Knowing the Bass Guitar

It is indeed true that music will never be complete without the presence of bass guitar. Bass guitar can truly add beauty to a musical composition. Bass guitar is like an elixir that can balance the music. The name itself implies its essence. It is an instrument that can be used for the purpose of playing the bass notes or basically the lower notes. In a band or in an orchestra, the bass guitar is being tuned up with the main guitar. The main guitar or the lead guitar will be for the high notes while the bass guitar will be for the lower notes. The presence of the bass guitar is needed in almost all kinds of music genres and musical performances. It is for the purpose of balancing the high notes and the lower notes.

Bass guitar is widely being used by jazz players, because it perfectly fits the jazz tone. But it is also being used in rock music because it stabilizes the high octaves of a lead guitar. Aside from these genres, bass guitar is also being used in other musical performances such as blues and funk, Latin, fusion, southern and classic rock type of music.

For a beginner, the bass guitar may appear like an ordinary type of guitar. There are certain things that make the bass guitar distinct from an ordinary type of guitar. An ordinary type of guitar has a bigger size while a bass guitar has a longer body type and has a greater length. This only means that the strings of a bass guitar are much longer than the strings of an ordinary type of guitar. Ordinary guitar has six strings, normally a bass guitar has 4 strings and that is enough to produce a lower sound, and there are also what is called as short scale bass. But due to some enhancements, there are already some bass guitars that have five strings, six strings, even eight strings. Another profound difference is that the four-stringed bass guitar is usually one octave lower compared to the four lower strings of an ordinary guitar.

The quality of the tone you get from the bass guitar depends on the length of the strings or scale. Basically, the longer the string, the lower the pitch of the sound will be. The long scale bases have a 35” strings, medium is 30”-33” and the short scale bass has 30” or less.

The concept of the well-known electric bass guitar was actually derived from the double bass which is popular during the decades of 1950’s and 1960’s. Double bass is considered to be the fundamental of the current bass guitar. The modern bass guitar is more sophisticated compared to its antecedents.

It is being said that bass guitar became popular because of jazz music. Remember that the jazz music requires a lower tone to be more distinct. The rock type of music needs a guitar that also has strong low tone. Before, the double bass is not enough to give the kind of tone that the rock music requires. Thanks to the brilliant minds of musical experts because they were able to invent the electric bass guitar which uses amplification devices that can surely enhance the sound.

Another great innovation of bass guitar is the semi-acoustic bass guitar. It is used to provide maximum resonance. The resonance that it produces comes from a hollow middle but there are also semi-acoustic bass guitars that can be externally connected to an amp. Rock musicians prefer semi-acoustic bass guitar because they can modify it to an ordinary bass guitar and then switch to electric guitar if they need to.