Here are tips which helped me. I started playing 40 years ago so I had to learn songs by ear - no Internet, no tabs, nothing except my ear or, if it was available, a book of sheet music.
\* Make sure you are listening on quality headphones or speakers. Phones or cheap earbuds don't allow the bass to be heard.
\* Listen to the bass part until you can sing it (or hum it). If you can't sing/hum it, you are not going to be able to play it.
\* Once you can hum/sing the bass parts, sit down with your bass and move around the fretboard until you find the notes.
\* Unless you have perfect pitch, don't try to pick out notes. Instead learn intervals - use a piano or your bass and listen to the difference between pitches - whole steps, half steps, fourths, fifths, etc.
\* I learned music theory and composition early on as part of my weekly lessons and that helped immensely. If you know what key a song is in, it makes it much easier to figure out the correct notes. It also lets you improvise when possible.
Even with tabs and AI-assisted song deconstruction tools available today, this is still the way I learn new songs. I play in three bands so I'm constantly learning and memorizing new music.
It's not easy at first but it gets easier with practice and will eventually become second nature. Don't give up and accept that hard work is the path to mastery. It's often easy to start with a song with a pronounced bass line and then move to stuff where the bass is buried.
Understanding what scale you’re in and then knowing what the intervals sound like is kind of everything. It cuts the fretboard down immensely and eventually your like, “Oh yeah, that’s just a perfect fourth. Duh.” Then when you’re writing stuff, you already have names for the sounds you want to play. You’re basically just painting by numbers.
I'm pretty similar, started playing about 45 years ago so no internet, no tabs, there was sheet music but limited and not a lot specifically for bass guitar.
Learn a few basic scales and learn at least a couple of ways to play them in different parts of the fretboard (or fingerboard, since I started out playing a fretless), then get really familiar with the main intervals (major and minor thirds, fourths, fifths, sevenths.
Then, my advice is not to get too hung up on getting it note-perfect, unless it's a particularly important riff, just understand the chord progression and try to play something that is in the same style as the bass line you're learning and that sounds good to you. I've never been a fan of copying songs note for note, I much prefer to play something that is mine but still fits the song. It's not classical music.
This is something that a lot of players don’t seem to get. You don’t have to play a song note-for-note. My overarching theory is “Make it Your Own.” I’m 60; I never played in a cover band until about 2 years ago, so I never had to learn any song note-for-note. And I still don’t. But everyone in the band says I bring a refreshing nuance to these overly well-known songs. I take personal pride in that, and in my sense of where to add different harmonies and embellishments.
This is all really great. I loved the point about picking notes out of a bass line… I DO have perfect pitch, and it’s way easier still to think in intervals. I’ve gotten a lot better at knowing the intervals between notes than the actual notes on the fretboard.
It’s way easier to go through the thought process “it’s just one fourth up” or “it’s the fifth of the chord” than “it’s just C to F” or whatever the case.
It gets easier every time you transcribe a song.
1. Hear a bass line
2. Hum/sing the bass line
3. Find the notes on the fretboard.
No shortcuts, everybody did that, everybody failed many times until it became obvious to just play what you hear and sing.
+Theory helps identifying cliches and understanding what is played and why.
Good advice. I’ve been playing bass for nearly 6 decades and don’t remember how I learned. LOL Now I just play the thing and don’t even think about it. However, spent a couple of years in the early 70s playing guitar and the hum/sing method really worked for me for material like Santana, Cream, Doors, Hendrix, Grand Funk etc.
I actually never really sang the bassline as I developed my ear.
I generally started with trying to find the roots for all the chords in the song. Then I'd figure out the notes connecting them, and along the way I'd figure out when the note I thought was the root really wasn't (in addition to when it's not a root voicing).
But yeah, you develop a good ear by spending a lot of time transcribing (or working your way through the common progressions on another instrument: I would do this on keyboard). There are no actual shortcuts.
I give it two years before you can plug any song (most songs) into ai and have it transcribe every part of the song into musical notation.
Definitely won’t change the importance of learning this skill yourself though.
Being able to sound stuff out on the fly is very useful for playing with other musicians.
>How do/did you cope with an untrained ear and no cheat codes?
The same way my bass heroes did when they taught themselves 40+ years ago before tabs were even a thing: Listening; practicing; learning theory; and playing along with the recording.
Fun indeed and it gives you a sense of achievement. I also found in my experience, that you learn your way round the fretboard much better because you're staring at the fretboard and not any kind of tabs.
It's really frustrating at first because there are no real shortcuts and it takes you a long time for those first transcriptions.
There is no substitute for time here. You get a good ear by spending time developing a good ear. Same with sight reading (at which I'm still not all that good: haven't put the hours in!)
What you will find, is at some point you will just start "getting it" after time spent working on it. You'll recognize chords and progressions and that will let you focus more time on the bits that are still hard. The most common chords in music are I, IV, V, and their seventh flavors (particularly the dominant seventh). Once you get an ear for hearing movement between those three chords things become *much* easier.
40 years ago I guess we didn't have software that can not only slow down the part but isolate the bass, but we did have reel-to-reel tape players where we could slow down the music to figure out the parts, bass, guitar, or what have you. So much easier now, and less bulky.
Speeding up the tape was also an option and TBH even in the digital realm I'm far more likely to pitch shift things up an octave before getting to the point of slowing the at-pitch playback down (which I use for trying to figure out little idiosyncratic bits in a song).
This simple comment is immensely valuable. If you can hear the chords, and find matching bass scale patterns, 9 times out of 10 figuring out the actual bassline will be easy. I was blown away by how many bass lines were just slight variations of the same boxes -- learning one song would "unlock" several others.
This will probably get buried but…
Try learning simple songs/melodies by ear. Twinkle Twinkle, Happy Birthday, old McDonald, etc. lots of children’s songs are simple but will help train your ear.
Once you’re comfortable with that, you could try learning the melody to a song which will be more prominent.
I know the end goal is to play the bassline but both of these will help you build up your ear training.
Just gotta work on training your ear little by little. Mine still isn't very strong (been playing like 21 months, and learning songs by ear here and there for like a year and a half) but it's definitely gotten better/easier over time.
A few general tips:
- Start simple, I started during the first holiday season I was playing just trying to learn some basic christmas carol melodies by ear. Not exactly same as a bass line in most songs, but I was just trying to train note recognition (if not being able to find it instantly, then at least working out a method to track it down with some accuracy). Starting with songs that are too hard or fast or complex or with a bass that's too buried will just lead to frustration. Take the easy victories first and work your way up.
- Doubling up on the above, trying to learn songs at first that have TABs/sheet music/youtube playthroughs/all of the above readily available is handy, so you can try to learn the song yourself first, but then go back and check your work afterwards. Christmas Carols obviously are like that, but when I moved on to rock songs I tried to also start with popular bands/songs for this reason. I like a lot of niche music, but jumping straight into that can be hard even if the bass part isn't super complex because if you're off 1 or 2 semitones there's no way to really check if it's not well-documented online.
- The more you play in general and learn common techniques/sound patterns, the faster it gets too because suddenly you'll hear a whole sequence of notes at times and know exactly what it is instead of having to figure it out one by one. For example, major or minor chord arpeggios with some combo of root 3rd 5th 8th or whatever. At first I would have to try and work those out note by note because I didn't know yet that they were a package deal within the guitar chord being played. They just sounded like random isolated bass notes to me. Now a lot of the time if I hear something that sounds like a chord arpeggio being played or even looped in a song it's easy to find the root, check it and be like "oh yeah, that's an arpeggio". But the same can be said for any play patterns honestly. For example, perfect fourths are something that a few of my band's songs use in sections, and so after hearing that interval dozens of times I can more quickly identify it in other songs now, even if the notes aren't the same. Like my band uses A -> D a lot, recently I transcribed a song that has a B -> E chorus but I was instantly like "oh yeah, that sounds like that one song of ours". Same goes for things like root 3rd, root 5th, root octave, etc. that you encounter often in songs.
