bass..

[concrete chaos]

ok ok i know its out of subject since this is a guitar forum, but i wanna give some tips to a bass player who doesnt have much experience. not that i know anything about bass but i can try to help.

so is anyone here a bass player as well or knows some beginner tips like when playing with ur fingers do u use a similar pattern to finger picking on guitar ie pima.

and if power chords have the same structure.. i assume the notes are like g,g#,a, a# etc.. like on guitar frets.

and what string gauge are basses usually

greatly appreaciated if anyone can help or even point me to a good site like this one :)

[PRSplaya]

I'm glad you brought this up. I've been thinking about picking up the bass, but I really don't know enough about it yet to get serious. Some links to good bass site's would be very helpful.

[concrete chaos]

cool lets see if anyone helps us :p

[Dr_simon]

I have a Peavey Cirrus 4 string (http://www.peaveyworld.com/peavey_cirrus.html) with active soap-bar PUs which normally goes through a Bass Pod Pro (http://line6.com/productDetail.html?model=7).

It is very versatile set up.

Things to know....
Basses love compression,

Basses have different types of strings:

Round wound, (http://www.music123.com/Dean-Markley-2674-i38052.music) and flat-wound (http://www.music123.com/Dean-Markley-Flatwound-i61180.music). They both have different sounds and applications.

Flat wounds are less common than round wounds and are very good for sliding around the place. Round wound are more punchy. Im using GHS medium round wound (http://www.music123.com/GHS-GHS-M3045-Bass-Strings-Med-i38065.music) strings. Bass strings are much more expensive than guitar strings and boiling them can bring them back to life if you have been using them for a while.

Slapping is much harder than it looks, and be prepared for playing the bass to hurt !!!

Id also start off using quite a heavy pick, walking bass-lines are fun however Id worry about one thing at a time and you may well find that the big ol strings and increased scale length really hurts your left hand.

You want to get Maj and min scales and arpeggios down and you are good to go.

I have had loads of fun playing the bass, though it was quite a lot of work at first !

g'luck !

[PRSplaya]

I've only played a bass once, but really enjoyed it. The hardest thing for me was the spacing between strings. I found myself trying to play strings that weren't there. As for purchasing a bass, I'll more than likely go with a peavey 4 or 5 string, but for the amp...I'm clueless. I wan't something that I can play along with a cd but also loud enough to sit well in a full band. Any suggestions?

[Lordathestrings]

A rule of thumb (that's a bass-player pun) is that you need 5 to 10 times as much power as you would for guitar. Bass rigs with over 1000 Watts :eek: are not rare.

The good news is that a guitar amp will do just fine, as long as your speakers are up to it. Case in point: the Ampeg V4 guitar head and the V4B bass head are identical except for the fact that the V4B does not have the reverb that is built into the V4. Both amps have the same circuitry, including the tone stacks, and can be used for either bass or guitar. Another example is the Fender Bassman amps that were used by more guitar players than bass players.

[Jolly McJollyson]

Slapping is much harder than it looks, and be prepared for playing the bass to hurt !!!

That's all my Bassist ever does. Too much Primus and Rush. He's awesome though, so I guess it's worth it. Woah...my posts are the same as my area code....sweet...

[concrete chaos]

thank you all for the replies..

I know about the strength you need to get down for bass i play bass occaisionaly, and my fingers dont take it usually i just do what i do with guitar to figure our the notes. anyway

what about that guitar amp thing....can u plug a bass into a guitar amp ?????? i think ive tried that and it didnt work - i have a marshall valvestate .........

oh yea and are the scales like the guitar scales..the positions might vary i guess...oh well i'll see how it goes and hopefully by helping this bass player ill learn myself to play bass...see i would be lying if there wasnt a piece of cake for me to eat :D

[Lordathestrings]

A 4 string bass is like a big guitar with the high B and E strings removed, and everything else tuned down a full octave. So the scales, positions and notes are all the same, just down an octave, and you're missing a couple of strings.

Any amplifier should work just fine, as long as it doesn't have some kind of low-cut filter to keep out bass frequencies. I have never heard of an amp that had such a filter, but you never know...

The speakers may be an issue only if they weren't designed to handle the lower frequencies produced by a bass. As I said in an earlier post, you need a lot of power to produce decent SPL at bass frequencies, so your speakers will be driven hard. A speaker that is rated down to 40 Hz at full power is good to go. Otherwise, you will need to get something that will do the job.

And do your tone a favour. Don't get a cab with a horn or a tweeter in it! Tweeters sound good in stereo systems. Horns sound harsh anywhere! They both sound just plain horrible in bass or guitar rigs. My opinion, but I ain't humble about it! For good bass sound, you want sealed-back cabs with speakers in 'em.