Bass guitar: Guadeloupe musical instrument

The bass guitar is a stringed musical that is played mainly with fingers or thumb of the hand, by plucking, slapping, popping, tapping, picking or thumping.

source of picture: junk-records.com 

This musical instrument is analogous in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, but with longer neck and scale length. The musical instrument has four to six strings or courses. The four strings bass is often tuned the same as the double bass that correspond to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest pitched strings of a guitar. This bass guitar is a transposing musical instrument, as it is noted in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds to prevent excessive ledger lines. Like the electric version of the guitar, this instrument is plugged into an amplifier and speaker for live performances.

Since the 1960s, the bass guitar has largely substituted the double bass in the popular music as the bass musical instrument in the rhythm section. While the kinds of bass lines performed by the bassist differ widely from one style of music to another, the bassist fulfills an analogous function in most types of the melody; anchoring the harmonic framework and establishing the beat. The bass guitar is used in several styles of music including the rock, metal, pop, rock, country, reggae, gospel, blues and jazz. The musical instrument is used as a soloing musical instrument in jazz, fusion, Latin, funk and in some rock and metal patterns.

In the 1930s, musicians and inventor known as Paul Tutmarc from Seattle, Washington fabricated the first electric string bass in its modern design, a fretted musical instrument fashioned to be held and played horizontally. The 1935 sales catalog for Turmarc’s electronic musical instrument company, Audiovox, showed his Model 736 bass fiddle, which is a four stringed, solid-bodied, fretted electric bass musical instrument with a 30 and a half inch scale as the length. The alteration to a guitar form made it easier for the musical instrument to be held and transported and the addition of frets permitted the bassists to perform in tune more easily. About 100 of these musical instruments were manufactured during this period.

Around 1947, Turmarc’s son, Bud, started marketing an analogous bass under the Serenader brand name, popularly advertised in the nationally disseminated L.D. Heater Co. wholesale jobber catalogue of 48. Meanwhile, the Tutmark family inventions did not gain market success.

In the 1950s, Leo Fender, with the help of his employee George Fullerton built the first mass-produced electric bass. His fender precision bass that was introduced in 1951, became a widely copied industry standard. His bass advanced from a simple un-contoured slab body design analogous to that of a Telecaster with a single coil pickup, to a contoured body design with slanting edges for security and a single four-pole. This split pickup that was introduced in the year 1957 shows to have been two mandolin pickups. The pole pieces and the leads of the coils were upturned with respect to each other, manufacturing a humbucking effect.

The Fender bass was a revolutionary new musical instrument that could easily be transported to a gig and amplified any volume without feeding back.  Monk Montgomery was the first player of this musical instrumentto tour with the Fender bass guitar, with Lionel Hampton’s postwar big band. Roy Johnson and Shifty Henry with Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, were the other players of the musical instrument. Bill Black, performing with Elvis Presley adopted the Fender musical instrument in the year 1957. The bass guitar was meant to appeal to the guitarists and upright bass performers and many early pioneer of the musical instrument like Carol Kaye and Joe Osborn were formally guitarists.

Following Fender’s lead, Gibson released the first short scale violin-shaped electric bass with end pin that is extendable in the year 1953, permitting the instrument to be performed upright or horizontally. Gibson renamed the musical instrument in the year 1958 as the EB-1. In 1958, Gibson released the maple arched top EB-2 that was described in his catalogue as “A hollow-body electric bass that features a Bass/Baritone pushbutton for two different tonal characteristics”. In the year 1959, these were followed by the more conventional looking EB-0 Bass. This version of the musical instrument t was very analogous to a Gibson SG in look.

Meanwhile, Fender basses had pickups that are mounted in positions in between the base of the neck and the top of the bridge, many of Gibson’s early instruments featured one humbucking pickup attached directly against the neck pocket of the instrument. The EB-3 version of the instrument that was introduced in the year 1961 also had a mini-humbucker at the bridge position. Gibson basses seemed to be smaller and sleeker musical instruments; Gibson did not produce a 34 scale bass instrument until in 1963 with the release of the Thunderbird that was the first bass from Gibson to use dual-humbucking pickups in a more traditional position, about halfway between the neck of the instrument and the bridge of the instrument. A small number of other companies started producing bass guitars in the 1950s and Danelectro in the year 1956.