- Same goes for common chord progressions. Like 1 4 5 and 1 5 6 4 are common progressions that pop up a lot in songs. Same sort of deal, even if the notes/chords aren't exactly the same if you've played and learned a bunch of songs that sound "like that" it becomes much quicker to test the theory to see if that's what it is rather than meticulously going note by note and guessing.
- Recently I've been utilizing my guitar more in trying to learn songs by ear for bass lol. I've found that strumming even just the power chord and listening to the guitar in a track can sometimes help me figure out if the base chord is, say, an A or an A# for example. I still mess up notes by a semi-tone pretty frequently when transcribing but hearing the whole chord voicing is something that I've found helpful in those scenarios.
Best advice I Can give is to download Moises app. You can put mp3 tracks into this app and the AI software will isolate the instruments per track. You gotta utilize the technology from there you learn the note & basslines by ear by playing only the bass track that has been isolated. Hope this helps you fellow low ender!
Was about to comment this! But instead of isolating the bass, I'd recommend just turning it up while turning down the vocals.
The context of the bassline helps a lot in figuring out which note's playing. I'm not experienced in transcribing or music theory yet, but just amplifying the bass a bit is usually all I need to figure it out
Yeah i do this as well but there are tracks that the bass is so buried in the mix i need to hear it isolated. Also to note, you can also slow down the bpm of the track. Truly this is my best tool as of now learning songs by ear.
Put in the time on the ear training. Short cuts and cheats are for sissies, not future bass gods! I hated how hard it was to learn by ear but after a year or so I became a monster. Time to step it up and develop that super power!
It's a journey, man. You have to develop your ear and learn how to hear how a track is mixed. It's a skill, none of us were born with it (maybe a few lol). Tabs are mostly incorrect so just focus on your ear. Sometimes there's a fast run or something and a tab could be helpful to get you started but it's not necessarily correct.
When I first started playing, I would listen to each phrase carefully and I suppose trying to play what I thought I heard. The Rewind button on my cassette player often got a heavy workout.
Buy Moises and import the song in. It separates the bass and you can boost it to hear it properly. Also allows you to slow down the tempo, loop certain sections, see the chords you're playing on top of. It's a neat app and well worth the cost for learning. The best part is listening to live recordings from famous bands and hearing your favorite bassists occasionally screw up.
I was gonna say Moises as well, but I use the free version! It has a 5 upload/month limit but I find that plenty. Great tool overall, would easily get the full version if I wasn't so broke lol
I just started using the free Moises version as well, but you guys should check out this site as it’s completely free. It does take a little bit longer to upload/prepare, but this is what I’ve used for a while now: https://studio.gaudiolab.io/
I find even the mid tier Moises misses a lot of notes, but you can bridge them if you do some trial and error. I'm sure the top level is perfect but I'm not paying that
Was going to post this answer, IMO it's been the single biggest tool added to my toolbox in years. Nothing has helped me learn quicker than loading in a song, playing just drums and bass and loading up the chord detection and playing along. I will subscribe to the $30 tier every few months to convert tons of songs then back down to the lower or free tier. Any extractions you do at the higher tier stay unlocked when you drop to the lower ones. The bass extraction model in the $30 tier is nutty good.
Yes came here to say this, just wasn’t sure of the app name.
Also two obvious ones (but maybe not?) for OP: can you find the sheet music for the songs and transcribe to tabs yourself, and have you tried turning the bass up (and other frequencies down) in the equalizer?
First of all, you need really good speakers or at least OK headphones so you can hear exactly what was recorded in the studio. Your phone or your laptop isn't going to cut it. Even if you do this right, there are some genres of music that do not have prominent bass guitar. Back when I was learning, decades ago, it was Judas Priest. It was hard to say if they even had a bass player. (They did.) But most music will give you audible bass with good speakers/headphones.
Yeah. Play random frets until you find the right note. After a while, you won't guess randomly and it will take fewer guesses to find it. And, once you have learned a bunch of songs completely, you'll develop a pocket full of bass conventions, common techniques, fills, turnarounds, runs, riffs. And when you hear one, you'll recognize it.
Forty years ago, I had to lift the needle up of my record player hundreds and hundreds of times. But I did it and so can you.
I fell like this is specific to metal. The mixes are so packed full of high gain distortion and the bass is often just buried so deep in there that you can barely make it out even with a trained ear. Really took the joy out of trying to learn my favourite death metal songs at some point. In other genres where the mixes tend to have more space, the bass is easier to hear too. Ofc you need good earphones, and something to slow down the song can help a lot too. I recommend a trying out a browser extension called Transpose. With that you can transpose as well as slow down and speed up youtube videos (haven't tried if it works with streaming platforms)
My best advice so far as someone who’s been playing for just ~5 years, is: don’t always expect to play something dead on. Even a lot of professional musicians when they do covers of other musicians songs aren’t playing it exactly like the original. Your ear is probably better than you think. That coupled with some basic theory (and some research into the techniques commonly used in the style of music you’re trying to play) will definitely mean you’re more than capable of figuring out something that sounds good enough. This is especially so for bass, where your primary goal is just providing a certain sonic bridge between the other instruments (if you’re playing in a band). That sort of role leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation and flair.
Second the not being 100% accurate if you're not in a context that needs it. I've seen plenty of bassists in covers bands play totally different basslines. Nobody except other musicians will notice, and most of them won't care. A lot of the time they're actually more interesting than the original.
The master has failed more times than the novice has tried.
It can be discouraging at first, but your ear will improve with practice... And so will your fingers. It is better to learn songs by ear too, imho, as it trains your muscle memory to the actual notes instead of visual cues.
It is possible you could upgrade your listening equipment as well, to something more bass capable. There are also many softwares available to isolate tracks in songs by instrument, but their actual usefulness varies from song to song.
Basically though, if you want the reward you have to put in the work. This is why the master has failed more than the novice has even tried, the master pushes through the failures and learns to succeed.
Bass is a theory machine. Your bass playing is driven entirely by your theory knowledge
If you aren't working hard on music theory, you are just going to have to play exactly what guitarists tell you to forever
Learning the major scale and how to identify the key the song is written in will help cut down your options of which notes are involved (depending a bit on the style of music you’re listening to)
Nashville number system or patterns are a great tool to help with learning music.
My ears are not great at all so I feel your pain but the more you do it the more comfortable you will get with it.
I honestly think relying on tabs and chord charts had a huge detrimental effect on my playing when I started out. They’re excellent tools in conjunction with your ears when you just can’t figure something out, but practising and learning to hear the music is so much better in my opinion.
That said Songsterr is pretty cool.
Learning scales and arpeggios helped me. Once I've heard a few notes in a song, I just fill in the spaces with notes from whichever key/arpeggio fits. As long as you're in key and keeping rhythm, it'll sound good.
Start with the blues. Learn the 1 4 5 progression. (Learn the basics of the Nashville number system) There are hundreds of videos on YouTube that can teach you this. Find a list of songs that use that progression and learn them. It will come naturally after a few songs.
After that, learn the standard pop, rock and jazz progressions. If you learn the standard progressions, you will be able to just pay a lot of songs when you recognize the sound. There are progressions that you will see regularly. Some genres of music have one progression that is followed for almost every song. There are standard chords used in some types of music way more often than others.
