Thus a funky bass line might be written like this: G---------5P-7h-5p------------------- D------------------------3b---------- A---0S\5-----------3S-5S----5S-5H--- E------------------------------------ A muted note (one that is not fingered cleanly and makes a percussive sound rather than a clear tone) is written by placing an x on a line instead of a number: G------------5--7-------------------- D------------------------------------ A---5--x--x--------5--x--5----------- E------------------------------------ When it is not obvious which left-hand (right-hand to lefties) finger should be used to to fret a particular note, this may be indicated by writing a number under the note, with 1=index finger, 2=middle finger, 3=ring finger, 4=pinkie finger, and rarely, 5-thumb: G---------5--7--5-------------------- D------------------------------------ A---0--5----------------------------- E------------------------------------ 1 1 3 Some people indicate time in tab by writing over each note a letter indicating the time value of the note: s=sixteenth note, e=eighth note, q=quarter note, h=half note, w=whole note. It is possible to add dots to this system as is done with normal notes though it is not common. In addition, vertical bars are usually used to indicate measure breaks. Tab noted this way might look like this: w q s s e q h q. e e e s s e h G-----|----5--7--5-------|-------------5--7--7-|---- D-----|------------------|-3--3--5--7----------|---- A---0-|-5-----------8--5-|---------------------|-5-- E-----|------------------|---------------------|---- The major advantage of tab as a notation system is that it clearly indicates how the music is to be fingered on which strings using which techniques. The major disadvantage is that time marking in tab is still rather primitive and will probably never be as flexible as standard notation due to the limitations of the ASCII character set. This is a distinct dissadvantage for the bass player. In printed sheet music, this problem is commonly addressed by writing tab and conventional music notation simultaneouly. This is inconvenient for ASCII representations, but some people are attempting to develop useful systems for it. None have become widely followed at this time, however. Other cited disadvantages include that not widely known among non-string players, and is believed by some to discourage improvisation and ear training. Most manufacturers put their addresses and numbers in their advertisements which appear in _Bass Player_ and in many guitar magazines as well. Check your local music store. Most manufactures have websites. Any search engine can help you find these. Harmony Central (along with many other websites) provides a section of links to bass equipment manufacturers. Bear in mind that list price is the manufacturer's suggested retail price. In actual practice, retail prices tend to be about 20% below list price, so equipment is need not be expensive as it seems. Competitive shopping can often turn up a lot of barga ins as well. In addition, used equipment tends to be cheaper than new, although when buying used things you will want to make sure that they're in serviceable condition (take along a friend who knows gear, if you have one).
A few sites that you can use to help spec gear are below: General Resources:The best site dedicated exclusively to bass instruction and music book is bassbooks.com. There are lots of books on introductry bass playing, and there aren't all that many differences between them. Most come in packages with a CD or tape. There is a six-book series written by Dan Dean called _Electric Bass_ (the last three books are also known as _The Studio Bassist_) which pre sents a comprehensive approach to learning the bass. There is a series of books by Chuck Rainey which also present a comprehensive bass playing method: the first book is an excellent introduction to the bass while the other books cover advanced topics in bass playing. Carole Kaye has also written a six-book serieson bass playing which many people recommend highly.
A good all-round introduction is Bass Guitar for Dummies by Patrick Pfeiffer.
Another good method for beginners is Hal Leonard's Bass Method, Book 1:
Bassist Chuck Rainey has a series of books devoted to the bass. This is the first one:
There is also a book called Electric Bass Guitar which is a compilation of old bass columns from Guitar Player
magazine (before Bass Player existed) which is definitive if a little eclectic.
Somewhat more advanced books which a lot of people find useful include Modern Electric Bass by Jaco Pastorius, which comes in a book/CD combo or as a DVD:
Rufus Reid's book remains a classic for Jazz players The standard student text for Upright classical players is Franz Simandl's New Method for Double Bass Harmonics:The style of playing popularised by Jaco Pastrious. Try:
Harmonics for Electric Bass by Adam Novick Jazz and Walking Bass:For walking bass Ed Friedland's books are highly recomended: Sight Reading:Dave Stewart's The Musician's Guide to Reading & Writing Music is a great introduction to
the fundamentals of reading and writing standard notation. It's
brief, pleasantly funny, and co vers all the bases. I (J.M.) highly reccomend it as a primer and a reference.
