Bass Guitar Music

The electric bass guitar - you can pluck it, you can slap it, you can strum it - it will always be your friend. It will even get better if you pick it! The electric bass may LOOK like an electric guitar, but you don't usually play melodies on it. Okay, in the sixties Besame Mucho and The Lonely Surfer were hits but who remembers them?

The electric bass was invented to give a bass line to music made by loud instruments. This is a limited area but within that area is scope for a load of creativity. See what you can find on Greg Lake on YouTube!

The Electric bass guitar has been around since the 1920's when Lloyd Loar designed the first electric double bass and has become the standard bass instrument for popular modern music, and, through all its changes in design, remains the backbone of rock.

In the 1930s Paul Tutmarc built an electric bass with a pickup which was too heavyto be practical so the guitar shaped body was born. It was a solid body bass made of walnut and strung with piano strings. Around 1940 Paul Tutmarc made a fretted bass that was played horizontal.

The Fender Precision was born in 1951 and is said by some to be the most popular bass ever. In 1957 the split pickup bass went on the market. The Fender Jazz appeared in 1960 with a slimmer neck, two pickups and a countered body design. The bass guitar was becoming very popular.

The first six string bass was created in 1959 by Danelecto and the first 5 string in 1964 by Fender. Called the Fender V, it was the first five string bass to go mainstream. The Gibson Thunderbird was first released in the early 1960's and it was perhaps Gibson's most popular bass ever. It has remained a favorite of the hard rock musicians.

The first fretless electric bass guitar was made in 1965 by Ampeg, and in 1968 the eight string bass was created by Hagstroem. Gibson Les Paul introduced in the late 60's popular with bassists for studio use.Carl Thompson is credited with building the first fretless 6 string bass in 1978. Ned Steinberger created the first headless bass in 1979. In 1987, the Guild Guitar Corporation introduced the fretless Ashbory bass which had silicone rubber strings and a piezoelectric pickup. The bass was only eighteen inches long but had that "real" double bass tone.

As time goes on the electric bass guitar is becoming more and more popular. It has almost totally superseded the old upright acoustic bass. It provides the low-pitched bassline and bass runs in pop, rock and jazz. Bass players also do nifty solos in jazz, fusion, and latin music.

The bass guitar looks like an electric guitar, but the body's larger and the neck's longer. The electric bass usually has four strings tuned an octave lower than a standard guitar.

PHIL LESH Still playing professionally at 60, one of the founders of The Greatful Dead is famous for his distinctive bass playing.

JOHN PAUL JONES Jones stood out in Led Zeppelin playing bass and keyboard simultaneously. Naturally he was overshadowed by the more flambuoyant Page and Plant, but he still managed to establish his place as rock legend.

ROGER WATERS A prime example of the bass player as an artist, Roger Waters, always had something to say in his songwriting and his bass playing.

JACO PASTORIUS One solo album and appearances with big time artists Weather Report, Joni Mitchell and Pat Matheny, jazz player Pastorius only needed a premature and violent death to ensure his place in history.

"FLEA" Around The World, Higher Ground, Suck My Kiss are tracks featuring the individualistic style of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers bass player. A colorful bass guitarist who leads a colorful life, Michael Balzary of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers will never be forgotten.

JACK BRUCE never regained the influential place he held in music with Cream, but his personality and longing to break new ground in music inspired many musicians. But he will probably be best remembered as the singer in Cream.

PAUL MCARTNEY We can't leave him off a list of the top bass players because he was with the Beatles. Well . . . I guess he was okay!

VICTOR WOOTEN Bela Fleck And The Flecktones wouldn't be where they are now without their bass player. He is a highly original artist with awards for bass gutiar playing coming out the wazoo. He is the favorite bass player of countless rock musicians.

LES CLAYPOOL The composer and performer of the theme song of South Park has also made his mark as a bass player 2. Not only can Primus' Les Claypool play many different styles, he can play many styles as well as anyone out there. His abilities and his innovation make him one of the best bassists to come out of the 90's. While Claypool gained notoriety through Primus, he has always made time for side project such as Sausage, Les Claypool & the Holy Mackerel, The Frog Brigade, and Oysterhead. Claypool may be best known for writing and performing the South Park theme song.