1956 saw the emergence of the German trade fair Musikmesse Frankfurt of the distinctive Hofner 5001/1 violin bass produced with the use of violin carving methods by Walter Hofner, a second generation violin player. The musical instrument is usually known as the Beatle Bass, because of its endorsement by Paul McCartney. In the year 1957, Rickenbacker introduced the model 4000 bass, this was the first bass to feature a neck-through-body shape; other Fender and Gibson versions of the instrument used bolt-on and glued-on necks.

With the explosion of the popularity of the rock music in the 1960s, many more producers started manufacturing electric basses. The first introduced Fender Jazz Bass in 1960, was known as the Deluxe Bass and was meant to accompany Jazz master guitar. The Jazz Bass featured two single-coil pickups, one closed to the bridge and the other in the precision bass split coil pickup spot. The earliest production basses had a loaded volume and tone control for each of the pickups. This was soon altered to the familiar configuration of a volume control for each pickup and a single passive tone control. The neck of the Jazz Bass was narrower at the nut than the precision bass.

Another seen difference that set the Jazz bass apart from the precision bass is the offset waist body. The shapes of the pickups on the electric basses are always referred to as a ‘P’ or ‘J’ pickups in reference to the visual and electric variations between the precision and the Jazz bass pickups.

Fender also started the manufacturing of the |Mustang Bass; a 30 scale length musical instrument that was used by bassists like as Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones. In the 1950s and the 1960s, the musical instruments were always called the Fender bass because of the early dominance of Fender in the market.

The 1970s saw the founding of the Music man musical instruments by Tom walker, Forrest White and Leo Fender that manufactured the StingRay, the first widely manufactured bass with active electronics. This adds up to an impedance shielding pre-amplifier on board the musical instrument to lower the output impedance of the instrument’s pickup circuit, increasing low-end output and the total frequency response. Exact models became identified with exclusive style of music like the Chris Squire and Geddy Lee or Rush, as the StingRay was being used by Louis Johnson of the Funk band The Brothers Johnson.

In 1971, Alembic launched the template for what became known as boutique electric bass guitars. These expensive custom-tailored musical instruments, as used by Phil Lesh, Jack Casady and Stanley Clarke, featured distinctive designs, premium hand-produced body from wood, onboard electronic for pre-amplification and equalization of the musical instrument and innovative construction methods like the multi-laminate neck-through-body carving and graphite necks. In the mid-1970s, Alembic and other boutique bass producers like Tobias, manufactured four-string basses and five-string basses with low ‘B’ string. In the year 1975, bassist known as Jackson Anthony commissioned luthier Carl Thompson to produce a six-stringed bass that can be tuned B0, E1, A1, D2, G2, C3.

In the 1980s, designers of the bass instrument continued to explore new ways. Ned Steinberger presented a headless bass in the year 1979 and went on with the innovation in the 1980s,with the use of graphite and other new materials and introducing the Transtrem tremolo bar. In the year 1987, the Guild Guitar Corporation introduced the fretless Ashbory bass that used silicon e rubber strings and a piezoelectric pickup to attain a double bass sound with a short 18 inches length scale length. In the later part of the 1980s, MTV’s unplugged show that featured bands playing with acoustic musical instruments helped to popularize hollow-bodied acoustic bass guitars that are amplified with pickups.

During the 1900s, as the five-string versions of the musical instrument became more widely available and more affordable, an increasing number of players in the genre ranging from metal to gospel music started using the five-stringed version of the musical instruments for added lower range. Also, onboard battery-powered electronics like the preamplifiers and equalizer circuits that were formally only available on expansive boutique musical instrument became increasingly available on modesty priced basses.

In the 2000s, some producers of bass included digital modeling circuits inside the musical instrument to recreate tones and sounds from many models of the instruments. Traditional bass fashions like the Fender precision bass and the Fender Jazz bas remained popular in the 2000s; in the year 2011, 60^th anniversary P-bass was brought up by Fender together with the re-introduction of the short-scale Fender Jaguar bass.

The bodies of the bass are typically produced of wood, but other materials like the graphite have also been used in the production. While a wide variety of woods are good for use in the body of the instrument as well as the neck and fret board of the bass instrument, the most generally used type of wood for the body of the instrument is alder, for the neck is maple and for the fret board is rosewood. Other commonly used woods include the mahogany, maple ash, walnut and poplar for bodies, mahogany for the neck of the instrument and maple and ebony for the fret board of the instrument.