A simple method is Arnold Evan's Note Reading Studies for the Bass These are only a few of the many books on bass playing that are available for beginning and advanced bassists.Most music stores carry a selection of instruction books and you should be able to find something that will workwell for you without too much effort. Specific StylesFunk & SlapA good guide to the style of Motown bassist James Jamerson:
There are many books and videos on Slap, including the following: Standard notation for bass is written on the bass clef (a.k.a. the "F" clef). The notes on the page are actually written one octave higher than they sound. This is done to avoid using a large number of ledger lines (the short additional lines used to write note below or above a given cleff), the logic being that notes on a cleff are easier to read than notes on ledger lines. Below is a brief introduction to the fundamentals of standard notation. Please note that standard notion is difficult to rend er in ASCII, so you may have to use you imagination a bit to understand some of the illustration. If you're absolutely cluless about music notation but would like to learn, I heartily reccomend Dave Stewart's _The Musician's Guide to Reading & Writing Mu sic_ (San Francisco: GPI/Miller Freeman, 1993. ISBN 0-87930-273-9). The lines and spaces of the bass cleff are lettered. Here are the lines (including the first ledger line above and below the bass clef): --C-- --------------A------------ ------------F-------------- ----------D---------------- --------B------------------ ------G-------------------- --E-- And here are the spaces: ____________B______________ __________G________________ ________E__________________ ______C____________________ ____A______________________ F The lowest note on a 4-string bass, open E, would be written as: --------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
--------------------------
-------------------------- (lowest line of bass clef)
--O-- (first ledger line below the bass clef, E)
The open A string would look like this: __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ ___________0______________ (the first space of the bass clef, A) The open D string would look like this: -------------------------- -------------------------- -----------0-------------- (the middle line on the bass clef, D) -------------------------- -------------------------- The open G string would look like this: __________________________ ___________O______________ (the fourth space of the bass clef, G) __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ So now you understand how standard notation can show the pitch of a note, but I haven't yet touched on how it can show the duration of each note. This is done by dividing the staff vertically into measures (a.k.a. bars) representing a certain number o f beats (usually 4), and by the type of note placed on any given line in any particular measure. These notes are very difficult to render in ASCII, but here's a rundown of their names and values (in 4/4 time): Type of Note | Length | Maximum number that will fit into one bar ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Whole note = 4 beats = 1 Half note = 2 beats = 2 Quarter note = 1 beat = 4 Eighth note = 1/2 beat = 8 Sixteenth note = 1/4 beat = 16 Standard notation also defines different sorts of "rests" which are like notes except they tell you how long *not* to play. A given bar (in 4/4 time) can be made up of any combination of notes and rests so long as the total value of beats adds us to f our. So, for example, you could have a measure which specifies that you play a quarter note on beat one, two eight notes on beat two, and rest on beats three and four. All that I've said here merely scratches the surface. I hope that this basic familiarity with notation will encourage you to devote some of your practice time to learning how to read and write standard notation. It is a very valuable skill which can be very convenient to have. The short answer [J.M.]:Standard tuning for four-string basses is E' A' D G (that E being the third E below middle C, though it is written on the staff as the second E below middle C, since bass lines are transposed up one octave). Some players ocassionaly tune the E string down to D' for some songs, which is know as "drop D" tuning. Droping to D can be faciliatated with a Hipshot Bass Extender, which is a tuning key replacement for your low E tuning machine. The Hipshot features a lever which you can flick to drop your E st ring to a lower note and then you can easily flip it back up again to standard tuning. Most five string players tune their basses B' E' A' D G, which provides an extended low range. Some other players prefer to sting their fives high, E' A' D G C, in order to extend the high range. Six string basses (also known as "contrabass guitar s") allow both of these extensions: B' E' A' D G C. Conklin Guitars markets a seven-string bass, which is tuned like a six string with an additional high string, tuned to F. They also make a nine-sting (as a custom order). You don't want to know how it is tuned. The long answer:A. Pitch is measured in hertz (hz), which is the rate at which the string is vibrating back and forth (measured in cycles per second). The standard definition of pitch is that the A above middle C is exactly 440 hz. The open A string on a bass is three octaves below that A, and dropping one octave divides the frequency by 2. So the A below middle C is 220 hz, the A below that is 110 hz, and the open A string on the bass is 55 hz). You can get the pitches for the other two strings in either of two ways. The first is to use natural tuning, and the second is to use even-tempered tuning. Natural tuning is based on the fact that a major chord sounds most pure if the ratio of the frequencies of the three notes is exactly 4:5:6:8. Thus an A major chord starting on the 440 hz A would be tuned as follows: A 440 hz, C# 550 hz, E 660 hz, A 88 0hz. A bass is tuned in perfect fourths, and as you can see from the E-A example in the A major chord, the frequencies of two notes in a perfect fourth are always 6:8, or 3:4. Using this ratio, and knowing that the open A string on a bass is 55 hz, we can find the pitches of the other strings just by multiplying or dividing by 4/3, or 1.33333. The problem with natural tuning is that it is internally inconsistent, because it can produce several different "correct" pitches for a given note. For example, consider starting with the 440 hz A, and trying to find the pitch of the A one oc tave above it. One way to do that is to say "octaves are in the ratio 4:8" and conclude that the A one octave above is 880 hz. However, an equally valid way is to reason as follows. The C# that is above the A is in the ratio 5:4 with that A, so its pitch must be 550 hz. Starting on that C#, we can build a C# major chord, which will have F as its third. The ratio of C# to F mus t also be 5:4, so that F must have a pitch of 550 * (5/4) = 687.5 hz. Now, starting on that F, we can build an F major chord with A as the third. The pitch of that A must be 687.5 * (5/4) = 859 hz, which is rather different from 880 hz. If you tuned an in strument to F=687, A=880, and played an F major chord on it, it would sounds very out of tune. The solution, which was popularized by JS Bach, is to slightly fudge the "natural" tuning of each note to average out the errors so that, while each chord will be a little off, no one chord will be very wrong and you can play in any key you like. Bach's piece, "The Well Tempered Clavier", which modulates through all 12 keys, was written to demonstrate the power of even-tempered tuning. The formula for even tempering is based on the number of half-steps between two notes. The ratio of pitch between two notes that are N half-steps apart is given by 2^(N/12) This formula was chosen because it makes the octave work out perfectly; an octave is 12 half steps so the ratio of two notes an octave apart is just 2 ^ (12/12) or 2^1, or 2. The advantange of this formula is that it gives the same answer for the pitch of a note, regardless of what intervals are used to calculate it. In the above example, the ratio between A and A an octave higher is 2^(12/12) or 2. The ratio of a major third is 2^(4/12) or 1.260. Starting with A 440, and going up by major thirds, we get C# = 554, F = 698, A = 880, because 1.26^3 = [2^(4/12)]^3 = 2^(12/12) = 2. For a perfect fourth, which is 5 half-steps, the formula gives a ratio of 2^(5/12) or 1.33484. Note that this is just slightly bigger than the ratio of 1.33333 given by the natural tuning, so it doesn't make a whole lot of difference which one you use in practice. Now, to answer the question :) The pitch of an A string is 55hz, and the other pitches depend on whether you use even-tempered tuning or natural tuning. The two cases are, for a six-string bass: B E A D G C Natural 30.938 41.250 55.000 73.333 97.777 130.369 Even-tempered 30.868 41.203 55.000 73.416 97.999 130.812 Other tunings are rare but not unknown. Most