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The bass guitar is a bass stringed instrument played with the fingers either by plucking, slapping, popping, or tapping or using a pick. The bass is similar in appearance and construction like an electric guitar, but with a larger body, a longer neck and scale length, and usually four strings tuned, one octave lower in pitch than the four lower strings of a guitar.

Materials used for making a bass guitar

The bodies of these special instruments are typically made of wood although other materials such as graphite have also been used. The most common type of wood used for the body is alder, for the neck is maple, and for the fret board is rosewood, though a wide variety of woods may be used to make the body.

Other regularly used woods include mahogany, maple, ash, and poplar for bodies, mahogany for necks, and ebony for fret boards. The choice of body material and shape of these guitars can have a significant impact on the timbre of the completed instrument as well as on aesthetic considerations. Other design options include finishes, such as lacquer, wax and oil along with flat and carved designs. Bass guitar necks, which are longer than regular electric guitar necks, are generally made of maple.

A brief history

In the 1930s, inventor Paul Tutmarc from Seattle, Washington, developed a guitar style electric bass instrument that was fretted and designed to be held and played horizontally. Unfortunately, Tutmarc inventions never caught the public imagination, and little further development of the instrument took place until the 1950s.

In the 1950s, Leo Fender developed the first mass produced electric bass. In the 1950s and 1960s, the term Fender bass was widely used to describe the bass guitars, because of early popularity of Fender in the market for mass produced bass guitars.

Different components of the bass guitar

This kind of guitar uses various components to produce music. Some of these components are strings and its tuning, fret or fretless bass, pickups, amplification and effects.

Frets and fretless bass

Frets are a raised metal strips inserted into the fingerboard that extend across the full width of the neck. On a fretted bass, the frets divide the fingerboard into semitone divisions. The original Fender basses had 20 frets. Fretless basses have a distinct sound, because the absence of frets means that the strings must be pressed down directly onto the wood of the fingerboard.

Strings and tuning

The standard design for the bass has four strings, tuned E, A, D and G, with the original frequency of the E string set at about 41 Hz, making the tuning of all four strings the same as that of the double bass. This tuning is also the same as the standard tuning on the lower four strings on a 6 string guitar, only an octave lower.

Pickups

Most electric basses use magnetic pickups. The vibrations of the instrument metal strings within the magnetic field of the permanent magnets in magnetic pickups produce small variations in the magnetic flux threading the coils of the pickups.

Amplification and effects

The electric bass is always connected to an amplifier for live performances. Electric bass guitarists use either a combo amplifier, which combines an amplifier and a speaker in a single cabinet, or an amplifier and a separate speaker cabinet.

Playing guitar is an incredibly fun and rewarding hobby that never gets old. And is fun and rewarding, but it is important to pay attention to your wrists and hands to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis and other painful conditions. Is a physical and mental skill as well as a creative one, and your body will take time to learn to create the sounds you can hear in your head. Has much about moving to a new position as holding down a chord. It is artwork, you need to practice and perfect the craft.

It is never boring, you can always learn something new. And is actually really easy, which is why it is one of the most popular instruments on the planet. Learn to play the easy way, if you have always wanted to learn to play, or have tried and not been able to get any results you might think is too difficult for you. The true beauty is that every facet of the instrument from the style, the features of the guitar and ultimately, the music you choose, is all about individual preference.

What comes to mind is a feeling of pure joy. However, there are a lot of things I do right handed is one of them. And is not that really what is all about. The main thing is, it has to be FUN, because that is what it is all about. Imagine that you, or someone you know, who does not know a thing about it is banished to a deserted island in order to study guitar sols. Since playing is quite a sensual experience, the more sensitivity the player has the better.

I find that playing guitar is more based on intervals and scale degrees and playing piano is more based on the actual notes in the scale. I am always amazed to hear of people practicing in front of the television, as if it is just some rote mechanical exercise. But I am sure you also agree that it is much more complicated than riding a bike. As you can see it is not the end to your musical career, playing instruments other than a guitar is the way to go to ensure that you are going to be able to get into a band.

