What to start off with?

[l Bad Religion l]

Ok, so I have this song I want to play, a metronome, and my bass with me. Im wanting to learn to play by ear for many of reasons. How would I start to learn a song by ear? If it helps, its called "stay together for the kids" from Blink 182. It sounds easy, so I figured I could practice it.

[Mr. Phil]

well you play this:

 

|CCCCCCCC|GGGGGGGG|AAAAAAAAA|EEEEEEEE

[lowfreq]

Damn Phil

 

Your Brilliant

[dcr]

Well, you're off to a good start--you've picked a simple song (I gather), you've got a metronome, and you chose bass as your instrument.

 

If you're using a CD, hopefully you have a player with a good pause button & rewind/fast forward buttons. The best thing you can do is to begin at the beginning. Listen to a small portion--one or two measures--pause the music, then try to play back what you heard. Once you can do that, go on to the next small portion, & when you can play it, start from the first one & play through as far as you've learned how. Repeat until you've got the whole song. Then play the whole song. Repeat until it sounds good.

 

That's all there is to it!

[Rhythm44]

Good advice! If there is a set of notes you just can't nail, strike a note that's close but lower than the tone you want, let it ring through the trouble spot, move up a fret, repeat, until that glorious sound of your bass perfectly matching the tone on the cd happens. Then write it down before you forget, and move onto the next trouble note.

 

Expect to spend 30 minutes to four hours (depending on difficulty) to get the song down.

[Afro_Man]

its really simple and only has the bass line on the chorus, just listen really carefully, because there is a bit where he just does one seemingly random note, its pretty obvious once you've got it, i could write out the tab for you now, but that wouldn't help you learn would it.

Nic

[JazzCat]

Train your ear to hear melodic phrases. Train your ear to hear intervals. Learn how to play around chord structures and changes. Learn scales. Learn chromatic concepts, I recommened Dave Liebmans approach. And only then will you be ready to tackle that Blink 182 song.

 

Learn your instrument and Blink 182 will be easy. If you have to ask then you need to get with a good teacher because you are going to screw yourself up early and form bad habits.

[73 P Bass]

When I learn a song off a cd or the radio or whatever, I hone in on what the first note of the first phrase is, and then play off that (i.e. sounds higher than first note play a note higher) after you've been playing for a while common intervals such as thirds, fifth, sevenths, fourths will become second nature to you. As has been stated, work a little at a time; you don't need to nail the whole song in one take. Figure out the verse, then move on to the chorus, then if there is a bridge work on that. Try and put them together slowly.

[Connie Z]

Hi Bad Religion!

 

I suggest you add one more item... a tuner. When you are trying to learn songs by ear from a CD, it is important to be in tune. That way you'll be starting off correctly.

 

I've only done it a few times, but I started off by identifying one note and then added others. I would forget to tune, and the first note would be something like a G#, and then I would realize that I was out of tune, and the note on the CD was actually an A.

 

I apologize if this sounds elementary, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

 

When I first started, I needed to be told everything! I am not good at figuring stuff out myself. I used to be, but my brain is getting fried at my advanced age of 44.

 

Good luck! ... connie z

[a boy named sue]

If you're using a CD, hopefully you have a player with a good pause button & rewind/fast forward buttons. The best thing you can do is to begin at the beginning. Listen to a small portion--one or two measures--pause the music, then try to play back what you heard.

If you play the CD on your DVD player you should be able to use the A->B repeat function. You press the button when the bit you want repeated starts and press it again when that bit stops. The DVD player will now loop that bit forever.

 

BTW my DVD player cost the same as my metronome

[No, I Wont Just Play Root]

my method comes from my wedding band days...

 

Get the song / songs you want to learn burned to a CD with only those songs on it.

 

Put it in your car stereo.

 

Go for a looooooong drive (takes me an hour to drive to and from work, so this helps), and listen to it until you're almost sick of it: the bass-line should now be in your head.

 

Sit and go through the methods described above, but it shouldn't take you quite as long as you know exactly what you are expecting to hear.

 

Hope this helps a bit: my mantra is that it helps to know the "sound" of a song inside out before learning it: that way you can extemporise around the line too.

 

[Bass_god_offspring]

it is a very simple song, and it shouldn't be to hard to learn. that was one of the first songs i learned too. good luck!

[Mr. Phil]

Originally posted by lowfreq:

Damn Phil

 

Your Brilliant

Well I try.

 

(I actually had to pick up my bass and make sure those were the right notes. I don't know the pop-punk magic progression by heart)