common is to tune the E string down to D, giving the tuning D-A-D-G. Another common tuning is to tune all strings one half-step flat: Eb, Ag, Db, Gb (or D#, G#, C#, F# if you like to think of it that way.) This reduces the tension on the strings, making string bending easier. Most groups that use this tuning, notably Van Halen, actually tune down so the guitarist can have the benefits of lower tension: the bass player just tunes down to match. However, it can be convenient to have lower string tension on bass as well. Also, being tuned to E flat instead of E can make things easier if you are playing with a horn section, since horn music is often written in such keys as E flat and B flat. Other artists use even weirder tunings, often setting the string intervals to fifths, major thirds, tritones, or even unisons. Michael Manring is probably the most notable artist who does this. It should be noted that this isn't all that good a thing for the bass, because the strings are designed so that all four strings will have the same tension in normal tuning, and thus apply the same pressure to the neck. If you change the tuning, so that some strings apply more pressure to the neck than others, the neck can warp in very odd ways that are not easy to fix. Michael solves this problem by using a bass with a graphite neck, and if you can afford to do this, you don't need to worry about the neck warping (for any reason). But if you have a wooden-necked bass, you might want to put the bass back into normal tuning after you experiment with other tunings. 5 and 6 string basses have extra strings either above or below the normal 4 strings. On 5 string basses, the extra string is either tuned to B below the low E or to C above the high G. Rock and pop players tend to find the low B more useful, while jazz players and chord players tend to find the high C more useful. 6 string basses usually add both a low B and a high C although a few players add a high C and a high F above that. In the 60's a few makers (notably Danelectro and Fender) made basses that had 6 strings and were meant to be tuned E-A-D-G-B-E, same as a guitar but one octave lower. This idea never really caught on, and almost no one tunes a bass this way anymore. The advantage to the extra strings are that you can reach more notes in a given position, and can get some notes you could not otherwise play. The disadvantages are that the neck must be wider to accomodate the extra strings, the bass is heavier and the string sets are more expensive. Eight string basses are constructed similarly to 12 string guitars; the strings come in pairs, each pair containing a string tuned normally and another string tuned one octave higher. Both strings are plucked or picked simultaneously Most 12-string basses have the strings in triplets, one at the normal pitch and two tuned one octave higher, to get a fuller sound on the top note. There are also some 12 string basses which have 6 pairs of strings instead of four triplets and a 10 string bass which is similar to an 8-string one. There have even been a few 18 string basses constructed which had strings in triplets but these were built more to demonstrate the strength of graphite necks than for actual use. The advantage of 8 and 12 string basses is that because several strings are played simultaneously they have a richer, fuller sound that a regular bass. The disadvantages are that playing becomes much more difficult because both strings have to be fingered and plucked. In addition, strings for 8 and 12 string basses can be somewhat difficult to buy as very few companies make them and not many people buy them. Many manufacturers of such basses either sell strings directly or can tell you who supplies strings for their basses. If you are willing to order strings by mail this will usually get you what you need. Some Jazz players such as Red Mitchell used a 5ths (or violin) tuning on bass. Electric bass players who prefer 4 strings but seek the extended range of a 6 string bass sometimes tune in 5ths too. Sascha Erni suggest these guages for a fretless bass with cello tuning: C' .085" G' .065" D .045" A .025"
Bass amplifiers, whether they are combo amps or stage rigs, contain three components: the preamplifer, power amplifier, and the speakers. The signal from your bass passes to the speakers in three stages, with an amplifier between each of the stages. The signal from your bass is carried at instrument level; floor pedals, which your bass plugs into directly, operate on the signal at this level. The instrument level signal is amplified to line level by the preamp. The line level signal is passed to rackmounted effects. Because the line level signal is more powerful than the instrument level one, rackmounts effects add less noise relative to the level of the signal than floor effects do, which is why professionals prefer them. Most preamps sold commercially also include a number of line level effects, though not all do. After the line level signal is processed it is passed to one or more power amplifiers. Most rigs use only one power amp but if you are biamping you would use two. The line level signal can also be sent to the PA system if your band uses one. The power amp amplifies the signal to the the much higher levels that are used to drive the speakers. The power power rating of a guitar or bass amp refers to the total wattage that is sent to the speakers by the power amplifier stage of the amp. You can buy a combination amp (a.k.a a "combo" amp) that contains a preamp, a power amp, and a speaker all in one box, or you can buy a separate preamp, power amp, and speaker cabinet (or "cab"). The former option provides portability and convenience. The latter option is generaly more expensive but provides more flexibility, alowing you to mix and match your components to a particular need (For instance, if you have two cabinets, say a 1x15 and a 2x10, you may take both cabs to large gigs and just one of them to smaller gigs). Many combination amps have a preamp-out jack, which allows you want to send the preamp stage's output somewhere other than the power amp. There are several reasons for doing that:
Some combination amps, though not all, also have a power amplifier in jack which allows you to send a signal from a separate preamp to the power amplifier directly. Most combination amps also have a power-amp out jack which allows you to send the power signal to an external speaker, either in tandem with the internal speaker or instead of it. Combination amps that have all three features are almost as flexible as separate stage rigs. Biamping refers to using separate power amplifiers to amplify different frequency ranges. (See question 10 for a discussion of power amplifiers.) In particular, it allows you to use one power amplifier to amplify your high freqencies and another to amplify your low frequencies. In most bass amplifier rigs, the preamp signal is sent to one power amp and the output from that amplifier is sent to the speaker cabinets, where it may be divided among the various speakers by a crossover in the cabinet; high signals to small speakers and horns, low signals to larger speakers. A crossover is a filter which separates a signal into high-frequency and low-frequency components: it may have a knob which allows the bassist to control the dividing point. With biamping, instead of splitting the power amplifier's signal, you split the preamplifier's signal and send each half to different power amplifiers. Then, each power amplifier drives its own speaker load; again, usually small speakers or horns for the high frequencies and large speakers for the lows. Also, the crossover used in biamping is usually active (ie it requires a power supply) whereas those found in speaker cabinets are usually passive. Biamping has several advantages:
For more information on the engineering side of biamping, an excellent book is Martin Colloms, _High Performance Loudspeakers_, 3rd. edition, pages 188-191 on biamping. The third item above is important because it takes more power to reproduce low-frequency sounds than high ones. A typical biamp setup might be to send to highs to a 4x10 cabinet and the lows to a 1x15, 1x18, or other large subwoofer. If you send your high end through the subwoofer, your tone will probably suffer and become muddy, whereas if you send your lows through the 10s they will not provide as much thump as the subwoofer will. By biamping, you can send the lows through the subwoofer and still get clarity and tone from the 10s without forcing the 10s to spend most of their energy driving very low frequencies. To get a good sound from biamping requires some fairly close matching between the crossover, the amplifiers, and the cabinets used. Done poorly, biamping can sound worse than using a single amplifier and cabinet. If you biamp, it is better to get a system designed explicitly for biamping than to assemble components one by one. The strings can stay if they are reasonably new. You don't even need to remove them.
Step one:Tune the bass. Check if the relief (the concave curve of the neck) is set right. Hold down the G string at the 1st and 16th frets. How much clearance (if any) is there between the 8th fret and the string? On a good neck there should be about 0,75mm gap. If there is less then you should increase the concave curve on the neck by adjusting the truss rod, if more, then decrease the concave curve by an adjustment in the other direction. See how to do this in step too, but important: If no adjustment is indicated then skip step two: if it aint broken don't fix it. Step two:Now you are going to adjust the truss rod. Be gentle! You will probably need only a between a quarter and half
turn in one direction to fix things - if this doesn't do the job either you are doing something wrong or the truss
rod is broken. Write down each 1/4 turn adjustment of the rod so if all else fails you can restore the original
postion. Write C for a 1/4 clockwise and A for 1/4 anti-clockwise. Step Three.Now your neck has the correct relief you can adjust the action. Plug the bass into a tuner so that you can always
adjust the strings tension after you adjust the bridge saddles. Step Four.Check over the intonation. This is best done with clean newish strings. Tune the strings. Fret a string at 12 and check it is also in tune. If it is flat at 12 screw the bridge saddle foward a half turn, tune and recheck. If you have to move a saddle significantly you may need to readjust the action as in step 3. Check out also article in issue #153 of the Bottom Line. It is long but very good. It can be obtained from the Bottom Line archives by anonymous FTP; the address is freedom.wit.com and the back Bottom Line issues are in the /music/lists/bass directory. You might want to check Rob Hunter's site for more detailed information. The short answer [J.M.]There are basically three types of strings currently in use on electric basses: Roundwounds, which were invented in the 1960s, are generally the most popular because they offer a bright sound with a lot of high end (sometimes described as "piano-like"). Flats give a mellower sound prefered by many blues and some jazz players. Fl ats are also easier on your fretboard and frets (which is an issue especially of relevance to fretless players). Groundwounds and/or half-wounds are hybrid strings which try to capture some of the brightness of roundwounds while being easier on the frets and fingerboard. Strings come in two scale lengths. The scale length is the distance from the the bridge of your bass to the nut. You will find strings in long scale and short scale. Longscale is for basses with a 32" or longer scale lenght. Short scale strings are for basses with shorter scale lenghts (short scale basses generally have a scale lenght around 30"). Most electric basses have a 34" scale lenght, though 35" is becoming a popular lenght for five and six string basses since the extra lenght adds clarity in the lower register. Strings also come in various gages, from extra-light to heavy. When it comes to string gage, you often trade tone for playability and vice versa. Thicker strings tend to sound better (to most people) and last longer. But playing strings too heavy fo r your technique can be painfull and counter productive. Experiment a bit and you'll find the set that works best for you. The Long AnswerThere are basically three factors that affect string sound and playability. The first is whether the strings are flatwound or roundwound, the second is the gauge of the strings, and the third is the metal the strings are made from. Almost all bass strings are made of a central string which is wrapped in a second layer to make the string thicker. The central string is called the core of the string. These are usually round, although some hexagonal core strings exist. The wrapping comes in two kinds; some strings are wrapped with flat ribbon and some are wrapped with a round piece of wire. The first kind, called flatwounds, have a dark sound and are fairly smooth, which makes them easy on the fingers and the fretboard. The second kind, called roundwounds, have a much brighter sound, but tend to wear down your frets or fretboard and chew up your fingers. Most people prefer roundwound strings for their brighter sound. Flatwounds are mostly used for fretless basses, for which the damage caused by round- wounds is especially problematic. There are also two kinds of compromise strings, called groundrounds and half-flatwounds. Both of these kinds of strings are flat on one side and round on the other: this can be achieved by taking a roundwound string and grinding it flat, by applying pressure to the string to flatten it, or by wrapping with wire which is alternately round and flat, so that one side of the string is flat and the other is round. These types of strings are not easy to find but some players do use them. The second question is the gauge of the string. The gauge is measured by the thickness of the string in inches. A typical set of light gauge strings might have thicknesses of about 0.040, 0.060, 0.075, 0.090 for the G, D, A, and E strings. A medium gauge might be about 0.050, 0.070, 0.085, 0.105. Heavy gauge strings are extremely difficult to find now, for some obscure reason. Most companies make three gauges of strings: light, medium-light, and medium. Some companies will sell you individual strings, which lets you mix and match your strings to get a unique combination of gauges, but not too many people do this. Lighter gauge strings tend to have a brighter but thinner sound. Heavier strings have a more solid sound to them. A major advantage to light gauge strings is that they require less tension to produce a given pitch, so that they require less force to fret, pluck, and bend, whereas heavier gauge strings call for a little more finger strength. The third factor is the metal used to make the strings. Almost all strings are made of either stainless steel or nickel. Stainless steel has a brighter sound at the expense of being a little harder on the fingers. The difference is not very great, however. You can also get strings which are plated with chrome or gold, or various black metals. These are more for effect than because the plating does anything to the tone. Acoustic strings can also be made of nylon or gut as well as metal. Gut strings are quite expensive but sound very nice. You can also get strings made of silicon and other exotic materials for unusual basses, but non-metal strings will not work with magentic pickups so most people don't use them. There are a few other factors to consider when buying strings. Many strings come with a silk wrap around the end of the string which helps to keep the wrapping on the string from coming unwound. Cheaper strings don't have this winding. However, if the string is made with a hex core (as opposed to a round core) then the wrapping is much less likely to come unwound (it grips a hex core better) and in that case, the silk wrapping is not as important. Another important thing to remember is that the strings have to go on your bass! Most basses require single-ball strings, with the ball end going at the bridge and the non-ball end being wrapped around the tuning peg. However, Steinburgers and most other headless basses require double-ball strings, one ball going behind the nut and the other behind the bridge. And, to keep things confusing, some headless basses, notably Kubickis, use single-ball strings by putting the ball end at the end of the next andtaking the non-ball end onto a post on the body of the bass. You cannot use single-ball strings on a double-ball bass and vice-versa, so make sure you know what you need before you buy. You also need to buy strings of the appropriate scale. The scale length of a bass is the distance from the bridge to the nut, ie