BOOTSY COLLINS A 17-year-old Collins began his career with James Brown, and quickly made a name as an innovative bass guitar player and an outrageous stage performer. Bootsy is referred to as the godfather of funk bass and emulated by many aspiring bassists.

The electric bass is the standard bass instrument in many musical genres, including modern country, blues, post-1970s-style jazz, many variants of rock and roll, heavy metal, punk, reggae, soul and funk. Even though the double bass is still the standard bass instrument in orchestral settings (or most settings where the instrument is played with a bow rather than plucked with the fingers), some late-20th-century composers, in particular Michael Nyman, have used the electric bass in an orchestral setting. Modern bass playing draws on guitar and double bass for inspiration as well as an increasing vernacular of its own.

The bass may have differing roles within different types of music and the bassist may prefer different degrees of prominence in the music. Early uses of the electric bass saw bassists doubling the double bass part or replacing the upright bass entirely with their new, more portable and easily amplified instrument. By the end of the 1960s, the electric bass had replaced the upright bass in many forms of popular music. It is ubiquitous to the point that a band without a bassist, such as an organ trio is considered unusual.

The switch to bass guitar moved bassists more into the foreground in a band setting, in several senses. From an aural perspective, electric bass tone can often "cut through" a live mix better. As well, bass guitars can be amplified to very high levels without the problem of feedback "howls" that can plague upright bass players trying to amplify their instruments. The smaller size of the electric bass allows rapid, complex lines to be played more easily, enabling some musicians to develop a solo role for the instrument. The switch to the bass guitar allowed bassists much more freedom of movement on stage. The double bass sits on an endpin, and stands vertically, and players typically play in a single location for the duration of a song. However, the bass guitar is smaller, and is held up with a strap, which allows the bassist to move about on the stage while playing, and get closer to other musicians or the audience.

Another design consideration for the bass is whether or not to use frets on the fingerboard. On a fretted bass, the frets divide the fingerboard into semitone divisions, although fretless basses are also widely available. The original Fender basses had 20 frets, but modern basses may have 24 or more. The twelfth fret on each string is an octave of the string note.

Fretless basses have a distinct sound, because the absence of frets means that the string must be pressed down directly onto the wood of the fingerboard and so the string can buzz against the wood (as with the double bass). The resulting sound is sometimes described as a "mwaah" sound by bassists. The fretless bass allows players to use the expressive devices of glissando, vibrato and microtonal intonations such as quarter tones and just intonation. Some bassists use both fretted and fretless basses in performances, according to the type of material they are performing.

In How The Fender Bass Changed The World, Jim Roberts states that Bill Wyman made the first known fretless bass guitar in 1961 by converting an inexpensive Japanese fretted bass. This fretless bass can be heard on The Rolling Stones songs such as "Paint it Black". The first production fretless bass was the Ampeg AUB-1 introduced in 1966. Fender introduced a fretless version of the Precision Bass in 1970. Fusion-jazz virtuoso Jaco Pastorius created his own fretless bass by pulling the frets out of a sunburst Fender Jazz Bass, filling up the holes with wood putty and coating the fretboard with epoxy resin.

An example of a fretless bass's fingerboard.Some fretless basses have "fret lines" inlaid in the fingerboard as a guide, while others only use guide marks on the side of the neck. Strings wound with tape are sometimes used with the fretless bass so that the metal string windings will not wear down the fingerboard. Some fretless basses have fingerboards which are coated with epoxy to increase the durability of the fingerboard, enhance sustain and give a brighter tone.

Although most fretless basses have four strings, five-string and six-string fretless basses are also available. Fretless basses with additional strings are also available, but these are typically "boutique" or custom-made instruments. In the mid-2000s, luthier Jerzy Drozd built the first 10-string and 12-string fretless basses. Fretless basses are widely used in jazz and jazz fusion music. Nonetheless, many bassists from other genres use fretless basses, such as metal bassist Steve Digiorgio and Les Claypool of Primus.

