Bass

Great Bass Play­ers
to Check Out

-Tony Levin
-Flea
-Vic­tor Wooten
-Mar­cus Miller
-Larry Gra­ham
-John Pat­i­tucci
-Geddy Lee
-Paul McCart­ney
-Les Clay­pool

Bass Tool­box

-Metronome
-Musi­cal Dic­tio­nary
-Gui­tar & Bass Tuner
–Bass Worksheets

A lit­tle about the Bass…

• Tun­ing: Basses most com­monly come in 4 string mod­els but can also be pur­chased in 5 and 6 string ver­sions. 4 string basses are tuned E-A-D-G. 5-string basses are typ­i­cally tuned B-E-A-D-G to pro­vid­ing an extended lower range. 6-string basses are tuned B-E-A-D-G-C pro­vid­ing both an extended lower and upper range than it’s 4 string counterpart.

• Pick­ups: Most elec­tric bass gui­tars use mag­netic pick­ups. The vibra­tions of the instrument’s metal strings within the mag­netic field of the per­ma­nent mag­nets in mag­netic pick­ups pro­duce small vari­a­tions in the mag­netic flux thread­ing the coils of the pick­ups. This in turn pro­duces small elec­tri­cal volt­ages in the coils. These low level sig­nals are then ampli­fied and played through a speaker. Since the 1980s, basses are often avail­able with bat­tery pow­ered “active” elec­tron­ics that boost the sig­nal, pro­vide equal­iza­tion con­trols to boost or cut bass and tre­ble fre­quen­cies, or both.

• Ampli­fi­ca­tion: Like the elec­tric gui­tar, the elec­tric bass gui­tar is often con­nected to an ampli­fier and a speaker with a patch cord for live per­for­mances. Elec­tric bassists use either a “combo” ampli­fier, which com­bines an ampli­fier and a speaker in a sin­gle cab­i­net, or an ampli­fier and a sep­a­rate speaker cab­i­net (or cab­i­nets). In some cases when the bass is being used with large-scale PA ampli­fi­ca­tion, it is plugged into a “DI” or “direct box”, which routes their sig­nal directly into a mix­ing con­sole, and thence to the main and mon­i­tor speakers.

• Nota­tion: Bass music can be writ­ten in tra­di­tional nota­tion using the bass clef or can also be writ­ten using bass gui­tar tabs as in the exam­ple below.