the length over which the string vibrates. Most basses are "long scale" or 34-inch scale length. A few basses, notably old Gibsons, are "short-scale" or 30-inch scale length. Modulus Graphite basses are all built to a 35-inch scale length, as are a few other basses (in fact, 35" scale-length is becoming increasingly popular for five and six string basses). There is also a "medium-scale" or 32-inch scale length, and some acoustic bass guitars are built to this scale. When you buy strings, they need to be the same length as the bass they're going on, so make sure you know the scale of your bass, and buy the appropriate strings for it. Also worth noting is the fact that there are only three major American manufacturers of strings, and a few more European ones. Although there are many brands of strings, a lot of those brands buy their strings from one of the main manufacturers and repackage them under their own name. Thus, there is less variety in strings than the number of brands available might suggest. Obviously the advertising does't affect the sound, so shop intelligently when you go looking for strings. A bass pickup works by detecting the changes made by the moving string in the magnetic field of the pickup. A normal bass pickup consists of one or more magnets wrapped in coils of thin wire. The vibration of the metal strings changes the magnetic field of the pickup, and the changing magnetic field produces a voltage across the two ends of the wire wrap. This voltage can be detected and amplified by a bass amp, and then converted back to sound by a speaker. This signal needs to be amplified in order to be audible. Passive pickups do not amplify the signal at all: they require the bass amp to do all of the amplification. Active pickups contain a small amplifier inside the pickup housing. This amp boosts the pickups signal to a higher level which is then sent down the instrument cable into the amplifier. (Good amplifiers have two input jacks, one for active basses and one for passive basses, to reflect this difference.) You can also get basses which have onboard preamps which take the pickup signal and pass into into an amplifier which is on the bass but not part of the pickup. These onboard preamps can also contain tone controls and other electronics; a few expensive active pickups also contain tone controls inside the pickup housing. You can make the pickup stronger or "hotter" by doing any of three things: using a stronger magnet, wrapping it in more windings of wire, or raising it closer to the strings. Using a stronger magnet causes the magnetic field to be stronger, raising the pickup puts it into a stronger area of the magnetic field, and using more wrappings of wire causes the moving string to induce a greater voltage difference within a given magnetic field. Any of these lets the string create a larger voltage differential across the pickup, resulting in a louder signal. However, they can also have an effect on the tone of the bass which you may or may not like. Also, if you set the pickup too high the string can actually hit the pickup casing when slapped or plucked hard, and this is usually not good. There is no optimal height for the pickups: you can put them anywhere you like as long as you are getting sufficient signal strength and you're happy with the tone of the bass. You can also balance your pickups by setting them at different distances from the different strings, which is useful if one string tends to be louder or quieter than the others. Most basses have bridges which let you adjust the string height, but this affects the action of the string as well as the distance from string to pickup. Some pickups allow you to adjust the height of the individual magnets so that you can set the strings at different distances from the magnets while keeping the action the same on all strings. Pickups come in two kinds: single-coil and double coil. Double-coil pickups pass the signal through two sets of magnets and wire coils (hence the name) whereas single-coil pickups use a single set of magnets. The advantage of most double-coil pickups is that the coils are wired backwards, and the magnets are out of phase with one another. Since the magnets are inverted in the two coils, they pick up the string signal out of phase, but they pick up any noise and hum in phase. Because the coils are wired backwards, the signal from one of the coils is effectively inverted before the two signals are added back together: this puts the string signals back into phase but effectively cancels out any noise that the pickup received. These pickups are sometimes known as "humbuckers" for this reason. Not all double-coil pickups are humbuckers, however: you only get the hum cancelling effect if the two coils are out of phase _and_ the magnets are out of phase. In some double-coil pickups the two coils are in phase, not out of phase, so these pickups do not cancel hum in the way that humbuckers do. Another side effect of having two coils in one pickup is that the two coils do not pick up exactly the same signal from the string, since they are not located in exactly the same place on the bass. As a result, when the signals are added back together, some of the high frequencies of the signal are cancelled out along with the noise and hum. This gives the pickup a particular sound associated with humbucking pickups that some people find unattractive, but others find desirable. Some double-coil pickups do not place each coil under all four of the strings. These pickups are sometimes called "split coil" and the most common configuration is to have one coil under the E and A strings and the other under the D and G strings. The pickup on a Precision bass is of this type. This pickup design doesn't cancel hum quite as effectively as a regular double-coil, since the coils are farther apart, but it also doesn't cause cancellation of the high frequncies of the string signal since the signal from each string is only picked up by one coil, not both. Single coil pickups, split coil pickups, and humbuckers all have somewhat different characteristic sounds, though, so all three kinds of pickups are fairly widely used regardless of their noise levels. A bass with two single coil pickups or in-phase double-coil pickups can also cancel hum if the if the two pickups are of opposite phase and are set at equal volume: in this case each single-coil pickup acts exactly like one coil of a double- coil pickup. Since the pickups are farther apart than the two coils of a single pickup would be, the high frequency cancellation is somewhat different, less pronounced but affected more frequencies.Most Fender Jazz basses are built with two single coil pickups that are out of phase and can therefore be used to cancel hum this way. Some basses have "phase switches" which let you change the phase of a pickup's wiring, so that you can get the "out of phase" sound with the hum cancellation, or you can get the in phase sound but also get some noise, as you choose. Some double-coil pickups also have a switch called a "pickup tap"; this lets you pass the signal through only one of the two coils, thus converting a double-coil pickup to a single-coil. And some pickups, both single and double coil, have a switch called a "coil tap" which takes the signal out of the pickup after passing through only some (usually about half) of the wire wrap. Since the sound of the pickup is affected by the number of turns of wire in each coil, having a coil tap lets you get two different sounds from one pickup. Some expensive basses also have non-magnetic pickups call piezo pickups or piezoelectric pickups. These do not contain magnets: instead, they work by having a small crystal in the bridge of the bass. When the string vibrates against the crystal, this vibration produces an electric signal