hi it's Geoff here from discoverdoublebass.com that is the home
of online video double bass lessons and courses and we also have a whole range
of interviews with bass players who are absolutely incredible such as Olivier
Babaz who's joining me in the studio today so Olivier we had a question for you
from the audience which is about ear training and is ear training an
important part what you do and you have any advice for somebody getting into ear
training to be honest I never did any ear training per se I never enrolled in
of course I never did buy a CD about that exactly but I have I'm an ear
player I've always learned music by ear first and so I always play along to
record and learn tune that way so it's how I developed my own ear as well as
playing other instrument than ten bass so to me the best ear training exercise
is for example if there's a standard you don't know that which is a quite familiar
known standard just pick a few versions an audio version on internet and
just play along to it until the point that you know it's and you will
learn plenty of chords and plenty of voicing and different colors and the
chords to me that's really the best the best option transcribing and playing
along to record and do you write out your the stuff that you're learning or do you
just learn it and try and get it in and not spend the time physically writing out
mean it's different things besides the the the exercise of transcribing and
exact solo and maybe playing it requires of course to write it down but when it
comes to ear practicing and getting a quick ear reflexes to me playing along
to record and and and playing tunes that I don't know with records preferably not
on a gig and catching the chords on the spot will make you learn it more deeply
and will develop your ear in a very very efficient way and as well so that's
playing along to record the bass parts but as well if you're if you want to
improvise more melodic stuff you can as well
I don't know if I can give you an example for example you like Chet Baker
you can put ballad Chet Baker playing a ballad and take your bow and try play
exactly what he plays because it's a ballad it's quite it's quite slow it's
Chet Baker so it's quite a nice sounding and easy to catch and you learn I mean
that's how I learn to to that that's how I develop my ear just playing along to
record and listening a lot and transcribing I think it's great advice
and Chet Baker Miles Davis is someone else comes to mind because they they are
you know perfect melodicists if that's the right word but they play these
perfect melodies without rising but also in terms of range they're quite
accessible you know and in terms of like the harmonic and melodic language so
yeah I think that's great advice I think just spending time with an album like
kind of blue you know and just playing all the trumpet solos on there I can't think
of anything better to do with my time and there's a aspect of ear training we
don't we don't talk a lot is for me it's a rhythm in ear training getting used
and understanding on the spot rhythm quickly is a really important skill of
jazz improvisation and there are some musicians that are really challenging to
catch so playing along to along with them if maybe we could think about in
the classic maybe Bill Evans is a great example of a challenging rhythm player
because it's not extremely complicated but it's very often surprising and at
the other time you will work on your harmonic skills because he's a he's got
beautiful voicings so but I learned a lot by playing along to Bill
Evans but and after a while I realized that I
developed more rhythm skills than than what I thought I would develop which
were harmonic skills so yeah thinking in terms of ear training thing thinking
about the rhythm is very important as well that's our server so great points
finish on that sir thanks for joining me Olivier thank you for watching at home
and if you want to learn more from this guy please go and check out our videos
and you've done a couple of courses for discover double bass now jazz bowing and
the creative improviser they're both fantastic I'm sure that you will enjoy
them if you go and check them out so yeah thanks again Olivier thanks