PLEASE HELP!im sorry to bother but i just joined and i hope there is someone who will help a passionate beginner 
! i've been playing for a year or 2 . i cant play like songs on a cd but i can play choruses and refrains etc.so please tell me how can i improve? by the way i play by ear i've never been taught or have a mentor. and i want to improve? help please 
ive gottten negative vibes around cos im female but i gonna shut ma eyes and play with christ. so help!
welcome to the low end:
First is learn your scales in the main position. and the most important ones are: major scales, minor scales, and the easiest and most often used are the minor pentatonic scales. Just by know these basic scales you can hear an entire song within the scale.
Some useful excercises is hum a simple tune in your head or out loud and copy that on the bass. Believe it or not the basic excercises such as do ri me fa la (something like that) is essential to improving your ear. that's basically the major scale.
For cd's that uses a lot of Major scales try Israel houghton:
Cd's with a lot of pentatonic minor scales try: byron cage and for advanced level fred hammond.
Also youtube has tons of information, that is better then buying instruction dvd's type in what you need and some good vids will pop up. I usually study how the players play, feeling, hand movement, position, etc...
Another rule of thumb is to know your fretboard. Pick up a book called fretboard logic for bass. it teaches you patterns on the fretboard to basically play all over the neck in all scales... instead of learning the notes on the neck it teaches intervals, this is a plus to get...
Buy some bass dvd's, live concerts on dvds, such as victor wooten, kirk whalum, fred hammond, or whatever your preference is - this not only helps me to study how to play live, and grooves but it's a motivation for me when i have my bass slumps...
I tend to also purchase live cd's because the bass players really come out the box. There's a difference from studio recording and live recording. It's good to hold a groove, but when live, it makes a difference to freestyle a little (but only when necessary) too much coming out the box can hurt you.
it's also important to learn theory: this is really help when learning cd's because all songs consist of chord progressions. If you now a chord progression, such as the simple 1-4-5 and you hear it in the song, you automatically know which note comes next, and the more you know the better.. the more you study the easier you can learn songs.
Last but not least... learn how to read music. THIS IS A PLUS, and it will not effect your hear training, it will only make it better, and this is when you can make some serious money from music and further advance your career.
If you have any questions, just hit me up:
