A Lesson in Critical Listening

I learned a valuable lesson the other day when I received a phone call from a friend. It seems the bass player in his cover band was in the hospital and unable to play an important gig on the coming weekend. My friend asked if I could sit in or if I knew someone who could. Since I owe this friend many, many favors, I told him I would be happy to do it. The gig called for me to learn twenty five songs in five days.

Since I was familiar with the tunes, I didn’t expect this to be too much of a struggle.  Learning cover tunes tends to be easier, if for no other reason than you already know how the songs go.  What I realized, though, was that although I thought I knew the songs back and forth, I had never really focused on their bass lines. I discovered not only that I didn’t know many of the bass lines, but more importantly, that many had great bass lines which I had been missing out on for many, many years.

It was a great reminder that we as musicians need to listen to everything that’s happening in a song. It’s easy to get caught up in a great vocal melody or an awesome guitar solo, but what else is happening during that time? There may be a great bass line, an interesting drum fill, or an awesome keyboard line.

Our brains don’t always have the ability to simultaneously hear every single thing that is happening in a tune. So a great exercise is to pop in some music and hone in on just the bass track. This might be a little difficult at first. Bass is seldom prominent in a tune and it’s not always possible to hear every single note being played. But with practice, it gets easier and easier.

Next, go back and focus only on the rhythm guitar. Then you might listen to just the other rhythm guitar, the keyboard track, the drums, or whatever other instrumentation is happening on the track. You can take this as far as you want. You can focus on just the kick drum, the snare, the cymbals, or whatever you find interesting. I’ve even listened to songs to see when and how often the drummer switches between hi hat and ride cymbal. People interested in recording might listen to a particular instrument just to see how much reverb is on it, how high it is in the mix, it’s pan position, or how it is eq’d.

People often ask if they should change the eq settings on their equipment when focusing on the bass guitar or other instruments. Although this might help bring out the particular instrument you’re listening to, I believe it’s better to listen to music the way the mixing engineer intended.  This will help you learn more about how different instruments fit together in a mix.

Although we’re all guitarists, the more we understand about how other instruments work in a band setting, the better musicians, writers, and arrangers we will be.  But perhaps more importantly, it will bring another aspect of enjoyment to your favorite music. Try this exercise out for yourself and let me know how it works for you.  You may just find something you never noticed before. Thanks for reading and good luck.

• Eric S. Morgan is a multi-instrumentalist, teacher, producer/engineer, and the author of the Pedal Tone Publishing book Fundamental Concepts of Music Theory. You can learn more about Eric and his book at Pedal Tone Publishing.