“In 20 minutes, I had the bass line...
and it was a BETTER bass line than the original”
Meet Chuck
Chuck originally joined my course Level Up Your Ear because he had been trying to ‘get off the page’ - or stop relying so heavily on tabs, notation and chord/lyric sheets. Chuck’s goal was simple:
I wanted to be able to hear things, and play them
Chuck's Story Of Making A 'Better' Bass Line
Than The Original
Chuck was smack bang in the middle of going through Level Up Your Ear when his keyboard playing buddy, Tom, sent him a keyboard arrangement he had made of a Garth Brooks song, We Shall Be Free.
Normally when Tom would play with Chuck, Tom would have charts for Chuck to play along with, but this time was different.
[Tom] said, “Come up with the bass track. It’s all up to you - I’m not going to send you a chart” That’s exactly what he said! “I’m not going to send you a chart - you figure it out” And it was just as Level Up Your Ear was starting...so I thought, “OK, this is a challenge” but I’ve also done a lot of hard stuff in my life and I felt like I could do this. And it seemed like because I was in the course, it was perfect timing.
Even though this was completely new to Chuck, he tackled the challenge head on, used everything he was learning in Level Up Your Ear and he thrived.
In 20 minutes, I had the bass line to it - and it was a better bass line than he was playing in his keyboard part! He LOVED it. I played a tone in between two chords - just a way to get from one chord to another that [Tom] hadn’t thought of - and he’s been playing keyboards his whole life - and he said, “That’s really great - we’ve gotta use that!" That felt really great...I was like, “I NAILED it!”
This is so exciting - when you can create brand new bass lines, brand new music and share it with other people and have them love what you do. There’s almost no better feeling.
So how does Chuck do it? Well have a look at the system he uses to play by ear:
Chuck’s first point of call is to use something called the ‘Intuitive Method’ - a technique I teach in Level Up Your Ear - to figure out the key. The key forms the basis for his playing by ear system.
He sometimes uses something called the ‘Key Certainty Test’ - another method from the course - to make sure that the key he thinks he’s in is the key he’s actually in.
Once he has that figured out, in his words, he ‘rushes’ to figure out the bass line, which is the most important part of the song for him. Sometimes he’ll use a software aid to help him decipher the notes of the bass line, whereas sometimes the notes just ‘jump out’ at him.
He’ll also sometimes make a very simple chart with the letter names of the notes so he has a reference when he comes back to the song later. Check out what he’s doing with this new system of his:
Learning bass lines by ear is lots easier. I guess the other thing is because I’m playing more, I’ve built up a backlog of bass lines. I’m better at hearing what’s going on - but Level Up Your Ear definitely helped me to sort those out - to figure out what those were.
And since Chuck joined the course wanting to ‘get off the page’, he’s been able to do that handily:
I’m learning a bunch of grooves right now and I hardly ever look at the paper anymore and that’s what I wanted to do
Chuck's Advice For The Fence-Sitters
I asked Chuck what he would say to someone who’s on the fence about joining the course and here’s what he said:
I would say; What’s the downside - what can you lose? The course is a bargain for what you’re charging...What I like about LUYE is that it’s really practical. I have pages and pages of notes from that course. They were terrific notes - I was just going to get back into it and start working on my next tune.
I love Chuck’s drive to keep learning more and working on the next thing. With that attitude, Chuck is only going to get faster and more accurate when he learns new bass lines, and when he creates his own, they’re only going to get better and better.
I’d be honored to have you as a student in Level Up Your Ear and help you do all the things that Chuck was able to do, but enrollment is only open until this Friday night. If you’re interested, just click the button below and register on that page.
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