{"id":515,"date":"2011-05-08T14:40:28","date_gmt":"2011-05-08T12:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/?p=515"},"modified":"2011-05-08T14:40:28","modified_gmt":"2011-05-08T12:40:28","slug":"bass-guitars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/2011\/05\/08\/bass-guitars\/","title":{"rendered":"Bass Guitars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/strong>\"\"<\/p>\n

The bass guitar, or electric bass or bass, is a stringed instrument that is primarily played with the fingers, thumbs, or using a pick. The thumb is used by plucking, slapping, popping, tapping, or thumping.\u00a0The bass guitar has a similar design to that of the electric guitar. The bass has a longer neck and scale length (length of the strings). Also, basses can come with four, five, or six strings, the four-string\u00a0bass\u00a0being the most commonly used. The four string bass is tuned the same as the double bass. The bass is commonly used for keeping the beat of a song and is used in most styles of music.<\/p>\n

Design Consideration<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"The body of a bass is usually made out of wood, but other materials including graphite have been used before. Many different types of wood may be used to make the body, neck, and fretboard of a bass. However, the most common type of wood used for the body of a bass is alder. For the neck, maple wood is commonly used and for the fretboard,\u00a0rosewood is preferred. Mahogany, maple, ash, and poplar are other commonly used woods for the body of the bass. Mahogany for the neck is also used and maple or ebony for the fretboard.<\/p>\n

Handmade instruments by highly skilled luthiers (stringed instrument makers) are becoming more and more available. These lutheirs use exotic materials when making basses, such as the woods bubinga, wenge, ovangkol, ebony, and goncalo alves. Graphite composites are used\u00a0to make lightweight necks, in some cases. Exotic woods are used in more expensive instruments. For example, Alembic (a bass and guitar making company) uses cocobolo as a body or top layer material because of its attractive grain. Warwick bass guitars are also known for having exotic hardwoods. Most of the necks are made of ovankol and the fingerboards are made of wenge or ebony. Solid bubinga bodies are used for tonal and aesthetic qualities.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Strings<\/strong><\/p>\n

The standard design for the bass guitar has four strings, tuned to E, A, D, and G. These are in fourths meaning that the open highest string, G, is an eleventh (an octave and a fourth) below middle C. This makes the tuning of all four strings the same as that of the double bass. Tuning is the same on the lower strings of a five or six stringed guitar.<\/p>\n

\"\"Strings types include all-metal strings and strings with different coverings. All-metal strings include roundwound, flatwound, halfwound, found wound, and pressure wound. Two examples of different string coverings include tapewound and plastic-coatings. This variety of materials used in strings allows bass players to have a range of tonal options. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the most commonly used string used by bassists was flatwound strings with a smooth surface. These strings had a smooth, damped sound similar to that of a double bass. In the late 1960s and 1970s, roundwound bass strings became popular, but flatwounds continued to stay popular as well. These roundwound strings were similar to those of guitar strings at the time. Comparing the two string types, roundwounds have a brighter timber (quality of a musical note) with greater sustain (amount of time it takes for the sound of the string to become silent) than that of flatwounds.<\/p>\n

The following is a video of a bass solo:<\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5omFFeLEXFE<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary The bass guitar, or electric bass or bass, is a stringed instrument that is primarily played with the fingers, thumbs, or using a pick. The thumb is used by plucking, slapping, popping, tapping, or thumping.\u00a0The bass guitar has a similar design to that of the electric guitar. The bass has a longer neck and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,5,9,1],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aesthetics","category-design","category-materials","category-uncategorized","tag-bass-guitar-woods-material-fretboard-strings-instruments-body-design-music-talent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}