 Other design options include finishes like the lacquer, oil and wax; flat and carved designs; luthier manufactured custom-fashioned musical instruments; headless basses that have tuning machines in the bridge of the musical instrument and many artificial materials like the luthite. The use of artificial materials permits for distinctive manufacturing mathods like the die-casting, to manufacture complex body shapes. While most basses have solid bodies, they can include hollow chambers also to increase the resonance or reduce the weight of the musical instrument. Some basses are constructed with entirely hollow bodies that alter the tone and resonance of the musical instrument. Acoustic bass guitars are typically equipped with the use of piezoelectric or magnetic pickups and amplified.

Handmade musical instruments by highly skilled luthiers are becoming increasingly available. Exotic materials include woods like bubinga, wenge, ovangkol, ebony and goncalo alves. Graphite composite is used to produce lightweight necks. Exotic woods are used to produce more expansive instruments; for example, Alembic uses cocobolo as a body or top layer material due to its attractive grain. Warwick bass guitars are well known for exotic hardwoods: most of the necks of the instruments are produced of ovangkol and the fingerboards wenge or ebony. Solid bubinga bodies are used for the tonal and beauty qualities.

A general feature of more expansive basses is neck-through construction. Rather than milling the body of the instrument from a single piece of wood and then fixing the neck into a pocket, neck-through bases are carved first by assembling the neck that may be made up of one, three, five or more layers of wood in vertical stripes that are longer than the length of the fret board. To this long neck, the body is fixed as two wings that may also consist of many layers. The whole bass is then pounded and shaped. Many players of the musical instrument believed that the neck-through construction provides better sustain and a mellower tone than the bolt-on neck construction. While the neck-through construction is common in handmade boutique basses, some model of mass-manufactured musical instruments, like the Ibanez’s BTB series also have neck-through construction. Bolt-on neck construction does not really mean a cheaply produced musical instrument, virtually all traditional Fen der designs still make use of bolt-on neck for musical instrument costing thousands of dollars, and many boutique luthiers will build bolt-on basses and neck-through.

The number of frets that are installed on a bass guitar neck may differ. The original Fender instruments had 20 frets and most bass instrument will have between 20 to 24 frets or fret positions. Musical instrument that has about 25 and 36 frets also exist.

Another design consideration for the bass instrument is whether to use frets on the fingerboard of the instrument. On a fretted bass instrument, the frets divide the fingerboard into semitone divisions. Fretless bass instruments have a unique sound, due to the absence of the fret means that the strings of the instrument must be pressed down directly onto the wood of the fingerboard as with the double bass instruments. The strings of the instrument buzzes against the wood and can be muted due to the sounding portion of the string is in direct contact with the flesh of the player’s finger. The fretless bass permits the player to use the expressive devices of glissando, vibrato and microtonal intonations like the guitar tones and just intonations.

While fretless bass instruments are always linked with the jazz fusion, bassist from other genres have always used the fretless bass instruments like the Freebo, Rick Danko, Rod Clements, Steve DiGiorgio, Colin Edwin. Some players of the bass instrument use both the fretless and fretted basses in performances, according to the kinds of materials they are playing.

The first fretless bass guitar was produced by Bill Wyman in 1961 when he converted an inexpensive Japanese fretted bass by removing the fret of the musical instrument. The first production fretless instrument was the Ampeg AUB-1 introduced in the year 1966, and Fender introduced a fretless precision bass in the year 1970. Around 1970, Rick Danko from the Band started using Ampeg fretless that he modified with the fender pickups.

The standard design for the electric bass instrument has four strings that are tuned E, A, D and G, in 4ths such that the open highest string, G, is an 11^th below middle, C, making the tuning of all the four string s of the musical instrument the same as that of the double bass instrument. This tuning is as well the same as the standard tunings on the lower strings on a six-stringed version of the instrument, only an octave lower. String kinds include all metal strings and metal strings with different coverings like tape wound and plastic-coatings. The types of materials used in the strings gives bass players a range of tonal options.

A variety of tuning options and number of string course have been used to extend the range of the musical instrument or to facilitate various modes of performing the instrument. The most commonly used are the four, five or six strings.

Like the electric guitar, the electric bass guitar is always connected to an amplifier and a speaker with a patch cord for live performances. The players use either a combo amplifier that combines an amplifier and a speaker in a single cabinet or an amplifier and a separate speaker cabinet. In some cases, when the bass instrument is used with large scale PA amplification, it is connected into a DI or direct box that routes the signal directly into a mixing console and thence to the primary and monitor speaker. Recording could use microphone setup in front of the amplifier speaker for the amplification signal, a direct box that feeds the recording console or a combination of both.

