Bass and Groove
Everyone knows what bass is. It's that deep, deep sound that creates the groove, gets you moving.
The accurate name for the instrument is "bass guitar." But it's not just a guitar tuned lower. It sounds different, requires different skills, and does a very different musical job. A bass player needs a drummer's sense of rhythm and the musical taste to hold up the bottom end of a song without playing too much or too little. For a beginner, all you need is the desire to play. You can work up your strength, rhythm sense, and style as you work up your playing ability.
Who Should Play Bass?
Bass is a great choice for any beginning musician, especially if you're
not sure what you want to play yet. If you're a singer who wants to
play another instrument, it's really hard to beat. It's also easy to
connect your playing to your favorite songs pretty quickly. With a
little experience you easily hear where the bass line fits into most
music. Playing bass is also great if you like to drive things and help
the whole band to sound good, but you don't necessarily want to be the
lead player. And here's something that might surprise you: Even though
the bass is a large instrument, you don't need to be big to hold it and
you don't need big hands to play it.
A Little Bass History
One of the newest instruments, the bass guitar was invented a little
over 50 years ago. Bass players all used to play an upright bass (also
called a standup bass, a bass violin, or a string bass), which is a
huge acoustic instrument. It relies on how hard you pluck the strings
to produce volume. Since their invention in the 1930s, electric guitars
kept getting louder and louder, and eventually the old-time upright
basses just couldn't pump out the volume to keep up in rock and roll.
For bass players, it was time to get loud or get out. So they cranked it up.
A man named Leo Fender made the first electric bass guitars. Since the first Fender basses were sold in 1951, many more manufacturers have made bass guitars, and today there are heaps to choose from.
How Many Strings?
The most common basses have four strings. Some are available with five
or six strings, but they are not as common and are usually bigger,
heavier, and more expensive. In addition, most instruction books for
bass are designed for learning the 4-string. So, as a beginner, your
best bet is a 4-string bass. You can "graduate" to 5- and 6-string
later, if you decide, although some of the best-known bassists swear by
their 4-string and wouldn't trade it for anything.
A 4-string bass' strings are tuned E, A, D, G, from lowest to highest (the lowest string is really fat; the highest string is about half as thick). If the bass has five strings instead of four, then a fifth string is usually added to the bottom, giving an even fatter, deeper sound. If a sixth string is added, it's added to the high end, so that more high notes are playable.
How Do You Play It?
Most bass players play right-handed, (meaning that the neck points to
your left, and you pluck the strings with your right hand). If you're a
natural lefty you'll know - left handed basses are not as common and
often have to be specially ordered at your retailer. To play a note,
you do this: (1) hold down a string against the fingerboard with a
left-hand finger; (2) with your right hand thumb anchored against the
end of the fingerboard, pluck the same string. As you move your left
hand up the neck toward the body, the notes get higher. And as you move
from the fatter (low) strings to the thinner (high) strings, the notes
become higher, too. Because the strings are fat and the neck is long,
it takes a little practice to feel how hard you should push down on the
string and how hard you must pluck the string. Developing coordination
between the left hand pressing down on a string and the right hand
plucking it takes time and practice. It's not hard, though, and it'll
soon seem like second nature to you.
Making Progress
An important way to ensure that you make good progress and therefore
don't lose interest is to take lessons. Lessons don't have to be
forever, but they're the fastest way to get you up to speed and build
your confidence as a bass player. Just a few months of lessons can
create a solid foundation for you, so that you know how to find the
notes and know how to read music for the bass. You may want to continue
beyond that, but even if you decide to teach yourself from books,
software, or web sites after that time, you'll understand the basics,
which will make any other learning simpler.
Stay focused, give yourself some time and realize that nobody ever does anything perfectly right away. Don't try to play fast and complicated parts right away (like those Chili Peppers tunes), and concentrate on one thing at a time. It is best for a bass player to do less well.