The relative pitch exercises covered in Lesson 17 and here in Lesson 18 will definitely prove most helpful if they become part of your regular woodshed routine (i.e., practiced consistently and regularly). The ear behaves like a muscle in that it becomes stronger with regular exercise.

The next step in ear training for relative pitch will involve expanding on the intervals by incorporating arpeggios, modes and chords. Getting your ear accustomed to recognizing these will REALLY assist you “on the gig”...particularly in any musical context that’s even slightly improvisational. It will also come in exceedingly handy if you ever get lost playing through a tune: a good ear has averted many a potential musical trainwreck!

The bonus side effect is that working through these various musical elements for ear training will also enable you to assimilate them to an even greater extent...helping get them further out of the “academic archive” part of the brain, into the “integral part of my musical bag” area!

Arpeggios

EXERCISE 1

  1. Play the D on the 5th fret of the A string;

  2. Sing the rest of a DM7 arpeggio (3, 5, 7, 5, 3, 1);

  3. Now play it on your bass and confirm that you sang the correct notes.

  4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 for the m7 and dominant 7 arpeggios.

EXERCISE 2

Work through Exercise 1 again, but this time, pick random root notes (e.g., start with an A#, sing and play an A#M7 arpeggio...then pick another random note - say, Db - and sing and play a Db-7 arpeggio, etc.).

Modes

EXERCISE 3

  1. Play the G at the 3rd fret of the E string (yeah, we’re MIXING it up a bit! ha);

  2. Sing each of the 7 modes (i.e., G Ionian, G Dorian, G Phrygian, etc.). After each mode, play it on your bass and verify that the notes match what you sang.

EXERCISE 4

  1. Play a random note on your bass;

  2. Sing the 1st mode;

  3. Play the 1st mode and verify the notes match;

  4. Play another random note;

  5. Repeat Steps 1 through 4 for the 2nd through 7th modes.

Chords

EXERCISE 5

Listen to the following audio clip and identify the quality (M7, -7, or dominant 7) for each chord. Write down your answers and compare below.

Audio Exercise 5

Answers:

1. dominant 7 (E7)
2. m7 (B-7)
3. M7 (F#M7)
4. m7 (A-7)
5. dominant 7 (C7)
6. M7 (DM7)