Different electronic bass effects like the preamplifiers, stomp box-style pedals and signals processors and the configuration of the amplifiers and speaker can be used to change the primary sound of the musical instrument. In the 1990s and the early parts of the 2000s, signal processors like the equalizers, overdrive devices and compressors or limiters became increasingly well known. Modulation effects, such as chorus, flanging, phase shifting, and time effects like delay and looping are less commonly used with the bass instrument than the electric guitar, but they are used in some pattern of music.

Most players of the musical instrument do this while standing, but sitting is also accepted, especially in large group settings like the jazz big bands or in acoustic genre like folk music. Some bassist like Jah Wobble, will replacing between seated playing and standing playing. It is a matter of the player’s performance as to the position that gives him great ease of playing and what a bandleader needs. While sitting, right-handed player of the instrument can balance the musical instrument on the right thigh or like classical guitar player, the left. Balancing the instrument on the left thigh always positions the instrument in a way that it can mimic the standing position, permitting for less difference between standing and seated playing of the instrument. Balancing the bass on the right thigh provides a better access to the neck of the instrument as well as the fret board in its entirety, particularly lower frets.

In distinction to the upright bass, the electric bass guitar is performed horizontally across the body, like an electric guitar. When the strings of the instrument are plucked with the fingers of the hand, the index and the middle fingers are used. The strings of the instrument can be plucked at any point between the bridge and the point where the fretting hand is holding down the string; different tone qualities are manufactured depending on where along the strings it is plucked. When the strings are plucked closer to the bridge, the string manufactures more pronounce harmonics, giving out a brighter tone. Closer to the middle of the string that harmonics are pronounced, producing a more mellow tone.

The plectrum is used to obtain a more accurate attack, for speed, or just personal preference. Although the use of a plectrum is mainly linked with the rock and punk rock, plectrums are also used in other styles of music. The plectrums can be used with alternating upstrokes and down-strokes, or with all down-strokes for a more steady attack. The plectrum is often held with the index finger and the thumb, with the up-and-down plucking motion supplied by the wrist. There are many types of plectrums available, but because of the thicker, heavier strings of the electric versions of this musical instrument, the players of the instrument seem to have heavier plectrums than those used for electric guitar, typically ranging from 1.14 mm to 3.00 mm. different materials can be used for the plectrums, including plastic, nylon and felt, all of which manufacture various tones. Felt plectrums are used to emulate a finger style tone.

Palm-muting is a widely used bass pattern. The outer edge of the palm of the picking hand is rested on the bridge of the instrument while picking, and mutes the strings, shortening the sustain time. The harder the palm presses or the more string area that is touched by the palm, the shorter the string’s sustain. The sustain of the plucked note can be differed for each note or phase. The shorter sustain of a muted note on an electric bass instrument can be used to emulate the shorter sustain and character of an upright bass. Palm muting is generally done while using a plectrum, but can also be done without a plectrum, as when doing down-strokes with the thumb of the hand.

The fretting hand; the left hand for the right-handed player of the instrument and the right hand for the left-handed player of the musical instrument; is used to press down the strings to perform various notes and shape the tone or tone quality of a plucked note. The main method used in the fretting hand is called ‘a finger per fret’, where each finger in the fretting hand performs one fret in a given position. Also, the double bass method can be used for the fretting. This pattern involves the use of four fingers in the space of three frets, particular;y in the lower positions. The primary advantage of the ‘four finger in three frets’ method is less tendon strain, in the lead to a reduced likelihood of Repetitive Strain injury. The fretting hand can be used to alter a sounded note, either by fully muting it after it has been plucked to shorten the duration or by partially muting it near the bridge of the instrument to trim the volume of the note, or to make the note die away faster. The fretting hand of the player is normally used to mute strings that are not being played and to stop the sympathetic vibration, especially when the player wants a dry or focused sound. On the other hand, the sympathetic resonance of harmonically related strings may be needed for some melodies like the ballads. In these cases, a player can fret harmonically related notes. The fretting hand can add vibrato to a plucked note, either a gentle or narrow vibrato or a more exaggerated, wide vibrato with the larger pitch variations. The fretting hand can also be used to sound notes either by plucking an open string of the instrument with the fretting hand, or in the case of a string that has already been plucked by hammering on a higher pitch or pulling off a finger of the hand to pluck a lower fretted or open string of the instrument.