The Harmonious Blacksmith: A Music Theory Exploration

Ep. 21 : Ear Training - How To Hear Chord Progressions Using Bass Lines(Part 2)

• Kevin Patrick Fleming • Season 2 • Episode 21

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🎧 Episode 21 : Ear Training - How To Hear Chord Progressions Using Bass Lines (Part 2)

In this powerful continuation of our bass line breakdown series, we dive even deeper into the essential skill of hearing chord progressions by analyzing bass movement. Whether you're a musician, music student, or music theory enthusiast, this episode is packed with practical insights to sharpen your ear training and harmonic awareness.

Learn how to identify diatonic and non-diatonic bass patterns, decode functional harmony, and recognize chord movement in real musical contexts. We also explore how bass lines provide harmonic clues that can unlock a deeper understanding of tonal structure across genres—especially in classical, jazz, pop, and gospel music.

If you're passionate about music theory, ear training, and improving your musical intuition, this episode is a must-listen. Perfect for self-taught musicians, formal music students, and anyone who wants to internalize harmony through bass line analysis.

🎼 Take your musicianship to the next level by learning how bass lines can guide your understanding of chords, voice leading, and harmonic function.

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UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to The Harmonious Blacksmith, a music theory exploration. This is a podcast where we are on a journey of music theory knowledge right now and we started all the way back with a single note in episode one and we've been building and building and building until we got to today's topic. I hope everybody's doing okay out there. I hope you are excited to learn some music theory and music knowledge with me today today is episode number 21 and it's all about how to hear chord progression using bass lines and this is part two of a two-part series and i as always am your host kevin patrick fleming hey sounds like we're feeling good today sounds like we're ready to rock let's get it Please take a moment to look in the description of this episode where it says support the show. Only$3,$5, or$7 a month can go a long way towards continuing to make incredible content for you. So thank you for checking that out and supporting the show. I appreciate it. So again, several previous episodes have led up to this episode. We were talking about baselines. We defined what a baseline is, what base range is, what the function of a bass line is, and then that led up to the previous episode which was how to hear chord progressions using bass lines. A bit of an ear training exercise. So what we learned is that the reason we're listening for the bass line is because that is where the answers are for hearing chord movement. And now we are connecting that idea to the idea of ear training, being able to hear certain sounds when you need to, being able to pull them out of the file folders in your brain, using that all-important concept that we must know and love in theory, intervals. And so we started off with the grand chord progression as we know it, the 1-4-5. And that bass line sounded like this. And again, we broke it down into intervals so that we could hear going from a I chord to a IV chord, which is a lot of notes. We're breaking it down to the bass note that sounds like this. Which is, of course, an interval of a perfect fourth. And in my case, in my file folder, in my mind, here comes the bride, comes to mind. And then the last one is to go from a one to a five also. The idea that you're going from this note to this note. And instead of giving you my example from last time, I want you to think about a perfect fifth and what is in your file folder in your brain for the sound. So that when you hear this, it could be there, it could be higher. That's another way to play a fifth. Now here's another one. So no matter high or low, it is the same interval with a same remembered sound. That is one of the best ways that interval sounds help us to understand how to hear and organize music. Now, did anybody recognize that guitar track I recorded at the beginning of this episode?

UNKNOWN:

No.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm sure a lot of you did because that was Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. And of course that was just the finger style guitar part of it without anything else in the song. But the reason I picked that one today is because it has such a cool bass line and we're going to break that song down and we are going to use our ear training skills, our knowledge of intervals to understand how to hear the bass line and how to connect it to the chord progression so that ultimately we can hear chord progressions. Okay, and without further ado, let's get into the beginning of Landslide for today's session. All right, so the intro is just going to rotate four chords over and over again, and it sounds like this.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_00:

Now those chords are being broken into arpeggios right there, but if you were to extract them and just play the chords by themselves so that we can hear the chord movement, I'm gonna help you out a little on this one by bringing out the bass line with my thumb intentionally. So listen for that. It would sound like this. And now I'm going to go even one step further and play just the baseline of the chord progression for you. And that would sound like this. All right, let me back up and start with the basic music theory here so that nobody gets lost. Let's start with the foundational stuff. So first of all, this song is in the key of G major. Okay, so there's my tonic chord, my root chord. And just think about in G major, from previous sessions and just your knowledge in general, what are all the chords we expect to find in the key of G? Let's go through them again. Remember, We have three majors and three minors and one diminished. It's always nicely balanced. G is one, C is four, D is five. All right, now we have three minor chords, right? And they are always gonna be in major. Do you remember? they are always going to be the two chord, the three chord, and the six chord. So if you recall from breaking down a key, which I have an entire episode on if you want to go back and check that out, when we broke down a key, in major, one, four, and five are major, two, three, and six are minor, and seven is diminished. So in the key of G, your two will be A minor, your three will be B minor, And your six will be E minor. Let's go through them in a linear fashion now. One is G. Two is A minor. Three is B minor. Four is C. Five is D. Six is E minor. And in case you're wondering, the diminished seven is an F sharp diminished. And then we're back to G.

UNKNOWN:

you

SPEAKER_00:

All right, now that our key is established, let me go back to the landslide example. Now, here's our chords at the beginning of landslide. We have a C. Yes, actually, I want to pause for a second and mention this. This is an important thing. Generally speaking, when we're talking about keys, when we're talking about songs, 90-something percent of the time, you can listen to the first chord and the last chord of a song, and that's going to be the key of the song. If you've never thought about it like that, that's true. I'll repeat it again. 90 90-something percent of the time, listen to the first chord and the last chord, and that is the key of your song. But that is not always true. And this is a great example. This song originally starts with a fade-in, but it starts on the IV chord. And a lot of you are going to be asking, well, how do you know that's the IV chord and not the root? I will get there. I promise. But trust me, this is the IV chord. And then our next chord is a G slash B, which of course is a I chord, but it is inverted. And we will talk about that in a moment. Then our third chord is an A minor, which again is the II chord. And then it jumps right back to the I chord again in first inversion, which is a G over a B. And again, I'm going to talk more about inversions in a moment, but remember they do that in this case. to create a cool bass line that really connects and walks through the chords and connects them. So quick reminder, remember we're just trying to hear chord progressions. In other words, if you are driving down the road and a new song comes on and you're like, oh, I love that song, and you want to go home and learn it really quick. I do this all the time, by the way. You want to be able to hear what they're doing in the chord movement. And it takes time and it takes practice, but this is the way to do it. So if you just heard that intro I just described in chord progression form, let's say like a regular old folk strum pattern on a guitar, it would sound like this. Test yourself. Could you hear the chord movement? It's okay if you couldn't. I mean, I couldn't hear it at one point. I had to work really hard and bend my ear and use these techniques that we're talking about to get there. So if you could hear the chord movement, more power to you. So now you know we're in the key of G. And again, just to hear the scale that goes with that.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_00:

I do that because it's good to remind yourself what key you're in by getting it in your ear, hearing the tonic chord, hearing the scale, and then getting the sound in your ear before you go through all this. But I digress back to landslide. All right. So now that we know that the beginning is a four chord to a one chord to a two chord, a minor two chord to Back to the I chord again. Let's figure out how we can hear that. But first I need to introduce a new concept, which is called descending intervals. A descending interval is the distance between two pitches and the sound it makes when we go from a higher pitch to a lower pitch. So as opposed to the ascending interval, which is the distance between two pitches and the sound it produces when we go from a lower note to a higher note. So let me give you audio examples of that. Remember that an ascending interval will be from a low note to a higher note, a lower note to a higher note. So a descending interval is going to be the opposite. It's going to go from a higher note to a lower note. And we play one more descending interval, higher note to a lower note. So this was necessary to learn because now our ear training that we've been going through needs to go to the descending level. Why? Because our bass line starts on a C, which is on the four chord. So that's our first bass note in the song. It is the root note of the four chord C major. But when we go to the I chord, instead of getting the root note G, which is what we expect to hear, we actually get the third of that I chord, which is B. So again, that's still a I chord. It's just that this time, when we play the I chord, it's not the... it's not the tonic note or root note of the chord you hear it is the it's the third of the chord that you hear and just for posterity's sake you could flip the chord again and have the fifth of the chord on the bottom so i could have this note So that's the five. So remember triads. One, three, five, three, one. There's your triad for your G major. All three of those notes can be used and are options for your baseline. That's what makes it so cool. That's what makes it so amazing and creative. You can mix and match melodies and baselines and be really creative by flipping chords, inverting them, adding sevenths and ninths and all kinds of colors to them. Alright, so follow me here. The IV chord has a bass note of C. Then we go to a bass note of a B, only a half step down, even though we're going to a I chord there. And then the B goes to an A for the A minor chord. And then we go back to B for the I chord. So our bass line is literally just going C, B, A,

UNKNOWN:

B.

SPEAKER_00:

And isn't that really simple? And that's another thing about music and music theory. I think people overcomplicate it a lot, but it really is the simple things that go a long way. And a simple connected bass line, melodic sounding bass line like this is really, really nice sounding to our ears, first of all. But going back to what we're talking about for this particular episode, descending interval, right? That's the first thing we're hearing. We want to be able to hear that bass note for that C chord, but how do we know what note we're going to next? It's the descending interval. We're going from this note to a low note. That is a descending interval that we call a descending minor second. And again, it sounds like this.

UNKNOWN:

So

SPEAKER_00:

Y'all remember the ear training game, right? So what you're doing is take that sound, that descending minor second, and think of a song that that might sound like. Now I'm going to leave you to your imagination on that one. I'm not teaching a full-blown interval episode today. so now here's the intro of landslide with the bass line and the chords kind of separated so now we connect it to the next section so if my intro goes four one Six. Eventually, as they're going through the song, the next transition chord that takes us to the next section sounds like this. Ooh, interesting. So what is that? You may not have recognized it right away. The bass note is this, which makes it a little deceiving because it's actually a 5-7 chord.

UNKNOWN:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, I know this is getting a little more difficult and advanced. OK, you're not supposed to know all this stuff yet. So I want to interject and say that I'm giving you a little glimpse into a little bit more of an advanced way of thinking with this. So it's OK if you're like, oh, my God, I'm not following this and I'm a little bit behind. Don't worry about it. You're really not. And you can always go back and listen to the episode again. So, connecting my bass line C to B to A. Now it drops down to F sharp, which again is part of a V chord and really a V7 chord. Remember the dominant 7 chord? But it's inverted, right? We don't have a root note D where you can hear this for our dominant seven. So it makes it a little trickier because it's the third of the chord we're hearing now. It makes it a little more difficult. But that bass line, the reason they picked this one is because it leads to... Ah, you know what that is? What does that sound like? Tonic! Yes, that is the tonic chord of our key. So we're back at rest. So the previous chord again goes like this. So the dominant seventh chord has a lot of musical tension, which snaps back to the tonic chord. But your bass line is just going... Which is just a minor second interval. And if you remember from my episode, that reminds me of Jaws. Whatever it reminds you of, that's what you should connect into. And now to recap our full bass line so far, it goes like this. So First of all, can you tell which one is tonic there? Can you hear when we are at home base and are at rest in our key? It's when we go to that second half that you can tell where it goes like this. Ah, once I get to that last note there, that's when I hear and feel like I'm at home base and in the key. And it turns out that is the root note of the chord G, which is our tonic. So I'm just hoping that you hear that kind of thing. I was talking earlier about how the song starts on a four chord. How do you know it's a four chord and not a one chord? It really is a matter of So in the case of this song, you just hear all the musical tension and the chords working together to lead towards G. And of course, the other thing is, in the key of C major... We have no sharps and flats, right? So once we get an F sharp in the bass line, then we would not be in the key of C major. Like that would be your clear giveaway that the first chord in the song is actually not the key. That part that ended like this. That takes us into the chorus part of this song. So now what it's going to do, the chord progression is going to go like this in the chorus of Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. It's going to be a I chord. Then it's going to be a V7 chord. Then it's going to be a VI chord in G, which is E minor. Does that twice. Then it goes back to the four chord. Back to the one chord. Then the two chord, the minor two, A minor. And then the cycle continues. It goes right back to that five seven chord again. That takes you right back to tonic. So now I'm on G, which is one. I'm on D seven, which is five seven. E minor is six. Then we're back to C on 4. Then we're on 1, which is G. And then we're back to A minor, which is 2. And then we're back to 1 again. And that is all the music of the whole song. You just heard all the chord progressions now. In that chorus that I just played for you, let's hear the bass line. It sounds like this.