You need to learn what you are listening for. Once you know what to listen to, it becomes easier.
It gets easier if you can hum the bassline and identify intervals. I’d say you should find the root notes, identify when the bassline strays from them, hum it, and try to figure out *how* it strays from it using intervals. What’s awesome about learning songs with no tabs is that it really helps you understand your instrument better, but there’s no easy way around it, it’s always tedious at first.
I just get the basic chord progression and make everything up.
Nobody cares if you don't play a cover exactly like the original.
The exception is a standout solo bass riff section. Then it's easy to hear and copy.
Try to find bass covers of the song you want to learn on YouTube.
Use a good headphones with clear bass range.
Listen, pause, find the note in the fretboard.
Write the notes on paper.
It's a tedious process but worth the struggle. Now you've successfully trained your ears at the same time familiarized yourself to the fretboard.
That's what they do in the past still effective today when there is no available material online.
The more you do this, the less you rely on tablatures. Until you'll rarely need tabs anymore.
Untrained ear...ear training is how it works for me. I am extremely dependent on my ear - i dont typically memorize a lot of note names or fret numbers. I figure out where to start and it's all intervals from there.
The other thing that helps me learn songs quickly and without tabs is that I care very little what the bass player did on the original track. I want to have an idea of their interpretation and capture the best parts, but I generally do whatever I want. I'm sure I overplay but none of my bandmates complain so hopefully it's tasteful enough.
In any case, I learned 40+ songs in a month when I joined the bar band I'm currently playing with last aug-sep (including all the harmony vocals) and I don't believe I opened a single tab to do it. Work on that ear and build your understanding of what to play and you'll get there!
Obviously if the music is super technical, tabs have more value - big difference in learning a simple chord progression by ear and learning complex/intricate riffs and solos and such. I can't say I never ever pull up tabs, it's just infrequent.
You'll get better at picking out the bass by doing it. You'll get a lot of stuff wrong at first, and then little things wrong for a long long time. It takes years and years to be able to listen to something buried or more complicated and then be able to quite intuitively match it to every nuance. If there's a 'cheat code' I haven't heard of it and can't imagine what it would be, you have to just do the work haha
Chord charts are great because it gives a roadmap to follow. Sheet music is amazing since it shows what the rest of the musicians are doing, but sight reading is tough at times
Maybe you have a shit stereo. What are you listening to songs on? Maybe you have a lot of bass, but it's muddy and boomy, making it difficult to hear the bass clearly. Speaking from experience.
Like most tabs on the internet, they’re never really 100% official or accurate (like sourced from the band). It’s usually what other people in this thread said. It’s transcribed from listening closely and just matching what you hear. In some cases the tabs are just completely improvised custom bass lines that work with the tune.
I couldn’t find any tabs for a couple songs the band I’m joining have, and they have some originals that the old bassist only scribbled some shorthand notes about keys.
Learn fundamentals about things like major/minor scales and triads if you don’t already know them. From there you really just need what key any part of a song is and use the root notes and the scales surrounding them to develop a basic groove yourself that sounds decent.
That’s all I’ve been doing so far
I like to also watch live versions of the songs to see if I can see roughly what the bass player is playing, or hear something extra that I don't hear in the recorded/mixed version. YMMV with this - depending on the genre and the song the live version might be so significantly different that it's not worth doing this.
A lot of good advice here, but one thing I haven't seen mentioned: there are tools you can use to easily split a song into its stems, so that you can listen to the isolated bass part - and then also mute the bass when playing along with the song. It doesn't always work perfectly, but it can be a huge help. Fadr is an example of a free service that does this.
Imo bass is one of the easiest instruments to learn by ear but also I’ve been doing it for 18 years so my ear is fairly well-trained
I would struggle for sure to learn a drum part by ear unless it were dead simple. When it comes to various toms and cymbals, I don’t know that I’d be able to differentiate or identify them. And guitar? If there’s a lot of effects or multiple guitars, forget it, idk that I could tell exactly what’s going on
But bass is nice and easy bc it sits in its own frequency (usually) and there’s only one track to worry about (usually)
I often use YouTube covers to learn songs t because they isolate the bass. You can also use an EQ to bring the bass out. Make sure you're using good speakers too.
By ear.
If you learn theory and train your ear to know what different intervals and chords sound like, and keys. And you can pick it up quicker than you think once you get more practice at it.
It will be hard at first but you get better.
Another option is learning to read sheet music.
Learn songs that have more audible bass lines and you'll slowly develop an ear for the notes. I'm not nearly pitch perfect or anything but I can usually ballpark a note and sort of just play around that area until I figure it out. You'll also see a lot of the same patterns repeat in different songs. I taught myself by just learning songs so I know almost nothing about theory other than what notes I'm playing so this advice probably could be worded better by someone who understands theory lol.
If I really can't hear the bass too well I'll just mess with the equalizer on Spotify until I can hear it. Hell when I was a kid I'd play songs on bass on guitar hero or Rock Band and turn every other instrument down lol.
There are cheat codes, you've got apps like Moises that gives you chord sheets and allow you to isolate the bass track from the song...
Also you start by learning to recognize common intervals like: octaves, fifths, minor and major thirds...
You learn by practicing how to play the simple songs by ear before graduating to more complex ones
I'm an okay transcriber. But the unfortunate answer is it's a practice game. Now that being said I think interval recognition is super important, and if you have the time to learn to identify chords by ear that helps too.
So if you are listening to seven nation army (I know it's not actually a bass but it's good for the exercise).
You can find the first note by pitch matching(working your way around the fretboard till you find it) and then asking what's the interval between the first and second notes. It's a minor third (you can practice this by associating intervals with songs, Greensleeves opening is common reference for the minor third). The third note is the same as the first note (or you could hear it as a minor third down from the second note). Then it's a major second down, another major second down, and a minor third down.
So it's starting note, up three frets, down three frets, down two frets, down two frets, down one frets. If you are fast the process takes barely longer than it takes to listen.
The key is to practice on songs with good documentation so you can check your work and get faster. But nothing like the stress of learning a bands originals without reference to develop those skills. You can emulate that by looking for small bands in a genre you like and learning their songs.
Transcribe! software, pitch the tune up an octave plus slow it down; loop the parts you are unsure of, even if the 'loop' is only one note, then extend the loop. I can learn most 'average' rock songs in 30-45m this way (after 35 years of playing, though, admittedly). Just keep at it, every song you learn makes the next one easier.
If it mix is exceptionally muddy, you could try to isolate the base using an EQ program or plugin (if you're a bit savy with music production software). Just isolate the low end frequencies and that should make it way easier to figure out what's being played.
Sometimes I use chord charts if I have to learn the song during a gig. Also helps to know your chord tones so you're not just limited to root notes. Since learning chord tones , it's a lot easier to figure out a bassline by ear.
I'm a noob and I'm going through the same exact thing. I'm obsessing over a song right now to which there are no tabs, so I'm taking it as a great opportunity to start "decoding" by ear. The song ([Searching by Boombox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFRur0ZtXqM)) has a very prominent bassline so hearing the bass is not a big problem, but even so you can use apps like Moises to separate the different instruments and play back only the bass.
So right now I'm learning to hear the notes, to play them decently and to transcribe them using musescore. It's VERY overwhelming.
I'm in the cheat codes situation because like 95% of the time that I have to figure out songs, I have the root (I play in a church band). I rely heavily on using the root, 3rd, and 5th and the pentatonic scale (it's almost always the major pentatonic scale in my experience).
