I find it hard to hear bass lines when lots of instruments are playing, and when they are playing by themselves quickly. To me, after a certain pitch which I think is about E written on the stave, everything starts to sound the same, unless it is played slowly and/or by itself. It's making it hard to hear cadences, modulations, intervals etc, which are quite a big part of listening at A2.
My teacher has sent me for a hearing test, but that's going to take ages to come through, and I'm not convinced that there's a problem with my ears... I've been told to buy a book,"Aural Matters", which has exercises, but I don't see the point in practising something I can't hear! It will help the rest of my aural, so I'll buy it anyway!
Is there anything else I can do? It's annoying, and I have a clarinet exam soon, where I have to identify cadences, something I find virtually impossible! Has anyone got any suggestions? anything would be useful!

It may help to focus your ear onto the bit you need to listen to.

To do this, a valuabler exercise would be to play (on CD) a very short bit of appropriate music (just a few bars), and learn to hum along to the bass line. Then when you're sure you've got it, listen for the bass line without humming. Do this about twenty or more times (the listening that is) and it will help to focus your ear on the right bit.

Frankly, hearing the whole chord can help you to guess the bass note too, if that makes sense at the moment.

Hope that helps a bit.

One way to help you to hear the bass line more easily is to listen to music that you have the score for (you could try some midi files from the internet) and then read the bottom line, it's much easier to pick it out when you know where it's going. Then once you get used to listening to it you should be better at doing it without the music. Another useful trick may be to try to listen to pieces where the melody is in the bass (try some bach there's usually a shift to the melody being in the left hand, at least for some time, in most pieces), it's easier to pick out melodies in the bass than the bottom notes of chords. Another possible trick if you have a piano (or keyboard) is to play two, or more, notes at once and try to sing back the bottom one. Just a few suggestions.

QUOTE (elmo @ Nov 2 2004, 09:42 AM)

I've been told to buy a book,"Aural Matters", which has exercises,

we have that book in school, argh i hate it! and we have this book full of listening tests, and all silly aural stuff. im hopeless at it!

QUOTE

all silly aural stuff

You mustn't say that in here, Natalie... *cough* Violinia *cough* Cyrilla *cough*

QUOTE (clarinetlover @ Nov 2 2004, 04:42 PM)

we have that book in school, argh i hate it! and we have this book full of listening tests, and all silly aural stuff. im hopeless at it!

A friend of mine who played many years in professional orchestras once said to me, "Music is about sound", and I like to keep that in mind. To become real musicians we have to be able to hear it in our heads.

I remember a music teacher at my school who had a test which involved playing loads of notes at once on the piano in a single chord and asking you to say how many notes he had just played. I was hopeless and thought this indicated I could only hear a few notes at a time. Years later I noticed that if you play a whole raft of notes at once, and then keep taking one note away and putting it back again, that single note stands out very clearly. This indicates that the problem is not with the acuity of our hearing, but with our musical training. I agree with anotherpianist's suggestion of listening to the music with the score in front of you. To do that, say with the score of a string quartet, or an orchestral score, and follow through one line at a time, is really exciting - parts that you would have sworn you couldn't pick out just by listening suddenly seem crystal clear, and you get a massively more interesting picture of the whole piece.

QUOTE (cecilia @ Nov 2 2004, 04:49 PM)

QUOTE all silly aural stuff You mustn't say that in here, Natalie... *cough* Violinia *cough* Cyrilla *cough*

QUOTE (cecilia @ Nov 2 2004, 04:49 PM)

QUOTE all silly aural stuff You mustn't say that in here, Natalie... *cough* Violinia *cough* Cyrilla *cough*

oops!