Nayland

I guess I'm old fashioned. I spend an obscene amount of time playing, stopping, backing up, and playing again until I've learned every part. Oh, I do plenty of stopping and backing up, but there's a difference between trying to transcribe, say, a Geddy Lee bass line (which is usually fairly easy to hear) and trying to transcribe a Percy Heath or Ray Brown bass line that was recorded in some nightclub. Anything that makes hearing the bass easier will minimize the stopping and backing up.

Typically I run the song in Audacity, compress heavily and boost lows. Hey that's not a bad idea, thanks. I used to have one of those Ibanez bassman dealies, where you could put a cassette in, slow it down, boost the lows, etc. Those were the days! It's long gone though, but this should do the trick. Thanks all for the suggestions.

Having neglected my ear training for a while, I want to get back into transcribing songs from records. Problem is, though, that sometimes the bass can get easily buried. I'm mainly thinking of older jazz records with double bass, but it can happen with just about any other kind of music - especially if the recording is older. Is there any decent method of separating the bass line to any degree? For example, I notice that Winamp has a graphic EQ, maybe that would work with the right settings. Any ideas? I usually use mp3s rather than any sort of analog medium.