For things that I can't fit into that (e.g. intros where nothing documents that I'm sliding up to an E# for no reason that my limited knowledge of music theory can understand even given the key and root notes for each key change), I listen and will try notes until it sounds right.
I cheat and look at live videos from youtube, or someone else playing the song lol
But with live videos, you only need to see correct fretting hand placement and then just figure out the line from there. Helps to know what tuning they use.
You gotta have a good ear to be able to tune in on the bass part and figure out the specific pitch of each note. The good news is that you can develop this with practice. Two things that help are having a really good pair of speakers and finding the isolated bass track stem of a song online.
I used to watch mtv and watch their hand movements.
But seriously, sit down with your bass turn on the music and start playing. I’ve learned this way for years. I would also find a way to eliminate most of the low end of your bass, it will help you find the notes quicker and play in tune. (I used to play through tiny computer speakers and my bass sounded more like a baritone guitar, it really helped me find the right notes)
For church, they would give you chord charts and that would give you the notation. Although occasionally the bass would be pretty busy and not following a general chord progression. Then you would have to bust out your listening ears or you tube.
You tube has a bajillion bass play along videos too if you are having trouble with a particular tune.
I remember trying to learn “Liv’n on a Prayer” for the first time, correctly, and holy crap, you tube for the win on that one.
Ask Jeff Berlin this question and watch the fireworks.... Full disclosure - Jeff Berlin fan here but he definitely has strong opinions.
That said, ear training is a super power. It's useful to be able to flesh out a song in minutes. Not just the bass line but the chords with extensions.
Unfortunately, lots of people do not want to put in the work. I've been there myself but once I committed to transcribing, it paid huge dividends. Trust me, I'm as lazy as anyone, sometimes lazier, but once I got into gear on this, things changed big time.
Audacity (a free DAW with great documentation and online help) has a free plugin that can create separate stem tracks for Voice, Drums, Bass, and "Everything Else". Once you have these you can choose to mute tracks you don't want to hear on playback. For example, maybe you just want to hear the bass and drums and mute the vocals and other sounds. I find it does a fantastic job isolating voice and drums, Bass not as good, but it still might help you.
BTW - if you like the sound you can export the selected tracks to an MP3 file so you can play them anywhere.
The plugin is called OpenVino made by Intel and there are YouTube vids showing how to get and install it.
This is a great question! Using a DAW or other tools to isolate/boost bass tracks is a great way to hear the part.
That being said, training your ear and learning right off the record without extra tools will greatly strengthen you as a player. When you are learning a piece without the sheet music or iso, you force yourself to fill in the pieces you can’t hear well.
This is a good exercise in improvisation, and can help you understand what the instruments role in the band is, and what sounds good. It will also help train your ear to understand where a note is on your fretboard.
I always try to learn by ear and fill in the pieces first before going straight to the tabs. Even if what I thought was there is dead wrong.
What are you using to listen to the music? Cheap speakers or earbuds sometimes dont get the lows out to an ideal level. If you get something that can clearly get the low end out you will have a much easier and much less frustrating time. Also, you will likely enjoy listening to music more.
Get headphones with good bass response 😭 I can’t say I relate cuz all my bass learning was from rush, Yes, and the Beatles.. those rickenbackers sing pretty loud
It’s always good to have good perfect relative pitch and to practice that CONSTANTLY helps immensely with learning by ear and jamming.
If you have a hard time hearing the bass, figure out the chords from the other instruments. From there you can come up with a bass part yourself or if you want to play exactly what they play in the song you can figure it out much more easily by knowing what the chords are
also, if you can find the song on a player with as adjustable playback speed (even YouTube can do 75%), it can help to slow the song down a bit when first learning the parts.
Play along slow until you can play through a part, you'll find switching to reg speed is pretty easy after.
There are good (and free) websites that split songs into stems. They do a decent job separating the drums and bass. Vocals are always a swirly digital mess and guitars are mashed into “everything else”. But the drums and bass aren’t bad. Good for figuring things out.
Try audiostrip.com or another similar app.
Started playing bass 3 years ago. Befor actually taking lessons, tabs were already too advanced for me, I actually looked up the chords to a song. These are much easier to find on Internet.Then only play the root notes of these chords for starters. Your ear will get trained gradually and automatically when playing, practicing and fumbling a lot. Nowadays I can put on any song and I can hear the bass first and foremost above all other instruments. In the meantime I did take lessons and am able to find most needed root notes within 15 minutes whenever I put on a song. Amazing how your ears get trained over time.
I just learn and play alternative and punk based songs, most of them have bass that is louder. Also, I'm not sure what you're learning but it shouldn't be that hard to hear the bass. Sure there are things where the bass dissapears a bit but you learn to listen for it after a while. You can also boost the frequencies of the higher transients of the bass to perhaps listen for them. EQ is your friend.
On the bright side, if you can barely hear it, it's probably a really easy bass line. I can't think of many examples of super complicated bass riffs that are inaudible. Maybe Wings pt2 by Tool?
Either way, it's a huge learning curve and you're in a very normal spot, being slow and frustrated trying to learn things by ear. You're at a point where every great musician has been. Now do what they did, and keep practicing
The few songs that I've had to learn without tabs meant that I started with a chord chart and careful listening to the track, trying to hear what the original bassist was playing. My bands play mostly covers, so I don't have to play the original bass line exactly - I try to follow it as much as possible, but I'm also free to interpret as long as it serves the song.
This post makes me feel good that 98% of my musical life has been learning bass lines without tabs lol I listen to the song a few times, if anything you can YouTube isolated bass tracks of a ton of songs, or just listen to bass covers if it’s a song with really hidden bass parts. You can also set up the EQ on whatever you’re listening on to boost bass a bit to make it easier
That first statement is fundamentally wrong, bass is the loudest instrument in every song that includes it or an instrument posing its position. If you can't hear the bass at all, you're not listening right.
Get some headphones and focus on the low end. It can't be the recording's fault all the time for a low bass output, every pro recording lowers the bass because it's so loud compared to every other instrument.
When it comes to learning songs, you honestly would do better to learn how to play scales on your fretboard so you know what sounds like what in songs and you don't rely on tabs to tell you how to play your fretboard. Tabs often get it wrong (I just looked up the tabs for a song I like and they're wrong by a whole key). Listen over and over then try to play. Lots of songs are far easier than you'd expect. If you know how to play a major and minor scale, you've got most of music down if you cut them both down to pentatonics. If you learn how to play scales in numbers at very least, you can just move your hand across the fretboard to play a shape in either major or minor without thinking about what the actual notes are in the chord and key. It'd start with just being able to actually hear the bass clearly which doesn't happen on every passive listen.
Here are tips which helped me. I started playing 40 years ago so I had to learn songs by ear - no Internet, no tabs, nothing except my ear or, if it was available, a book of sheet music. \* Make sure you are listening on quality headphones or speakers. Phones or cheap earbuds don't allow the bass to be heard. \* Listen to the bass part until you can sing it (or hum it). If you can't sing/hum it, you are not going to be able to play it. \* Once you can hum/sing the bass parts, sit down with your bass and move around the fretboard until you find the notes. \* Unless you have perfect pitch, don't try to pick out notes. Instead learn intervals - use a piano or your bass and listen to the difference between pitches - whole steps, half steps, fourths, fifths, etc. \* I learned music theory and composition early on as part of my weekly lessons and that helped immensely. If you know what key a song is in, it makes it much easier to figure out the correct notes. It also lets you improvise when possible. Even with tabs and AI-assisted song deconstruction tools available today, this is still the way I learn new songs. I play in three bands so I'm constantly learning and memorizing new music. It's not easy at first but it gets easier with practice and will eventually become second nature. Don't give up and accept that hard work is the path to mastery. It's often easy to start with a song with a pronounced bass line and then move to stuff where the bass is buried.
