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Ear-Hand Coordination
It’s possible that many of the people reading this have found themselves in a position where they’ve had to play a song that they’ve never heard without the benefit of a chart.
When I was 15 years old, I used to stay out until all hours of the night (yes… ALL hours) playing in a local jazz club with a well-established piano player in the area. His name was Eddie Abrams and his band was called the Red Port Review. Red Port like the wine, of which he regularly consumed a great deal. In fact, by the time I joined the band he had moved on to White Port. Maybe too many headaches, I don’t know.
As a kid I was exposed to a lot of music. My mom, when she was a child, was a big fan of the popular music of the 40’s and 50’s. Since she didn’t have a piano in her formative years, she would have to learn the songs by ear from listening to the radio, and then remember them until the next day, when she would go to school and have access to a piano. Needless to say, her ears were, and still are, scary.
A lot of what she learned, she passed along to me. And some of that repertoire was part of Eddie’s set. All of it, stylistically, fell into the category of “standards”. Even though I though I knew an awful lot for a 15 year-old kid, I found out quickly that I was going to be challenged on that gig. Eddie didn’t call the names, or the keys, or the tempos, or the feels of any of the songs. I sometimes wondered if maybe his hands just played and his mind caught up with them. Like his hands were doing the same thing to his mind, that he was doing to me. At any rate, I had to learn to hear on my feet. And I did.
I like to call it ‘Ear-hand’ coordination. I didn’t even know I was developing it until one time, on a wedding gig, I was playing with one hand and talking on the phone with the other (Off the side of the stage during a “continuous” ballad where no one could see me). Not professional, I know, but the audience couldn’t see me, and the band members were friends. The piano player played some hip substitute changes and without realizing it, I played them with him. When I turned around to react and say, “nice changes…those were hip”, I saw him and the bandleader laughing. They were apparently testing me. Nice… They thought it was some kind of freakish thing. It was second nature to me.
This is when something useful happened in my head. So many people ask me how I can do that kind of thing. Many of them can’t imagine how I do it, like it’s magic. People accuse me of having perfect pitch, which I do not. I came to the realization, through some of these conversations, that some people haven’t realized that music is not random. Not only is it not random… western music is typically VERY PREDICTABLE in terms of it’s harmonic and melodic content, which is what we as bassists are mainly concerned with in that kind of situation. If a c chord suddenly becomes a C7 chord, the chances of the next chord being an Fsomething are pretty good. There’s also a good chance it would be a B chord of some type, or more of C7. In most situations there are predictable likelihoods at the very least. Often, a song can lead you through it on it’s own if you listen carefully enough.
The point of all of this is that the only wrong way to get through a situation like that is to give up or get nervous. The main thing is to have an opinion! If you don’t know what the next chord is, listen and form an opinion in your ear. It might be wrong, but not having an opinion means not playing anything. And that’s useless.
If you’ve had any experience with Victor Wooten, you may have heard him talk about “A right note always being a half step away.” For bassists this is almost true without qualification. Obviously, there is only one right note to play for a written chord. If the chord is a C major chord, you need to be playing C to be accurate. BUT, if the chord you’re coming off of is an E7, and you think you’re going to A, and you play an A, you’ve just changed the C major chord to an A min7 chord, and that beats the heck out of playing nothing.
Can you hear the difference between a Cmaj7 and a Cmin7? Try this. Play all the white notes in one octave on a keyboard. Now change one. Do you hear the difference? I’ve never known anyone who didn’t. If you can hear this, you can hear a Cmaj turn to a C7. If you can hear that, you can hear a lot more. The trick is to identify it and remember it.
I hope this was useful. I could write volumes on the subject, and probably will. But for now, ponder this. And if you have an opportunity, play some jazz with some close friends and make them play tunes you don’t know. Ask them to tell you the form and play through it once for you to listen… in time so you can feel the harmonic rhythm. Then just go. Don’t be nervous. You’re only getting better which is all you can ask of yourself. You will be surprised, I guarantee you.
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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