UNKNOWN:

This. do do

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so we talked about the interval way of doing it, but I do want to give you one other way that you can think about this and figure it out. It would require having your instrument with you. So whatever instrument you play, it doesn't matter. Again, I play like eight of them, but guitar is my main one. But whatever instrument you play, just play the scale of the key... And then go through the scale degrees. Remember scale degrees? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1. And when you go through the bass line that we just did, basically what you do is you go, which note am I hearing? If I'm hearing a 1, it's probably a 1 chord. If I'm hearing a 4, it's probably a 4 chord. If I'm hearing a five, it's probably a five chord. So whichever scale degree you're hearing will help you. Now, this is not an exact science, because let me point out one thing here. When our bass line starts with a C, yes, that does clue us into the four chord. Or scale degree four in the scale. One, two, three, four. Right? So that clues us in. But when I go to the next note, which is B, that's scale degree three, right? So if that's scale degree three, what chord do you expect? A three chord, maybe? That's right. That's where you should go first in your mind. So when I play that three chord, it sounds like this. And that's clearly a minor chord. You don't even have to know it's a B minor chord. Just listen to the tonality. It was in minor, but the chord we actually get sounds like this.

SPEAKER_01:

So

SPEAKER_00:

B bass note with B minor. B bass note with the tonic G major. Mmm, same bass note, very different context. When you hear it with the minor chord, you can tell it's a minor chord. This is, again, how your ear needs to continue to get tuned in to all this stuff. When I hear this... Can you hear that that's a major chord? So things like that will help connect your ear. The idea of interval sounds, understanding what you're hearing when you're hearing it, the idea of function within a key. Once you figure out what's home base, you can use your theory knowledge, your scale degrees in your key, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1. Whatever bass note you're hearing within those scale degrees, you can try to play the corresponding chord that goes with it, and that works most of the time except for what we just talked about which was inversions. where you have a middle note of the chord in the chord, and it gets a little tricky. I'm gonna come back to this concept because it's super cool, but I just wanted to give you a glimpse into it about how to hear bass lines, how to use intervals, how to use your theory skills to put all of it together to be able to hear how the chords are moving within a key. But now it's time for breakdown. Today we finished a two-part series on how to hear chord progressions using bass lines. We learned the new concept of the descending interval, which is the sound going from a higher note to a lower note. We rehashed inversions and talked about how bass lines are created using inversions for smoothness and connectivity. We rehashed the idea of a key and scale degrees so that you could go through and use your scale degrees by playing your scale on your instrument and matching them up. And we, of course, did all of this in the context of a hit song from back in the day called Landslide by Fleetwood Mac. Thanks again for tuning in, everyone. I do appreciate support. I hope you learned something and enjoyed yourself. And until the next episode, I will be waiting to... Continue this music theory exploration with all of you. Until next time, gang, have a beautiful music-filled week. Take care, everybody.