Bass guitar is almost the same as an electric guitar in its shape and design except that it has a slightly larger body, a longer scale with four to six strings adjusted and tuned to play the pitch similar to double bass. They happen to match the electric guitar pitch of the four lower strings by one octave lesser than the electric guitar pitch.
Electric bass guitars have been widely used in the place of other older versions of guitars since 1950s, wherein the guitars are connected to amplifiers and speaker for live performances. Such type of bass are called acoustic electric bass. Bass guitarists generally manage the harmonic framework of a musical performance and lay down the beat. The types and style of bass lines played varies from one style of music to another.
Different methods of playing notes in a guitar are plucking, popping, tapping, thumping or slapping. Some of the different styles of music where guitars are used intensely as an accompaniment are rock, pop, metal, jazz, country, blues, reggae etc. However in few other styles such as Funk, Latin, Fusion, some rock and heavy metal, bass electric guitars are used as solo instruments in the lead.
Many guitarists play the instruments with their left hand. In a left handed acoustic electric bass, the string setup is different from that of normal right handed guitar. The strings are normally placed in an inverted manner with the last string on the top of the bridge and the fret remaining the same. Though it takes a while to get used to this, the musicians take no time in getting the feel of it and learn to play naturally. There are quite a few cases of left handed guitarist playing right handed bass while few others are known to be able to play both right and left handed bass.
Bass electric guitars are made most often with wood. Different varieties of wood is used for the body, neck and fret board separately .While bodies are made using wood types such as alder, mahogany, ash, maple wood and Mahogany is popularly used for necks and ebony and maple for fret boards. Besides wood many other items such as lacquer, oil and wax are used in the manufacturing.
One of the variations in guitar designs is the guitar with fret and without. While on a fretted guitar, the frets are used to create semitone divisions, in a fretless bass the string is pressed down into the wood of the fingerboard as in the case of double bass and the player uses this to play different variations of glissando, vibrato, just intonation and quarter tones besides other micro tonal variations.
Electric bass guitars use the vibrations of the strings within the magnetic field of magnet pickups to produce small electrical voltage in the coils of pickup, from which the electrical signals are picked up, amplified and played aloud through amplifier and speakers. Innovation has led to active electronics being deployed with bass where in battery powered booster controls provide control over bass and treble frequencies and either boost them or cut them as required. There are many more varieties of pickups such as Jazz pickup, Precision pickup, Dual Coil pickup etc. There are also non magnetic pickups available in many variations.
There are many styles of playing bass and are popularly referred to as Playing techniques. While majority musicians stand and play, a few also prefer to sit down and play the bass. Some of the popular playing techniques are Plucking, Picking, Slap and Pop, Fretting, Two handed tapping etc.
Comments on this entry are closed.