through the crystal, which is sent out to the amplifier. Basses that use non-metal strings are built with piezo pickups, and some basses use piezo pickups in addition to magnetic pickups in order to get more variation in tone. However, piezo pickups have a much much higher impedance than magnetic pickups do, and piezo pickups require special onboard preamps or other amplification tricks in order to sound good. This is a fairly difficult thing to do because most recording equipment is designed to work best with frequencies higher than those delivered by bass. However, with the right equipment it is not hard to achieve a nearly professional quality recording of your playing. The simplest thing to do is to get a tape recorder with a microphone input and plug your bass into it directly, or send it your preamp signal. This will only allow you to record on one track, but it's very easy to do and most people have the necessary equipment at hand. You can also record using a microphone placed in front of your amplifier, but you will tend to introduce extraneous noise and unless you are in a recording studio you are better off using a direct input. If you want to record multiple instruments, or multiple tracks of a single instrument, you will need to obtain access to a multi-track recorder. You can buy four-track recorders at most large music stores, and professional studios have 16, 24, or 32 track recorders. Once you have access to a recorder, the main decision you have to make is whether to send your bass signal to the recorder directly, to pass the signal through a preamp, or to send the signal to speakers and use a microphone to record the sounds from the speakers. If you go direct, you will need to convert your signal into a form that the recorder can take as an input. This can be done using a tool called a direct box, which most studios have, which will convert it to a balanced, low-impedance signal of the form that most recorders expect, but leave it otherwise unaffected. Or, you can use your own preamp to raise the signal to line level plus doing whatever effects processing you like. Your preamp may have a balanced output, or if not, you can run the line level signal into most direct boxes as well. However, if you are in a studio the engineer may have access to line-level effects like equalization and reverb which are better than those found in floor effects or preamps. If you can get the engineer's attention for 15 or 20 minutes consider using the studio's quipment instead as you can get better performance from studio equipment in many cases. The drawback to so doing is that it takes time, plus you have to explain to the engineer how you want the sound to be whereas your preamp is under your own control. Another common problem is providing a constant signal from the bass. In particular, if you do a lot of slapping and popping, or you like to play chords on your bass, you might have a hard time recording a clean track without a compressor. A compressor will quiet down the louder notes you play and boost the quiet ones to produce a constant volume in the recording. If you don't have access to a compressor, you can try to simulate this by adjusting the recording volume as you play the track (or having a friend do it) You can also increase the volume of a bass solo the same way: turn the recording volume up for the solo, then turn it back down when the solo is over. You might also want to use noise reduction to eliminate signal noise, either from your bass and amplifier, or from a compressor if you use one. If your recorder has dbx then you don't have to be so critical of the signal level because dbx noise reduction gives you about 90db of dynamic headroom and almost no tape hiss. You will find that some of the notes you play on the instrument are louder than others. This is called the "sweet spot". Most instruments have them, though graphite necks can reduce or eliminate them. Your recorder should have a VU needle or other indicator that will tell you how much volume is being recorded. Adjust your level so that the VU needle does not spend too much time in the red zone of the indicator: this is an indication that you are playing loudly enough to damage the recorder. These emulators are inserted after the preamp (some emulators will function as preamps too - details vary between products). Emulators with XLRs and parallel outputs to connect to your bass rig can make good DI boxes for live use. The are some direct boxes available which allow valve amps without separate preamp output facilities to be recorded direct (i.e. older amps). Valve amps normally require speakers to be connected to function correctly, and so the direct boxes tend to be either a box that sits between power amp and speaker, and take a speaker level output (most typical) or form a dummy load for the amp. For boxes of this sort the DI signal also includes power amp emulation, as the signal is actually an attenuated power amp output. There are sevenn main effects for bass, plus some others that aren't as widely used. They are: compression, distortion, wah/auto-wah, delay, reverb, and pitch shifting (octivider), chorus/flange. Most of these effects come in both analog versions and digital versions. Analog effects act upon the incoming signal directly, modifying it to produce the output. Digital effects convert the incoming signal to a pattern of zeroes and ones (hence the name digital). The resulting code is processed and the new code is converted back to a signal. Digital effects are typically cleaner and have fewer side effects than analog ones do. They are also considerably more flexible as patterns of numbers are easier to manipulate than electric signals are. However, analog effects are usually cheaper, and to exactly replicate the sound of players from the 70's and earlier who used analog electronics, you have to use analog effects yourself. (Digital effects weren't in common use until the late 70's, and weren't commercially available until the early 80's.) However, either one is fine for use with bass. They will sound a little different, so try both kinds and choose the one you prefer. Effects come in two kinds, those designed to work with instrument level signals and those designed to work with line level signals. Floor boxes are almost always designed for instrument level, and rackmount effects for line level. However, check and make sure you know which you have. It is possible to damage your effects, especially floor effects, by running the wrong level signal through them. There isn't all that much difference between guitar effects and bass effects and you won't damage anything by running a guitar through a bass effect or vice versa. However, bass effects are designed to work better on lower frequencies than guitar effects are, so you will usually get a better sound by using an effect designed specifically for bass. Most effects devices have several names. Where there aren't too many the following paragraphs try to give them all, along with the reasons for using one rather than another. However, if you are in doubt, ask the salesman what an effect does and you should usually be able to recognize it as one of those described below. Compression is an effect that keeps the signal strength of your instrument constant. It can work in one of two ways: it can reduce loud signals, or it can amplify quiet ones. Compressors usually have both functions; effects that only quiet loud signals are called limiters and effects that only amplify quiet ones are called sustainers. Compression has two purposes. First, it keeps your volume level constant. This is used in recordings where constant volume is desirable, and it protects amplifiers and speakers from having an excessively high signal sent to them that could burn them out. (Most amplifiers have limiters