helpful, thanks to all. I guess I shouldn't say I'm a complete beginner. I actually know all major chords and most minor on a regular guitar, and I'm a little familiar with some very basic chord theory from piano.
I have no problems with rhythm... lol, so I'm mostly interested in learn .... chord progressions???? I've heard that term used in piano, is that similar to Intervals in bass playing?
No prob!!Chord progressions
No prob!!
Chord progressions are closer to turnarounds really, intervals do help with being able to hear the distence between notes and chords so this will help with following a guitarest around during a song you don't know or being able to pick a note in your mind that you wanna play and then play that note on your bass without having to find it.
For the complete lowdown on
For the complete lowdown on chord progressions you might want to read this wiki article.
The easiest example of a chord progression is the standard 12 bar blues (and hence many derivative styles) progression. The I, IV, V progression. That is the I, or root chord, followed by the IV, or 4th degree chord, followed by the V, or 5th degree chord. In the key of C that would be C, F, G.
Ok, so according to
Ok, so according to wikipedia "The most common chord progressions, in the common practice period and in popular music, are based on the first, fourth, and fifth scale degrees (tonic, subdominant and dominant);" and also "progression is generally regarded as the most common progression of the common practice period,"
So the I, IV, V progression is different from the circle of fifths? And am I to assume that the I, IV, V progression is a basic progression, and most songs actually deviate from this, but by have this in the back of my head, I should be able to, to some degree, start to see some advancement if I play along with songs have this progression in mind?
You are all very helpful by the way, a great community!
Yea circle of fifths (or
Yea, the circle of fifths (or fourths depending on witch way you go) has nothing to do with it.
The progression that Paul pointed out is just one of many progressions. A progression is just the order that the chords of a song are played in but as you know there are thousands of possibilities but there are some that are standard progressions that can be great to learn.
The 12 bar blues has many different ways it can be played but one of the most common ways it played today is: I (4 bars), IV (2 bars), back to I (2 bars), V (1 bar),
IV (1 bar), I (1 bar), and then V(1 bar), this comes to 12 bars.
The last V chord is the main tension chord that is great to build up on before you go back to the start.
This next one is a very common jazz progression, Called a 1625 progression or I vi ii V, the small stand for minor ant the big ones satnd for Major
I hope this isn’t to confusing for ya.
Jaymie
There are a couple of ways
There are a couple of ways to go about chord progressions:
1) Find a theory book that discusses them (look for sections on blues progressions, I-IV-V progressions, etc). Many jazz books will have this information
2) Get a songbook or a "fakebook." These list the chord progressions to hundreds of songs. You'll start to notice patterns on your own (even w/o the theory).
Pick some simple songs that you like and find the music (or at least the chord progression) for them. On bass, the simplest lines start by just playing the "root" of the chord progression. So, if the chord progression is F, C, G, D (one bar of each), you might start by playing straight eighth notes of the root of each of those chords (i.e. F F F F F F F F | C C C C C C C C | G G G G G G G G | D D D D D D D D). You can get a lot more complicated, of course, but you start by pounding out the roots.
Wheat
bassplaying.com
Just pick something you like.....
....hopefully not your nose! Perrumpum. But seriously find a piece of music you really like that is not too difficult and loop it so that you can play along with it over and over. Once you learn it do it again with something else. You will start to accumulate a few grooves and tricks sure as snow in winter!
There are a lot of chord
There are a lot of chord progressions (i.e. stock sequences of chords) that are common in rock, blues and jazz. So, sometimes, the players, even when you're playing "by ear" are really just navigating very common progression and using their ears to tell them when something odd comes up.
For instance, the 12-bar blues progression (I-IV-V) is the most common. In jazz, many songs are built of strings of II-V-I progressions. In rock, there are certain "box" patterns that occur quite naturally on the guitar neck (like any combination of G, A, C, D).
When you're playing live, knowing just a little about 6-string guitar and the left-hand of piano can allow you to play by "eye" and watch the changes as they happen. That, combined with an ear and with a knowledge of common chord progressions, will get the job done 90% of the time.
As for composition, knowing which cord to play next can be fairly intuitive or can come from some knowledge of music theory. In any given key, there are seven chords that always work (the "diatonic" chords). You can write the chord progression of a song by stringing these together in various combinations that please your ear.