Suzi Quatro has done it all. A self-taught bassist since 1964, she also plays and reads classical piano and percussion. Born on 3 June 1950 in Detroit, Michigan, USA to a musical family of 5 children, her father didn't stop gigging until he was 89 years old....rock till ya drop! Suzi grew up in the States, experiencing the rock n' roll revolution as it happened. She joined the band The Pleasure Seekers whilst still in her teens and never looked back. After the band split, Suzi settled in England where she became a successful solo singer, bassist and songwriter with a string of hits throughout the Seventies and Eighties including 'Can The Can' and 'Devil Gate Drive' and the autobiographical 'The Wild One'. In her musical career she has had 16 hit singles, sold over 45 million records and toured since 1964. Here is an interview at Bassgirls.com

One of the challenges for the learner guitarist is learning the basic chords. You will not only need to know where to put your fingers, but also how to change from one chord to another. The technique of smooth transition between chords is a learning process which we are never really finished with. Every time we learn something new on the guitar, that's another sequence of small movements our body learns, and these sets of movements must be executed smoothly through relaxed, calm practice.

Holding chords with your left hand is a new skill. It uses groups of muscles we do not normally use, so it takes time to learn the chord shapes without experiencing discomfort. There is light at the end of the tunnel, although sometimes the tunnel seems very, very long.

Another physical adaptation that has to be made when you learn your basic guitar chords is the left-hand fingers need to be toughened up. Callouses form on the tips of the fingers after a few weeks playing, but until they do you need to put up with the pain.

Fortunately learning the notes on the guitar is a job that does come to an end. As you learn more songs, chords and scales you will feel your ease with musical theory and notation growing even if you didn't directly learn much theoretical stuff. If you learnt in your own way the knowledge gets into you by way of constant practice and the enjoyment you bring to your guitar playing.

So the task at hand is to learn a basic group of chords. This is your toolbox you begin your guitar playing with.

Each chord is identified by a letter. If the letter is followed by the word, minor, it's a minor chord. If it is just the letter alone, it's a major chord.

Major chords contain the Root note, a major third above the Root plus a fifth above the Root.

Minor chords, which have a more "sad" sound, are the same except that they contain a minor third instead of a major third.

A basic rule of thumb for understanding major and minor chords is for a

major chord play the (1) (3) and (5) of the major scale, and for a minor chord play the (1) (3) and (5) of the minor scale.

A handy thing to know once you start playing barre chords is that if you learn the major chord shape, you only need to lift one left-hand finger to play the minor chord.

The basic chords come from the keys of A G C and D. The chords themselves can be played at all positions on the fret board, but beginners start with open chords at the first position. This means that at least one note is played on an open string.

We group the basic keys into families:

The A family contains the chords A, D and E.

The D family contains the chords D, E minor, G and A.

The G family contains the chords G, A minor, C, D and E minor.

The C family contains the chords C, D minor, E minor, F and G.

Beginner Guitar Lessons Beginner guitar lessons consist of you getting to know your first guitar. This guitar will probably be a nylon string acoustic which will enable you to learn what it takes to get music out of an instrument without relying too much on electronic enhancements and without cutting your fingers up on steel strings. What style of guitar do you want to learn?

Electric Guitar Lessons Electric guitars are established in our universe. There are even classical pieces composed for electric guitar. This is a new kind of musical instrument. Not only is the sound amplified by electronics but the sound itself is MADE by electronics. Soooo . . . is playing electric guitar as easy as it looks?!

The Best Acoustic Guitar Tuner One common obstacle to learning to tune a guitar is a certain natural resistance to learning new things which is present in everybody to some degree. The prospect of learning to tune a guitar by ear can fill some people with a sense of dread.

Guitar Tuning Online This is probably the most important piece of knowledge that you can learn when it comes to tuning your guitar. The process of tuning your guitar to itself is one by which you tune each string to another string on the guitar. Basically, it means that you can tune the guitar without having to use a tuner or pitch tool.

Learning Classical Guitar Music Classical guitar music is seen by alot of people as being somehow inaccesible without years of study. But the term "clasical music" is very broad, and when put together with the guitar, it could refer as much to Latin music or The Beatles as to music from two hundred years ago! If you weren't seduced by the electric guitar during your childhood or teen years, what is it that attracts you to classical guitar music? Is it the delicacy of the Elizabethan dance music? The rich and vibrant sound of a great classical guitar?