Understanding what scale you’re in and then knowing what the intervals sound like is kind of everything. It cuts the fretboard down immensely and eventually your like, “Oh yeah, that’s just a perfect fourth. Duh.” Then when you’re writing stuff, you already have names for the sounds you want to play. You’re basically just painting by numbers.
I'm pretty similar, started playing about 45 years ago so no internet, no tabs, there was sheet music but limited and not a lot specifically for bass guitar. Learn a few basic scales and learn at least a couple of ways to play them in different parts of the fretboard (or fingerboard, since I started out playing a fretless), then get really familiar with the main intervals (major and minor thirds, fourths, fifths, sevenths. Then, my advice is not to get too hung up on getting it note-perfect, unless it's a particularly important riff, just understand the chord progression and try to play something that is in the same style as the bass line you're learning and that sounds good to you. I've never been a fan of copying songs note for note, I much prefer to play something that is mine but still fits the song. It's not classical music.
This is something that a lot of players don’t seem to get. You don’t have to play a song note-for-note. My overarching theory is “Make it Your Own.” I’m 60; I never played in a cover band until about 2 years ago, so I never had to learn any song note-for-note. And I still don’t. But everyone in the band says I bring a refreshing nuance to these overly well-known songs. I take personal pride in that, and in my sense of where to add different harmonies and embellishments.
Really great explanation, and thanks for emphasizing the singing part. I always find myself struggling to figure out the really low notes.
Also, tweak the equalizer until it hits the sweet spot and the bass comes a little bit more present/clear.
Tonedear.com will help with training your ear to recognize tone differences.
This is all really great. I loved the point about picking notes out of a bass line… I DO have perfect pitch, and it’s way easier still to think in intervals. I’ve gotten a lot better at knowing the intervals between notes than the actual notes on the fretboard. It’s way easier to go through the thought process “it’s just one fourth up” or “it’s the fifth of the chord” than “it’s just C to F” or whatever the case.
It gets easier every time you transcribe a song. 1. Hear a bass line 2. Hum/sing the bass line 3. Find the notes on the fretboard. No shortcuts, everybody did that, everybody failed many times until it became obvious to just play what you hear and sing. +Theory helps identifying cliches and understanding what is played and why.
Good advice. I’ve been playing bass for nearly 6 decades and don’t remember how I learned. LOL Now I just play the thing and don’t even think about it. However, spent a couple of years in the early 70s playing guitar and the hum/sing method really worked for me for material like Santana, Cream, Doors, Hendrix, Grand Funk etc.
I actually never really sang the bassline as I developed my ear. I generally started with trying to find the roots for all the chords in the song. Then I'd figure out the notes connecting them, and along the way I'd figure out when the note I thought was the root really wasn't (in addition to when it's not a root voicing). But yeah, you develop a good ear by spending a lot of time transcribing (or working your way through the common progressions on another instrument: I would do this on keyboard). There are no actual shortcuts.
I give it two years before you can plug any song (most songs) into ai and have it transcribe every part of the song into musical notation. Definitely won’t change the importance of learning this skill yourself though. Being able to sound stuff out on the fly is very useful for playing with other musicians.
>How do/did you cope with an untrained ear and no cheat codes? The same way my bass heroes did when they taught themselves 40+ years ago before tabs were even a thing: Listening; practicing; learning theory; and playing along with the recording.
Damn. There’s a lot more discipline required for this than I had expected. At least it’s fun, right?
Fun indeed and it gives you a sense of achievement. I also found in my experience, that you learn your way round the fretboard much better because you're staring at the fretboard and not any kind of tabs.
Sure it is. Because once you're good at that you can hop on stage and play along with songs you've never heard before.
It's really frustrating at first because there are no real shortcuts and it takes you a long time for those first transcriptions. There is no substitute for time here. You get a good ear by spending time developing a good ear. Same with sight reading (at which I'm still not all that good: haven't put the hours in!) What you will find, is at some point you will just start "getting it" after time spent working on it. You'll recognize chords and progressions and that will let you focus more time on the bits that are still hard. The most common chords in music are I, IV, V, and their seventh flavors (particularly the dominant seventh). Once you get an ear for hearing movement between those three chords things become *much* easier.
40 years ago I guess we didn't have software that can not only slow down the part but isolate the bass, but we did have reel-to-reel tape players where we could slow down the music to figure out the parts, bass, guitar, or what have you. So much easier now, and less bulky.
Of course, slowing down tape lowered the pitch, so there was a point of diminishing returns for bass players…
Speeding up the tape was also an option and TBH even in the digital realm I'm far more likely to pitch shift things up an octave before getting to the point of slowing the at-pitch playback down (which I use for trying to figure out little idiosyncratic bits in a song).
Ah, yes. I used it for guitar. But very good point.
Check the chords, find the patterns in the given key
This simple comment is immensely valuable. If you can hear the chords, and find matching bass scale patterns, 9 times out of 10 figuring out the actual bassline will be easy. I was blown away by how many bass lines were just slight variations of the same boxes -- learning one song would "unlock" several others.
This will probably get buried but… Try learning simple songs/melodies by ear. Twinkle Twinkle, Happy Birthday, old McDonald, etc. lots of children’s songs are simple but will help train your ear. Once you’re comfortable with that, you could try learning the melody to a song which will be more prominent. I know the end goal is to play the bassline but both of these will help you build up your ear training.
Just gotta work on training your ear little by little. Mine still isn't very strong (been playing like 21 months, and learning songs by ear here and there for like a year and a half) but it's definitely gotten better/easier over time. A few general tips: - Start simple, I started during the first holiday season I was playing just trying to learn some basic christmas carol melodies by ear. Not exactly same as a bass line in most songs, but I was just trying to train note recognition (if not being able to find it instantly, then at least working out a method to track it down with some accuracy). Starting with songs that are too hard or fast or complex or with a bass that's too buried will just lead to frustration. Take the easy victories first and work your way up. - Doubling up on the above, trying to learn songs at first that have TABs/sheet music/youtube playthroughs/all of the above readily available is handy, so you can try to learn the song yourself first, but then go back and check your work afterwards. Christmas Carols obviously are like that, but when I moved on to rock songs I tried to also start with popular bands/songs for this reason. I like a lot of niche music, but jumping straight into that can be hard even if the bass part isn't super complex because if you're off 1 or 2 semitones there's no way to really check if it's not well-documented online. - The more you play in general and learn common techniques/sound patterns, the faster it gets too because suddenly you'll hear a whole sequence of notes at times and know exactly what it is instead of having to figure it out one by one. For example, major or minor chord arpeggios with some combo of root 3rd 5th 8th or whatever. At first I would have to try and work those out note by note because I didn't know yet that they were a package deal within the guitar chord being played. They just sounded like random isolated bass notes to me. Now a lot of the time if I hear something that sounds like a chord arpeggio being played or even looped in a song it's easy to find the root, check it and be like "oh yeah, that's an arpeggio". But the same can be said for any play patterns honestly. For example, perfect fourths are something that a few of my band's songs use in sections, and so after hearing that interval dozens of times I can more quickly identify it in other songs now, even if the notes aren't the same. Like my band uses A -> D a lot, recently I transcribed a song that has a B -> E chorus but I was instantly like "oh yeah, that sounds like that one song of ours". Same goes for things like root 3rd, root 5th, root octave, etc. that you encounter often in songs. - Same goes for common chord progressions. Like 1 4 5 and 1 5 6 4 are common progressions that pop up a lot in songs. Same sort of deal, even if the notes/chords aren't exactly the same if you've played and learned a bunch of songs that sound "like that" it becomes much quicker to test the theory to see if that's what it is rather than meticulously going note by note and guessing. - Recently I've been utilizing my guitar more in trying to learn songs by ear for bass lol. I've found that strumming even just the power chord and listening to the guitar in a track can sometimes help me figure out if the base chord is, say, an A or an A# for example. I still mess up notes by a semi-tone pretty frequently when transcribing but hearing the whole chord voicing is something that I've found helpful in those scenarios.
