I am looking for sources for good (beginner) call and response exercises for bass.
I’ve found a few videos on youtube but either the level is too high for me or I have to force myself to not look at the sheet music they show in the video.
I found that ear training exercises (alone) are a little too dry for me to keep my motivation going and the intervals in which I do them makes them almost useless and training my ear with call and response exercises with my bass in hand might increase my motivation for ear training.
Does anyone know a good app or other source for these exercises? Or am I overreaching if I can’t get the “simple” pure ear training exercises right?
Can you elaborate a bit more on what kind of exercises you’re looking for? I’m not sure I understood what you’re looking for, but if it’s what I’m thinking it has potential.
I’m actually developing an ear training module for fretful, so I have an interest in this subject.
5 mintes after posting I thought “Mh, gcancella already has the scales figured out and you can let the notes play. Maybe it’s not even that far from what I want.”
So I want to hear a small phrase in a specific scale. Something like root, fifth, octave and then repeat it by ear. Of course it’s just an example phrase and it should vary every time. What I do not want is visual cues during my response what the phrase is. It has to be by ear.
The more practice one gets the longer the phrases can be and although I said I want to have it in a specific scale that’s more of an idea to make it more beginner friendly. I think I can manage repeating phrases in a, for example, C major scale if I know that it’s the C major scale. If I don’t I’m kind of lost. I might get the intervals right but I doubt I get the root correct.
Got the idea from Charles Berthoud:
And failed to check the links in the description.
There is a link to a website of his bass teacher. At least I think it was his teacher: practice cds I would buy a “call and response” track to see if it contains beginner material but I am apprehensive of buying of a website with an SSL certificate error.
So the certificate error is just with his personal website. The shop seems to be an external one. The website and shop itself are abhorrent design wise. I’ve seen better in the 90’s but I guess he’s a bass teacher, not a webdesigner. I will sleep on it and probably spend the 7 bucks tomorrow for one of the “CDs”. Dunno why he still calls it CDs because it’s all digital…
I bought the Call and Response #1 “CD”. It is exactly the beginner exercise shown in the video above.
It has 4 different tracks and the way it’s geared towards beginners (I think) is that at the start you get one phrase and it’s repeated a few times and then some variations are added in, at first just rythm with the same notes (I think) and then some notes are added.
Overall this exercise is more fun than “pure” ear training but I am afraid that I overreached and just have to do the step with only determining intervals, because when you are not sure how good your ears are you have no way of really telling if what you did was correct…
Well I could put the song in Transcribe! or a DAW but that kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise itself… I think.
It turns out Justin at JustinGuitar has a pretty decent module on ear training. I just did the first grade (easy, 4ths 5ths and octaves, but a good start.)
edit: forgot to mention, apparently his app has ear training features he mentions in the lessons there.
Probably a good resource to have for ear training but as far as I can see the exercises are more or less what Josh told us to do - determine different intervals by ear. (Justin adds singing/humming the interval). Also the ear trainer app seems to be only available for iOS and not Android? I’m not entirely sure because the link goes to the app store but there are justin guitar apps on android - just not an ear trainer.
As far as I can see it’s not a “call and response” exercise the way I was talking about.
The EarMaster app has a call and response module at the beginning for one note singing. It maps how close you sing to the note. I haven’t tried it with bass to see if it detects tones that low. I haven’t worked all the way through it so I don’t know if it abandons the call and response format entirely for the more complex exercises or not. Maybe they’d be open to the request since all the tech seems to be in place.
I was not able to tune my bass with a tuner app on my phone.
D and G kind of worked, A almost not at all and for E all hope was lost so I doubt it will work with bass.
I will still check out the app, sounds interesting anyway. Thanks.