Pfeiffer - Bass Guitar For Dummies

Bass Guitar For Dummies, 3rd Edition

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Chapter 1

In This Chapter

Differentiating between bass guitars and other guitars

Understanding the function and parts of the bass

Getting ready to play bass

Trying your hand at grooves, solos, fills, and different musical genres

Picking up gear and taking care of your bass

T he bass is the heart of music. Its unique qualities set up a gravitational field that draws you in perhaps it's the rich, deep, mellow sound or the hypnotic rhythms. In the right hands, the bass is a tremendously powerful tool, because it gives a band its feel and attitude. But what exactly is the bass? What makes the bass so powerful? And how does it contribute to giving music that irresistible feel? Whether you're a raw bass recruit or a seasoned veteran, this chapter helps you answer these questions.

Bass guitars differ from other guitars in several significant ways:

• Traditionally, basses have four strings, while guitars have six. In the 1970s, some bassists started adding strings. Nowadays, you can find five- and six-string basses (and beyond), but four-stringers are still considered the norm.
• Nearly all bass guitars are electric. Other guitars come in all flavors: electric, acoustic, or a combination of the two. You do encounter some beautiful acoustic bass guitars, but they're generally not loud enough to be of much use in a band (unless your band consists of just one or two acoustic guitar players who join you in your music-making endeavor).
• The bass strings are an equal distance musically from each other. The sound of each bass string is tuned an equal distance from the string above it, making the instrument perfectly symmetrical. So if you play a scale starting on one string, you can use the same fingering to play that same scale starting on a different string. This type of tuning makes playing the bass quite different from playing the guitar, where the second-highest string is tuned differently than the others.
• The bass has a lower pitch than the guitar. The deep notes of the bass fill the lower end of the sound spectrum. Think of these notes as the bass-ment, or foundation, of music.
• The bass's neck is longer than the guitar's, thus making its strings longer. The longer the string, the lower the pitch; the shorter the string, the higher the pitch. Think of a Chihuahua and a Saint Bernard, for example. The Chihuahua has short vocal chords, and a rather high-pitched bark; the Saint Bernard... well... you get the idea.
• The bass player and the guitarist serve different functions. I won't bore you with the guitarist's job description, but the bass player's makes for fascinating reading, as the next section shows. By the way, if you do happen to want to know more about the guitarist's job description, you can check out Guitar For Dummies, by Mark Phillips and Jon Chappell (Wiley).

As the bassist, you play the most crucial role in a band (at least in my opinion). Everyone in the group follows your subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) lead. If the guitarist or saxophonist makes a mistake, hardly anyone notices, but if the bassist makes a mistake, everyone in the band and the audience instantly knows that something is wrong (in which case you may want to throw an accusatory glance at one of your bandmates).

You're responsible for linking the harmony (chords) of a song with a distinctive rhythm (groove). This link contributes to the feel (mood) and genre (general style) of the music, which together determine whether a song is rock, jazz, Latin, or anything else. Chapter tells you exactly what you need to do to establish excellent grooves, and Part IV discusses the different musical genres you're likely to play. The goal is to be able to emulate any bassist's style in any genre and, at the same time, to be creative using your own rhythms, notes, and ideas!

Every song is made up of chords (harmony) that are particular to that song, and all the notes in the song relate to the sounds of those chords (see Chapter for more about chords). Some songs are based on only one chord, from beginning to end, and so all the notes relate to that one chord sound, making such songs easy to play. The chords of most songs, however, change as the song progresses. In these cases, the first group of notes in the tune relates to the first chord and has one kind of sound, the next group of notes relates to the next chord sound, and so on throughout the song.