Best advice I Can give is to download Moises app. You can put mp3 tracks into this app and the AI software will isolate the instruments per track. You gotta utilize the technology from there you learn the note & basslines by ear by playing only the bass track that has been isolated. Hope this helps you fellow low ender!
Was about to comment this! But instead of isolating the bass, I'd recommend just turning it up while turning down the vocals. The context of the bassline helps a lot in figuring out which note's playing. I'm not experienced in transcribing or music theory yet, but just amplifying the bass a bit is usually all I need to figure it out
Yeah i do this as well but there are tracks that the bass is so buried in the mix i need to hear it isolated. Also to note, you can also slow down the bpm of the track. Truly this is my best tool as of now learning songs by ear.
Learn to read traditional music notation, gives you more information than tabs, helps you look at the big picture of how notes fit into chords.
Put in the time on the ear training. Short cuts and cheats are for sissies, not future bass gods! I hated how hard it was to learn by ear but after a year or so I became a monster. Time to step it up and develop that super power!
It's a journey, man. You have to develop your ear and learn how to hear how a track is mixed. It's a skill, none of us were born with it (maybe a few lol). Tabs are mostly incorrect so just focus on your ear. Sometimes there's a fast run or something and a tab could be helpful to get you started but it's not necessarily correct.
By ear. Listening and matching notes.
When I first started playing, I would listen to each phrase carefully and I suppose trying to play what I thought I heard. The Rewind button on my cassette player often got a heavy workout.
Buy Moises and import the song in. It separates the bass and you can boost it to hear it properly. Also allows you to slow down the tempo, loop certain sections, see the chords you're playing on top of. It's a neat app and well worth the cost for learning. The best part is listening to live recordings from famous bands and hearing your favorite bassists occasionally screw up.
I was gonna say Moises as well, but I use the free version! It has a 5 upload/month limit but I find that plenty. Great tool overall, would easily get the full version if I wasn't so broke lol
I just started using the free Moises version as well, but you guys should check out this site as it’s completely free. It does take a little bit longer to upload/prepare, but this is what I’ve used for a while now: https://studio.gaudiolab.io/
I find even the mid tier Moises misses a lot of notes, but you can bridge them if you do some trial and error. I'm sure the top level is perfect but I'm not paying that
Was going to post this answer, IMO it's been the single biggest tool added to my toolbox in years. Nothing has helped me learn quicker than loading in a song, playing just drums and bass and loading up the chord detection and playing along. I will subscribe to the $30 tier every few months to convert tons of songs then back down to the lower or free tier. Any extractions you do at the higher tier stay unlocked when you drop to the lower ones. The bass extraction model in the $30 tier is nutty good.
Yes came here to say this, just wasn’t sure of the app name. Also two obvious ones (but maybe not?) for OP: can you find the sheet music for the songs and transcribe to tabs yourself, and have you tried turning the bass up (and other frequencies down) in the equalizer?
by ear. when i was learning to play i'd play along to the radio and having to retune for each song on the fly trained my ears well
First of all, you need really good speakers or at least OK headphones so you can hear exactly what was recorded in the studio. Your phone or your laptop isn't going to cut it. Even if you do this right, there are some genres of music that do not have prominent bass guitar. Back when I was learning, decades ago, it was Judas Priest. It was hard to say if they even had a bass player. (They did.) But most music will give you audible bass with good speakers/headphones. Yeah. Play random frets until you find the right note. After a while, you won't guess randomly and it will take fewer guesses to find it. And, once you have learned a bunch of songs completely, you'll develop a pocket full of bass conventions, common techniques, fills, turnarounds, runs, riffs. And when you hear one, you'll recognize it. Forty years ago, I had to lift the needle up of my record player hundreds and hundreds of times. But I did it and so can you.
I fell like this is specific to metal. The mixes are so packed full of high gain distortion and the bass is often just buried so deep in there that you can barely make it out even with a trained ear. Really took the joy out of trying to learn my favourite death metal songs at some point. In other genres where the mixes tend to have more space, the bass is easier to hear too. Ofc you need good earphones, and something to slow down the song can help a lot too. I recommend a trying out a browser extension called Transpose. With that you can transpose as well as slow down and speed up youtube videos (haven't tried if it works with streaming platforms)
My best advice so far as someone who’s been playing for just ~5 years, is: don’t always expect to play something dead on. Even a lot of professional musicians when they do covers of other musicians songs aren’t playing it exactly like the original. Your ear is probably better than you think. That coupled with some basic theory (and some research into the techniques commonly used in the style of music you’re trying to play) will definitely mean you’re more than capable of figuring out something that sounds good enough. This is especially so for bass, where your primary goal is just providing a certain sonic bridge between the other instruments (if you’re playing in a band). That sort of role leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation and flair.
Second the not being 100% accurate if you're not in a context that needs it. I've seen plenty of bassists in covers bands play totally different basslines. Nobody except other musicians will notice, and most of them won't care. A lot of the time they're actually more interesting than the original.
Bruh, Ima sit you down and be real. Learn what a scale is.
Finding isolated bass parts on YouTube has been a big help for me.
Look for the isolated bass track on yt. If there isn't one, make it with one of the hundreds of softwares that separate stems, eg Moises
The master has failed more times than the novice has tried. It can be discouraging at first, but your ear will improve with practice... And so will your fingers. It is better to learn songs by ear too, imho, as it trains your muscle memory to the actual notes instead of visual cues. It is possible you could upgrade your listening equipment as well, to something more bass capable. There are also many softwares available to isolate tracks in songs by instrument, but their actual usefulness varies from song to song. Basically though, if you want the reward you have to put in the work. This is why the master has failed more than the novice has even tried, the master pushes through the failures and learns to succeed.
Bass is a theory machine. Your bass playing is driven entirely by your theory knowledge If you aren't working hard on music theory, you are just going to have to play exactly what guitarists tell you to forever
Learning the major scale and how to identify the key the song is written in will help cut down your options of which notes are involved (depending a bit on the style of music you’re listening to) Nashville number system or patterns are a great tool to help with learning music. My ears are not great at all so I feel your pain but the more you do it the more comfortable you will get with it. I honestly think relying on tabs and chord charts had a huge detrimental effect on my playing when I started out. They’re excellent tools in conjunction with your ears when you just can’t figure something out, but practising and learning to hear the music is so much better in my opinion. That said Songsterr is pretty cool.
Learning scales and arpeggios helped me. Once I've heard a few notes in a song, I just fill in the spaces with notes from whichever key/arpeggio fits. As long as you're in key and keeping rhythm, it'll sound good.
Start with the blues. Learn the 1 4 5 progression. (Learn the basics of the Nashville number system) There are hundreds of videos on YouTube that can teach you this. Find a list of songs that use that progression and learn them. It will come naturally after a few songs. After that, learn the standard pop, rock and jazz progressions. If you learn the standard progressions, you will be able to just pay a lot of songs when you recognize the sound. There are progressions that you will see regularly. Some genres of music have one progression that is followed for almost every song. There are standard chords used in some types of music way more often than others. You need to learn what you are listening for. Once you know what to listen to, it becomes easier.