You do not win at guitar because it is an art of many styles, but you can win against yourself by working on your weak points or struggles. The cornerstone to faking like you are super awesome at player is called the pentatonic scale. Also realize that most great players know that playing guitar is a lifetime project and the better they get, the more they want to get better. The art is on a comeback, however. Made so Simple that total beginners can finally understand what it takes to play If you know the shortcuts, playing guitar is as easy as 1-2-3.
Ronald Firquain is a writer, marketer, entrepreneur, webmaster and has 16 years of computer knowledge. You can download e-books for making money online, building a website, improve your golf game, playing guitar and much more. For more information go to: eBooks Mall

There are two ways you can go about learning chords on guitar. One way is to memorise the chord shapes (where you fret your fingers) from a chord chart. The other way, and the advised way, is to get a real understanding about how these chords are built, and where they essentially “come from”.

Now, you may say “what’s the point? As long as I memorise the chord shape, I’ll know where to put my fingers” - true, and to some extent this is not a wasteful way to learn. However, it’s one of those things that once you do understand how these chords are made up, only then do you fully appreciate having that knowledge. You find it overlaps into other areas of guitar theory, not just chords. So, this article will hopefully get you thinking about the scaffolding that allows us to build what we call “barre chords” and “movable chord shapes”.

Firstly, the word “shape”. We get this from the formation of our fingers on the fretboard when we play a chord. Those 5 main open chords you learn as a beginner are the basis of the 5 barre chord shapes, because the barre chords use these shapes up and down the fretboard.

The E-shape barre - based on the open E chord shape, therefore the lowest root note lies on the low E string.

The A-shape barre - based on the open A chord shape, therefore the lowest root note lies on the A string.

The C-shape barre - based on the (yep, you guessed it!) the open C chord shape, which also has its lowest root note on the A string.

And that leaves the G and D shape chords based around their open chord counter-parts.

So using our index finger as the “barre”, it effectively becomes a nut or capo that allows us to form that familiar open chord shape at fret 1 onwards.

The E-shape barre chord at fret 1 becomes “F”. At fret 5 it becomes “A” - this is because the root note lies on “A”. So once you learn the notes across the fretboard, you’ll know where the root notes lie (on the low E, A and D strings) for each of the 5 main chord shapes!

It’s important to point out that calling them “barre chords” is not always accurate. Sometimes the chord does not include an index finger barre, but is still based on one of the 5 chord shapes. I simply call these “movable chords” or “movable chord shapes”, because you can shift it up and down the guitar neck depending on what key you’re in.

You eventually learn to see these shapes as “descending” or “ascending” shapes. For example, the G-shape descends down the fretboard, whereas the E-shape ascends, yet they can both use exactly the same low E string root note.

By mastering the 5 main movable/barre chord shapes, you effectively now have 5 voicings for any given chord!

For example: A major can be played using the E-shape barre at the 5th fret, but you can get a higher voiced A major by using the D-shape barre at the 7th fret. Furthermore, you can play a G-shape A major chord for yet another voicing.

What makes the voicings different? Well, this is where knowledge of the major scale comes in. The major scale tells us where particular notes lie that make up the chord. Guess what? The major scale can be identified as shapes as well! These shapes coincide with the chord shapes we’ve just been talking about.

For example, the C-shape barre descends down the fretboard from it’s root note, but we can see how the notes of this chord shape are formed from an associated descending major scale shape. The chord shape literally gets superimposed onto the notes from its related major scale shape.

Once you learn the major scale shapes, you see how the formation of the notes that make up each of the chord shapes defines their unique voicing. For example (this may not make much sense right now), the C-shape barre has a lower voiced “3rd” than the A-shape barre, and this is part of what gives it a unique voicing.

It truly is amazing how it all seems to pull together naturally. The relationship between scale shapes and chord shapes is often overlooked, and as a result guitarists end up learning chords parrot fashion. This is not a problem at all… until you come to writing your own music - then, knowing how different voicings work, and more importantly how to finger those voicings, your music is not restricted by what you see on a chord chart!

Admittingly, it’s hard to explain and hard to take in, but I hope I’ve at least opened up some curiosity in your mind about how these chords work behind the chord chart scenes.

Experiment, explore and enjoy this wonderful instrument!
Mike Beatham runs a free, easy to follow guitar lessons site with backing tracks and exercises to help you develop your own unique style of playing. To learn more about guitar barre chords, visit http://www.fretjam.com/guitar-barre-chords.html