built in, which is why they don't get louder beyond a certain point when you increase the volume control.) Second, they increase the sustain of your instrument; as the string vibration begins to die down, making the signal quieter, the compressor raises the quiet signal, making it sound as it the string is continuing to vibrate. The drawback to compressors is that they eliminate sharp changes in the level of your sounds. This tends to destroy slapping, popping, and other percussive sounds, and it also alters the individuality of your sound by changing the attack and the muting of your fingers. Most compressors have three knobs: one which controls how quickly the compressor will react to changes in the incoming signal (usually labeled attack), one controlling how much the compressor will boost the signal (sustain or compression) and one controlling the level the compressor will try to attain (level). Manufacturers tend to adopt their own methods of labeling knobs on effects boxes; your mileage may vary. Distortion causes your sound to become more "crunchy" or "grungy". What it does is to clip the high peaks off your signal, which makes the wave more like a square wave (which has the characteristic buzzing sound of distortion) and emphasizes the higher frequency harmonics of the signal. In the old days, distortion came from driving an amplifier close to its limit, thus trimming off the high peaks naturally, and you can still obtain distortion this way. Tube amplifiers clip more gradually and more gently than transistor amps do: this causes the resultant distortion to sound different. Most people prefer tube distortion to transistor distortion, though not all do. You can drive either the pre-amp or the power-amp to its limit with most amps: you will usually get better distortion by overloading the power amplifier, but try it both ways and see what you get. Be careful not to blow out your amplifier this way, however; turn it up high enough to get distortion but no higher. If your amp has a limiter, you may not be able to do this at all. (Players also used to get distortion by playing with speakers which had rips in the cones. It is not recommended that you try this.) Distortion pedals clip your signal in a more artificial way but produce a similar tone. They usually have three knobs, one which controls the mix between noise and instrument signal, one which controls the tone of the distorted signal, and one which controls the output level. (Names of knobs varies too widely to permit suggestions.) Delay effects take the incoming signal and send it out repeatedly, with intervals ranging from microseconds to 30 seconds or more. They can be used to add fullness to your sound, to produce doubled parts without having to hit each note twice, or, with long delays, enable you to accompany yourself by playing a 30-second part through a 30-second delay and then playing a second part over it! Delay boxes usually have three knobs: one controls the time between repeats (delay), one controlling the falloff in volume between repeats (level), and one controlling the number of repeats given (repeats). Reverb effects are similar to delay effects, but mix in a very large number of very quick, quiet repeats. They simulate the effect of playing in a small room, where the sounds from the instrument reflects off the walls, creating a large number of rapid echoes. They usually have the same three controls as a delay box, which work about the same way in principle but will have quite different effects on the sounds. Pitch shifting involves sampling and transposing the pitch of the incomming signal. For bass this is usually done so that the resulting signal is an octave lower than the input hence the common name for it: octivider. When mixed with the dry signal the octivider sound gives the bass an extra sub-bass punch or allows the player to create synconised lead and bass sounds playing. Wah and auto-wah effects sweep filter the incoming signal to create a slightly vocalised sound. This effect was very popular in 70s funk/fusion bands like Return to Forever and Herbie Hancock's Headhunters. Chorus and flange effects both simulate the sound of having multiple instruments playing at once. Consider two basses playing the same part. They will not be perfectly together; they will be very slightly out of tune and the players will hit the notes at slightly different times. A chorus pedal simulates this effect by taking an input signal and duplicating it, with the duplicate signal slightly delayed and slightly out of phase with the original. In addition, the amount of delay and phase shift varies over time. This is designed to simulate the second player being slightly off from the first one. The difference betwwen chorus and flange is one of degree only; chorus pedals use small delays and phase shifts to produce a very subtle effect. Flangers use even smaller delays but vary the length of the delay and the phase changes to produce a more noticeable effect. If you turn on a flanger and don't play anything, you will hear a characteristic "whoosh" sound which is the result of certain frequencies being cancelled in the two signals before being sent to the amplifier. Choruses and flangers usually have three knobs; one to control the extent of shift produced by the effect (depth), one to control the rate at which the shift changes (speed) and one to control how much of the second signal is mixed together with the first (level or intensity). Cheap choruses will omit the latter knob. Some choruses will have a fourth knob which controls the overall signal from the effect as well. Many effects boxes, most commonly choruses and delays, contain a stero split which allows you to send the original or "dry" signal to one amplifier and the affected or "wet" signal to another. This is commonly used to send the dry signal to the PA and the wet signal to the stage amplifier, or vice-versa. Or it can be used to power two different stage amplifiers to get a stereo sound, though this involves lugging twice as much equipment around. Most players use the following sequence for their effects: compression first, then distortion, then chorus/flange, then delay, and last reverb. However, there is nothing magical about this ordering, and you should feel free to experiment with alternate orderings to get different sounds. For more information on effects, consult the excellent book "Getting Great Guitar Sounds" by Michael Ross, which discusses the acoustic properties of electric instruments and the workings of amplifiers as well as effects. There are quite a number of differences between digital and analog electronics, which make analog better for some applications and digital better for others. First, a little information on bass signals. When you pluck the string on your bass, it vibrates back and forth. The vibration of the string causes sounds waves to be transmitted through the air at the same pitch as the string, and that's what your ears detect as sound. The idea of amplication is to get an electronic representation of the string's vibration, and then make the amp's speaker vibrate in exactly the same pattern, thus creating the same sound as the string (only much louder :) The job of the pickup is to "read" the position of the string at any moment in time, and translate that into a voltage. When the string is not moving, the voltage is zero and there's no sound. The faster the string is moving, the higher the voltage is, and moving in one direction induces a positive voltage and the other direction, negative. Thus, as the string goes back and forth and back and forth, the voltage in the pickup goes positive and negative and positive and negative. This voltage signal exactly replicates the movement of the string, so we now have an electronic "picture" of the string's movement