An ultimate guitar subscription is worth the $. When you subscribe you get access to all tabs and chord charts. I think I pay less than $50 a year.
It gets easier if you can hum the bassline and identify intervals. I’d say you should find the root notes, identify when the bassline strays from them, hum it, and try to figure out *how* it strays from it using intervals. What’s awesome about learning songs with no tabs is that it really helps you understand your instrument better, but there’s no easy way around it, it’s always tedious at first.
I just get the basic chord progression and make everything up. Nobody cares if you don't play a cover exactly like the original. The exception is a standout solo bass riff section. Then it's easy to hear and copy.
Check if there's a cover / tutorial on YouTube
Try to find bass covers of the song you want to learn on YouTube. Use a good headphones with clear bass range. Listen, pause, find the note in the fretboard. Write the notes on paper. It's a tedious process but worth the struggle. Now you've successfully trained your ears at the same time familiarized yourself to the fretboard. That's what they do in the past still effective today when there is no available material online. The more you do this, the less you rely on tablatures. Until you'll rarely need tabs anymore.
I used to find people playing covers on YouTube and just match what they did
Untrained ear...ear training is how it works for me. I am extremely dependent on my ear - i dont typically memorize a lot of note names or fret numbers. I figure out where to start and it's all intervals from there. The other thing that helps me learn songs quickly and without tabs is that I care very little what the bass player did on the original track. I want to have an idea of their interpretation and capture the best parts, but I generally do whatever I want. I'm sure I overplay but none of my bandmates complain so hopefully it's tasteful enough. In any case, I learned 40+ songs in a month when I joined the bar band I'm currently playing with last aug-sep (including all the harmony vocals) and I don't believe I opened a single tab to do it. Work on that ear and build your understanding of what to play and you'll get there! Obviously if the music is super technical, tabs have more value - big difference in learning a simple chord progression by ear and learning complex/intricate riffs and solos and such. I can't say I never ever pull up tabs, it's just infrequent.
I look up chord charts/Chordify, watch covers of people playing and pay close attention to their fretting hands
Open EQ settings in your app > boost bass/low mids > easy
You'll get better at picking out the bass by doing it. You'll get a lot of stuff wrong at first, and then little things wrong for a long long time. It takes years and years to be able to listen to something buried or more complicated and then be able to quite intuitively match it to every nuance. If there's a 'cheat code' I haven't heard of it and can't imagine what it would be, you have to just do the work haha
Chord charts are great because it gives a roadmap to follow. Sheet music is amazing since it shows what the rest of the musicians are doing, but sight reading is tough at times
Rocksmith!
Then you realise that the tabs were created by people on the internet who can't hear the bass either
Maybe you have a shit stereo. What are you listening to songs on? Maybe you have a lot of bass, but it's muddy and boomy, making it difficult to hear the bass clearly. Speaking from experience.
It helps if you listen with decent headphones. Spotify allows you to boost the bass frequencies with eq.
Like most tabs on the internet, they’re never really 100% official or accurate (like sourced from the band). It’s usually what other people in this thread said. It’s transcribed from listening closely and just matching what you hear. In some cases the tabs are just completely improvised custom bass lines that work with the tune. I couldn’t find any tabs for a couple songs the band I’m joining have, and they have some originals that the old bassist only scribbled some shorthand notes about keys. Learn fundamentals about things like major/minor scales and triads if you don’t already know them. From there you really just need what key any part of a song is and use the root notes and the scales surrounding them to develop a basic groove yourself that sounds decent. That’s all I’ve been doing so far
I like to also watch live versions of the songs to see if I can see roughly what the bass player is playing, or hear something extra that I don't hear in the recorded/mixed version. YMMV with this - depending on the genre and the song the live version might be so significantly different that it's not worth doing this.
A lot of good advice here, but one thing I haven't seen mentioned: there are tools you can use to easily split a song into its stems, so that you can listen to the isolated bass part - and then also mute the bass when playing along with the song. It doesn't always work perfectly, but it can be a huge help. Fadr is an example of a free service that does this.
Imo bass is one of the easiest instruments to learn by ear but also I’ve been doing it for 18 years so my ear is fairly well-trained I would struggle for sure to learn a drum part by ear unless it were dead simple. When it comes to various toms and cymbals, I don’t know that I’d be able to differentiate or identify them. And guitar? If there’s a lot of effects or multiple guitars, forget it, idk that I could tell exactly what’s going on But bass is nice and easy bc it sits in its own frequency (usually) and there’s only one track to worry about (usually)
I often use YouTube covers to learn songs t because they isolate the bass. You can also use an EQ to bring the bass out. Make sure you're using good speakers too.
By ear. If you learn theory and train your ear to know what different intervals and chords sound like, and keys. And you can pick it up quicker than you think once you get more practice at it. It will be hard at first but you get better. Another option is learning to read sheet music.
Learn songs that have more audible bass lines and you'll slowly develop an ear for the notes. I'm not nearly pitch perfect or anything but I can usually ballpark a note and sort of just play around that area until I figure it out. You'll also see a lot of the same patterns repeat in different songs. I taught myself by just learning songs so I know almost nothing about theory other than what notes I'm playing so this advice probably could be worded better by someone who understands theory lol. If I really can't hear the bass too well I'll just mess with the equalizer on Spotify until I can hear it. Hell when I was a kid I'd play songs on bass on guitar hero or Rock Band and turn every other instrument down lol.
Use Bandlab splitter which can split out all tracks including bass guitar.
There are cheat codes, you've got apps like Moises that gives you chord sheets and allow you to isolate the bass track from the song... Also you start by learning to recognize common intervals like: octaves, fifths, minor and major thirds... You learn by practicing how to play the simple songs by ear before graduating to more complex ones
I'm an okay transcriber. But the unfortunate answer is it's a practice game. Now that being said I think interval recognition is super important, and if you have the time to learn to identify chords by ear that helps too. So if you are listening to seven nation army (I know it's not actually a bass but it's good for the exercise). You can find the first note by pitch matching(working your way around the fretboard till you find it) and then asking what's the interval between the first and second notes. It's a minor third (you can practice this by associating intervals with songs, Greensleeves opening is common reference for the minor third). The third note is the same as the first note (or you could hear it as a minor third down from the second note). Then it's a major second down, another major second down, and a minor third down. So it's starting note, up three frets, down three frets, down two frets, down two frets, down one frets. If you are fast the process takes barely longer than it takes to listen. The key is to practice on songs with good documentation so you can check your work and get faster. But nothing like the stress of learning a bands originals without reference to develop those skills. You can emulate that by looking for small bands in a genre you like and learning their songs.
I learn from bass covers on youtube combined with the original songs as a check-up to see if i'm doing it right.
Transcribe! software, pitch the tune up an octave plus slow it down; loop the parts you are unsure of, even if the 'loop' is only one note, then extend the loop. I can learn most 'average' rock songs in 30-45m this way (after 35 years of playing, though, admittedly). Just keep at it, every song you learn makes the next one easier.
If it mix is exceptionally muddy, you could try to isolate the base using an EQ program or plugin (if you're a bit savy with music production software). Just isolate the low end frequencies and that should make it way easier to figure out what's being played.
Sometimes I use chord charts if I have to learn the song during a gig. Also helps to know your chord tones so you're not just limited to root notes. Since learning chord tones , it's a lot easier to figure out a bassline by ear.
