Ear training for bass:
intervals and lines

Relative pitch means recognizing the distance between two notes. Unlike perfect pitch, which is rare, it can be trained. It’s what lets you work out a line by ear and play along with a song you don’t know.

Relative pitch, perfect pitch

Perfect pitch recognizes a single note, with no reference: “that’s an A”. It’s rare, and usually there from childhood.

Relative pitch recognizes the gap between two notes: “the second one is a fifth above the first”. That’s the one that matters for a musician, and it improves with a bit of regular practice. From a single known note, say the root of the chord, it gives you all the others.

The intervals to know first

An interval is the distance between two notes. Start with the ones bass plays most:

• the octave: the same note, higher. The two blend into each other;
• the fifth: very stable, open. It’s the most played note after the root;
• the fourth: stable too, but it “wants” to come back down;
• the major third and the minor third: they tell you whether the chord is major, bright, or minor, darker;
• then the second, which leads from one note to its neighbor, and the tritone, tense and unstable.

On a bass tuned in fourths, each interval keeps the same shape everywhere on the neck. Learn the shape along with the sound:

The basic exercise: sing before you play

1. Play a root, and let it ring.
2. Sing the fifth, without playing it. In tune, or close enough.
3. Play it to check.

Do it again with the octave, the fourth, then the thirds. Singing forces your ear to predict the note: that’s what makes it improve. You don’t need to sing well, just aim.

Working out a bass line

1. Find the first note: it’s often the root of the chord. Look for it on the neck by playing along with the recording.
2. Listen to the next note: does it go up or down?
3. Then by how much: a small step, a fifth, an octave?
4. Move ahead in small chunks, one or two bars at a time, and listen back often.

It’s slow at first. After a few lines, the same intervals keep coming back, and you recognize them faster.

Major or minor?

Play the root of a chord, then sing its third. If it sounds bright, the chord is major; darker, it’s minor. The seventh comes next: a minor seventh on a major chord often signals a chord that wants to resolve, a dominant.

A little every day

Five minutes a day, in the scales or rhythm part of your session, beats one long ear-training session a month.

With UnitBasse

In the Tuner, clicking a string plays its reference note: something to sing against or check with. In the Scales tab, the Intervals view shows where each interval sits on the fretboard relative to the tonic, and Play plays the scale note by note. You can hear the chords of the scale as block chords or arpeggios, with BLOCK and ARP: a good exercise for telling major from minor.

Frequently asked questions