User:TablaBassist/Bass Guitar

The Bass

Bass Guitar makes a Music Live. This is a very old statement. Bass Guitar is a stringed instrument, played with fingers or pluctrum. A person who plays Bass Guitar is a Bassist or Bass Player or Bass Guitarist. However, those musicians who played Bass instruments other than bass Guitar or double bass were also called bass players in olden days. During those days, Double Bass was used to make music live. Double bass is tuned with one octave lower than normal Guitars. Electric Guitar has been of wide use since last century, when the Rock n’ Roll era began.

The parts

The most important part of an electric bass guitar is the magnetic pick up with coils. Now a days there are onboard battery-powered electronics such as preamplifiers and equalizer circuits. Four string electric Bass Guitars and Accoustic Bass Guitars other than Double Bass are also tuned one octave lower to ordinery Guitar(E, A, D, G). Commonly used bass guitars are fretted (fitted with fret wires on the finger Board. Since fretless bass guitar gives natural acoustic tone, it is used in jazz and fusion music. Luthiers commonly use woods like alder, maple, rosewood, mahogany and maple to make Guitar.. String types include all-metal strings. Different types of strings used are roundwound, flatwound, groundwound, or halfwound. Different coating are also used in strings to get better tone. Though 4 string bass is commonly used, there are Bass Guitars with even 1 or 2 or 3 strings with a very different tuning. Of later, bassists started using 5 string Bass. During the end of 1980s five-string bass guitars became more popular. It provided an additional low range string with B (note) tuning. There are Bass players who use 6 to 7 to even to 12 string Bass Guitars.

Evolution

The evolotion of Bass playing strated around in the 1920’s. Double Bass is played with fingers by pulling the strings and relieving it. At times musicians used to do it with very high pressure and that facilitated the evolution of Percussive bass playing. Soon, bassists innovated percussive bass on Electric bass Guitar by slapping the strings with thump and popping the strings with index and middle fingers. But musicians from different parts of the world started innovating new methods on bass. Now different styles of slap bass are followed by bassists. Slap bass is commonly used in Funk Music. The conventional style of playing Bass is by plucking the strings with fingers. Still, many bassists use pluctrum to play bass in Rock Music and its different genres.

The Future

The instrument is having its own changes in its making and playing in the 21st century and it is happening so fast that different genres of music can be evolved in the coming years. Now a days, Bass Guitar is widely used to perform solo concerts. Bass sound makes a Music LIVE !