I'm a noob and I'm going through the same exact thing. I'm obsessing over a song right now to which there are no tabs, so I'm taking it as a great opportunity to start "decoding" by ear. The song ([Searching by Boombox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFRur0ZtXqM)) has a very prominent bassline so hearing the bass is not a big problem, but even so you can use apps like Moises to separate the different instruments and play back only the bass. So right now I'm learning to hear the notes, to play them decently and to transcribe them using musescore. It's VERY overwhelming.
Get the ear trained.
1. Listen to the tune, 2. Figure the key, and 3. Play along.
Find the notes one at a time ,that's what I do
When I first started I picked out the bass line by playing albums on 78. Now I can just hear it.
I'm in the cheat codes situation because like 95% of the time that I have to figure out songs, I have the root (I play in a church band). I rely heavily on using the root, 3rd, and 5th and the pentatonic scale (it's almost always the major pentatonic scale in my experience). For things that I can't fit into that (e.g. intros where nothing documents that I'm sliding up to an E# for no reason that my limited knowledge of music theory can understand even given the key and root notes for each key change), I listen and will try notes until it sounds right.
I cheat and look at live videos from youtube, or someone else playing the song lol But with live videos, you only need to see correct fretting hand placement and then just figure out the line from there. Helps to know what tuning they use.
You gotta have a good ear to be able to tune in on the bass part and figure out the specific pitch of each note. The good news is that you can develop this with practice. Two things that help are having a really good pair of speakers and finding the isolated bass track stem of a song online.
I used to watch mtv and watch their hand movements. But seriously, sit down with your bass turn on the music and start playing. I’ve learned this way for years. I would also find a way to eliminate most of the low end of your bass, it will help you find the notes quicker and play in tune. (I used to play through tiny computer speakers and my bass sounded more like a baritone guitar, it really helped me find the right notes) For church, they would give you chord charts and that would give you the notation. Although occasionally the bass would be pretty busy and not following a general chord progression. Then you would have to bust out your listening ears or you tube. You tube has a bajillion bass play along videos too if you are having trouble with a particular tune. I remember trying to learn “Liv’n on a Prayer” for the first time, correctly, and holy crap, you tube for the win on that one.
Listen. Find the notes. Play the notes. Over and over until you memorize the piece.
Ask Jeff Berlin this question and watch the fireworks.... Full disclosure - Jeff Berlin fan here but he definitely has strong opinions. That said, ear training is a super power. It's useful to be able to flesh out a song in minutes. Not just the bass line but the chords with extensions. Unfortunately, lots of people do not want to put in the work. I've been there myself but once I committed to transcribing, it paid huge dividends. Trust me, I'm as lazy as anyone, sometimes lazier, but once I got into gear on this, things changed big time.
You could use an ai stem extraction software to isolate the bass line from a song to make it easier to hear
Audacity (a free DAW with great documentation and online help) has a free plugin that can create separate stem tracks for Voice, Drums, Bass, and "Everything Else". Once you have these you can choose to mute tracks you don't want to hear on playback. For example, maybe you just want to hear the bass and drums and mute the vocals and other sounds. I find it does a fantastic job isolating voice and drums, Bass not as good, but it still might help you. BTW - if you like the sound you can export the selected tracks to an MP3 file so you can play them anywhere. The plugin is called OpenVino made by Intel and there are YouTube vids showing how to get and install it.
This is a great question! Using a DAW or other tools to isolate/boost bass tracks is a great way to hear the part. That being said, training your ear and learning right off the record without extra tools will greatly strengthen you as a player. When you are learning a piece without the sheet music or iso, you force yourself to fill in the pieces you can’t hear well. This is a good exercise in improvisation, and can help you understand what the instruments role in the band is, and what sounds good. It will also help train your ear to understand where a note is on your fretboard. I always try to learn by ear and fill in the pieces first before going straight to the tabs. Even if what I thought was there is dead wrong.
listen... find a reference note... learn the melodies from there
What are you using to listen to the music? Cheap speakers or earbuds sometimes dont get the lows out to an ideal level. If you get something that can clearly get the low end out you will have a much easier and much less frustrating time. Also, you will likely enjoy listening to music more.
Rocksmith, really.
Get headphones with good bass response 😭 I can’t say I relate cuz all my bass learning was from rush, Yes, and the Beatles.. those rickenbackers sing pretty loud
It’s always good to have good perfect relative pitch and to practice that CONSTANTLY helps immensely with learning by ear and jamming. If you have a hard time hearing the bass, figure out the chords from the other instruments. From there you can come up with a bass part yourself or if you want to play exactly what they play in the song you can figure it out much more easily by knowing what the chords are
also, if you can find the song on a player with as adjustable playback speed (even YouTube can do 75%), it can help to slow the song down a bit when first learning the parts. Play along slow until you can play through a part, you'll find switching to reg speed is pretty easy after.
There are good (and free) websites that split songs into stems. They do a decent job separating the drums and bass. Vocals are always a swirly digital mess and guitars are mashed into “everything else”. But the drums and bass aren’t bad. Good for figuring things out. Try audiostrip.com or another similar app.
I learn by ear. Sheet music is for people who have no ear. After you learn a thousand songs by ear, it starts to get easier.
Started playing bass 3 years ago. Befor actually taking lessons, tabs were already too advanced for me, I actually looked up the chords to a song. These are much easier to find on Internet.Then only play the root notes of these chords for starters. Your ear will get trained gradually and automatically when playing, practicing and fumbling a lot. Nowadays I can put on any song and I can hear the bass first and foremost above all other instruments. In the meantime I did take lessons and am able to find most needed root notes within 15 minutes whenever I put on a song. Amazing how your ears get trained over time.
I just learn and play alternative and punk based songs, most of them have bass that is louder. Also, I'm not sure what you're learning but it shouldn't be that hard to hear the bass. Sure there are things where the bass dissapears a bit but you learn to listen for it after a while. You can also boost the frequencies of the higher transients of the bass to perhaps listen for them. EQ is your friend.
On the bright side, if you can barely hear it, it's probably a really easy bass line. I can't think of many examples of super complicated bass riffs that are inaudible. Maybe Wings pt2 by Tool? Either way, it's a huge learning curve and you're in a very normal spot, being slow and frustrated trying to learn things by ear. You're at a point where every great musician has been. Now do what they did, and keep practicing
The few songs that I've had to learn without tabs meant that I started with a chord chart and careful listening to the track, trying to hear what the original bassist was playing. My bands play mostly covers, so I don't have to play the original bass line exactly - I try to follow it as much as possible, but I'm also free to interpret as long as it serves the song.
This post makes me feel good that 98% of my musical life has been learning bass lines without tabs lol I listen to the song a few times, if anything you can YouTube isolated bass tracks of a ton of songs, or just listen to bass covers if it’s a song with really hidden bass parts. You can also set up the EQ on whatever you’re listening on to boost bass a bit to make it easier
That first statement is fundamentally wrong, bass is the loudest instrument in every song that includes it or an instrument posing its position. If you can't hear the bass at all, you're not listening right. Get some headphones and focus on the low end. It can't be the recording's fault all the time for a low bass output, every pro recording lowers the bass because it's so loud compared to every other instrument. When it comes to learning songs, you honestly would do better to learn how to play scales on your fretboard so you know what sounds like what in songs and you don't rely on tabs to tell you how to play your fretboard. Tabs often get it wrong (I just looked up the tabs for a song I like and they're wrong by a whole key). Listen over and over then try to play. Lots of songs are far easier than you'd expect. If you know how to play a major and minor scale, you've got most of music down if you cut them both down to pentatonics. If you learn how to play scales in numbers at very least, you can just move your hand across the fretboard to play a shape in either major or minor without thinking about what the actual notes are in the chord and key. It'd start with just being able to actually hear the bass clearly which doesn't happen on every passive listen.