Finally, as some others mentioned, there are stock progressions that aren't entire songs but are parts of songs. These are called "turnaround" and they happen at the end of a "chorus." So, in a 12-bar blues, there are several stock one, two, and four bar turnaround that can occur at the end of any 12-bar group.
Finally (x2), a common trick in many songs is to move to the relative minor for the bridge. So you can pretty much guess your way through if you have to.
Thanks for such a great question. I see there are lots of great comments on it already.
Wheat
bassplaying.com
To the philosophical part of
To the philosophical part of your question. Though having innate musical aptitude of some sort certainly helps, playing musical instruments is a highly teachable set of skills, IMHO. If you have the desire to learn, and the time to practice, you can learn how to play most any instrument. You might not be great at it, but you can develop competence, through instruction and trial and error.
As with all learning, motivation is more an issue that ability. If you can stay interested in music and in an instrument, there's practically nothing you can't learn.
Wheat
bassplaying.com
Playing by ear is a simple
Playing by ear is a simple thing in theory, but sometimes very difficult to do in practice. My suggestion is to just play along with your favorite tunes. If you hit a tough spot, rewind and try again until you get it. Take it slow, stick to root notes, and get some input from other musicians if available.
In time, you will find yourself desiring a more challenging approach by playing along with the radio and trying to pick out the parts as you go. Great exercise, that one.
There is no substitute for a good ear; especially since lessons don't turn you on. I wish you the best and applaud your efforts.
Bo
You don't love me, you just love my FINGERSTYLE!
Peavey T40; SX/Squier P-bass; Spector Legend 5
Roland Bass 30 Cube
Bo
You don't love me, you just love my FINGERSTYLE!
Peavey T40; SX/Squier P-bass; Spector Legend 5
Roland Bass 30 Cube
Playing along with tunes is
Playing along with tunes is a great idea! I didn't buy it for this (or even know it could do it when I bought it), but GearBox, the software that came with my Line 6 UX2, has a play-along feature. You can open up an mp3 or wav file (or a CD track) and play along with it. You can set the volume of the backing track relative to your bass. Having it in the headphones makes it easy to focus on the line. It even has a slow-down feature (not a great one, but it's still handy).
Since all my music is ripped to iTunes (most of it in mp3 format), I can play along with whatever I like very easily. And the software lets you set loop points, so you can nail difficult passages.
I'm not trying to sell you on this particular product (though I love it and would recommend it to anyone). But any setup that allows you to get your bass and the song you want to learn together in the headphones will be a real benefit. And, if you can set loop points, so much the better.
Wheat
bassplaying.com
You figured that one out eh
You figured that one out eh Wheat?
That is a new feature for GearBox. When I bought mine I did not have it and then when I upgraded the software I still did not know about it until a few months later (I never really use any of the add-ons on the bottom of it).
What I found it useful for, there were a couple of tunes I did not have music for so I went to my handy dandy tabs just to get a rough idea and then plugged the songs into GB and was able to figure out the rest of the tunes.
Hazz
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"Carburetors man!! That's what life is all about."
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the tascam bass trainer
is great for playing along with music also........lets ya mix what you hear of the cd's and what you play........as well as slowing t down for those tough parts.
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Greg
*and it harm none,do what thou will*
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Greg
http://www.youtube.com/user/BroknDreamsBand
Http://www.facebook.com/brokendreamsband
http://www.reverbnation.com/brokendreamsband
*and it harm none,do what thou will*
Maybe my ...
Maybe my piss poor reading prevented me from seeing it buttttt . . .
Learn your fret board.
Learn what notes are at what frets on which strings.
Once you know the fret board then listen to some simple songs and try and pick out the notes on the fret board. It will take some ear training but once you can do that then you can get into the rest of the theory the others are talking about which will allow you to elaborate on the root note.
Hazz
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"WHAT ARE UUUUU DUUUUUING IN MAA SWAAAMP!!
Musicians Collaboration Studio
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"Carburetors man!! That's what life is all about."
Musicians Collaboration Studio
Thanks Hazz.... knowing what
Thanks Hazz....
knowing what is where will obviously help alot. This was probably a no-brainier to most, but stating the obvious to a newbie never, ever hurts...
I think i'm going to start with my Student Fender acoustic guitar which has been collecting dust instead of spending money on a bass right now. The theory is the same i'm assuming...