which we can send on to the amplifier and speaker. En route, we are going to want to process this signal. At the very least we want to amplify it, ie, make it louder. We may also want to apply equalization or compression, or even a delay or chorus effect. There are two ways to do these sorts of things; analog, and digital. Analog techniques use physical electronic effects to convert the signal, using magentic fields, capacitors, and so forth. Digital effects use computer circuitry to create a mathematical representation of the signal, and then manipulate that signal mathematically. They then convert the processed signal back to a physical representation to send to the speaker. Converting the physical representation (ie, the pattern of the voltages from the bass) into a mathematical representation (a series of numbers stored in the computer circuit) is called digitization. Our earlier pattern of voltages going positive, negative, positive, negative gets translated into a series of numbers, something like 1, 0.6, 0, -0.6, -1, -0.6, 1, 0.6, 0, -0.6, -1, -0.6. Since those numbers are now stored inside the computer circuit, you can do anything you like with them before you send them over to the speaker to be converted back into sound. For an amplifier, the analog method of amplification involves either a vacuum tube or a transistor. Without going into the details of the physics, what happens is that the amplifier runs two signals through the vacuum tube/transistor. One is the incoming signal from the bass, and the other one is the outgoing signal to the speaker, which is much more powerful. The job of the tube or transistor is to exactly copy the voltage of the bass signal onto the speaker signal, which is then sent to the speaker where the physical signal is converted back to sound. In a digital amplifier, the electronic signal from the bass is digitized, but there isn't any manipulation of the digital signal. It's just sent over to the speaker circuit and sent out there unaltered, except with more power. The real power of digitization is that you can do anything you want with those numbers. Wanna send the signal out backwards? No problem, just reverse the sequence of the numbers. Effects like delay, reverb, chorus, and flange are very awkward to create using magnetic fields and circuits, but very easy to produce using a computer with a memory bank. That's why most of the uses of digital technology have been in effects boxes or processing equipment like MIDI, rather than amplifiers or basses. However, if you have a digital amplifier already, then it's real easy to build in a digital EQ or reverb while you're there. You've already digitized the signal, so you may as well play with it. There is no strict relationship between an amps output power and the impedance, beyond:
If the speakers do not have the same resistance, then more of the power will be pushed through the low-resistance speaker. So, if you are hooking a 4 ohm speaker and an 8 ohm speaker together in a cabinet, the total resistance will be ~= 2.67 ohms. An amp rated for 100 watts through 4 ohms would put out 150 watts under this speaker load. Play however you want. Some rock players like the penetrating percussive attack that a pick lends to their notes. Funk, fusion and Jazz players often prefer the closer contact with the strings and easier string skipping that finger playing allows. It's a matter of musical taste. It's fair to note that pick playing is less fashionable than formerly, probably due to the clearer definition of active basses pick ups and modern bass amps. Note that you loose serious cool points if you post to RMMB stating that real players use their fingers or alternatively that picks maketh the musician. Sorry..
There are some topics which come up on RMMB which often spark furious debate but never come to any definitive conclusion. These debates then fade away only to return later. Such is typical with every newsgroup. None of these topics are forbidden on RMMB (which is, afterall, an unmoderated news group), but you should be advised that these topics will generally spark a lively, but heavily polarized, debate and usually one with the same answers as last time (which is why some veterans of the group often become bored with them):
This one tends to get really ugly. People who agree on everything else can often disagree about the value (or detriment) of tabulature. In a recent round of the tired debate, contributor Don "Mango" Pancoe (pancoe@netaxs.com) made the following thoughtful comments: "I've been reading all the 'to tab or not to tab' posts, but have not posted till now because I thought the last thing this thread needed was another opinion, or another statement of someone else's opinion. I now would like to state my opinion just once for the record, and also hopefully point out a few areas where we all seem to agree. I propose the following tennets for your consideration: "Both pro and anti tabbers agree that tab is a more expedient way to learn a bass line than learning standard notation or learning the song by ear. I personally prefer standard notation. Now that I have read it for many years, it is the most expedient way for me to learn a tune. I personally find learning tunes by ear to be quite tedious. Analysing a tune so you can learn what makes it work is another matter entirely. "Electrical engineering is my vocation. Music is my first and foremost avocation. Therefore, I spend whatever time I can learning music to its fullest. This includes notation, theory, and so forth. Still I am not nearly as well versed in these areas as those who study full time. I would also *like* to be a recording engineer, a photographer, a chef, a world-class cyclist, etc, etc, etc. While I have chosen to invest a large share of my time in music, I am certainly not above reading "Photography for Dummies" or "The Joy of Cooking" for quick results in those areas. "There are some things which tab can impart that notation can't, there are some things that notation impart which tab can't, and there are things that neither can impart without some fundamental knowledge of music theory. Tab is one way to get started, and it can also be all you ever need to know if you only ever want to be involved in music to a certain level (which is not even the same for every person.) Keep in mind, there's no reason why a tab player of X years couldn't decide to learn notation and theory, but where would he be if he had learned that from day one. "One idea, which I'm surprised hasn't been raised more by the anti-tab camp, is the accuracy of the tabs people are trading over the 'net. (I may have even posted on this before, so this may, in fact, not be my *only* post on tab.) I highly doubt that the players whose songs are most requested in tab form spend much time tabbing every part they play. That means that someone else has learned their parts (by ear) and tabbed them for you. Ulitmately with tab, and even with standard notation, you will most likely refer to the original recording for additional info. Of course, if you never listen to the original, only to the way your own ensemble plays the tune, it could turn into something entirely new, which can be a very good thing. "So, if anyone agrees, perhaps we could put something like this (I'm not saying it has to be my words) in the group's FAQ, and we can leave the shouting, name-calling and finger-pointing to the guitar groups." Here the question is legitimate but the confrontational language is likely to anger anyone who uses and/or likes the product in question. Toning the phrasing down a bit reduces the chances that a flame war will ignite as a result. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the Bass Guitar that includes a lot about its history.
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