Guitar How-To

Today I want to talk about how to play bass guitar. The bass guitar player and the drummer in a rock band keep the rhythm of the song moving along while the lead guitarist plays the solos. To switch to this job in a band needs some understanding of the differences between a bass guitar and a regular guitar plus a good grasp on bass guitar playing technique.

Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake And Palmer changed between guitar and bass during concerts and, of course, played both on different tracks on records. Not many people have done this, usually a bass guitar player just plays bass.

Let us take a close look at how a bass guitar works. The usual tuning of a four string bass guitar is E A D G. The tunings are the same on a five string bass except there is a low B string. The six string bass is the same but it has a high C string. So on a 6 string bass you have the tuning of B E A D G C. Also there are seven string basses that have a high F string.

There are quite a few ways you can tune a bass guitar but they are much the same as those used to tune a regular guitar, so it is unnecessary to mention them. As with other guitars, you tune your bass guitar by loosening the string and then tuning it UP to the correct note. You should tune each string separately, always being meticulous about matching the sound of the string to your bass guitar tuner. While we are on the matter of tuning, you should remember to do a search for a free online bass guitar tuner.

With your electric bass guitar, the music is achieved by plucking using the index and middle fingers or striking the string with a pick. The early Fender basses used to have a thumb rest attached to the pickguard situated just below the strings. This was meant to give the fingers somewhere to rest while the thumb plucked the strings. Alot of people think that the pick is used by rock bass players but the truth is players of all styles develop their own individual techniques, sometimes using thumb, fingers or pick depending on the sound they want to make. If the bass guitar player uses all upstrokes the guitar sounds different from if he uses all downstrokes or alternates his strokes of the pick.

Some bass guitar players, Les Claypool and John Entwistle are two examples played using their fingernails just like a classical acoustic guitar player.

The accomplished bass guitar player must be on top of his technique. Nimble fingers and a certain amount of fast playing are often needed. Also, bass guitar music will demand that you develop your own individual style. To get some ideas, listen to and copy the work of the most popular and innovative bass guitar players of recent decades, like Paul McCartney, Pino Palladino – the guy who took over from John Entwistle in The Who, Flea the bass player in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jaco Pastorius – an original bass player universally looked up to by bassists of all styles – Mark King, an extremely fast English bass guitarist, and not forgetting John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin.

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