I really want to be able to listen to songs and know what frets to press after a couple of listens but I’ve looked up many ways to train my ear for bass but every time I look I get a website or app and it’s always piano keys. Is there any ear trainer with just bass or another method I can use to help train my ears?
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Well there’s an easy way and there’s a hard way.
The easiest is to study the fingerboard, and start your ear training exercise. Learn your basic theories and chords progression. It gets things rolling.
The easy way is to start with easy song, do that a couple of hundred songs (easy) then move up to intermediate then difficult, by the time you get there you’d have it nailed. I’m half way down the intermediate.
The hard way is to play a lots of songs with tab on YouTube and hope you have great retention and hopefully when you play enough songs your muscle memory can get you there.
There’s no shortcuts. You scan learn “A” song and master it but to know all songs takes lots of dedication and hard work. Not even session pro can do it consistently on the fly.
Try this guy
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I can’t listen to music and immediately go “that’s an E” and wing it, but with enough time spent playing and listening I can usually get close. You will become familiar with what notes sound like on different strings and it will get easier.
What I do is hook up my bass, play whatever song it is i’m trying to learn, then just fret around until I find the right note. Since you can play the same note in many different places you just have to listen to the progression to dial in where exactly it’s being played on the neck.
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