History of the Bass Guitar

Series Summary

The bass has a bit of a chip on its shoulder. Many people think that the least talented musician in a band is assigned to the bass. But fewer strings does not necessarily translate into less creative impact. While much of pop music has relatively simple bass lines, even the most basic of these lines are crucial to creating a solid rhythm section. In more progressive forms of rock music, as well as in jazz, the bass maintains the timekeeping function while adding a subtlety and depth to a band’s sound nearly impossible to achieve with the more intrusive lead instruments. In funk and hip hop, the bass steps up to center stage, pounding home dance floor rhythms. And in reggae the bass takes over, with the guitar keeping the beat as expansive bass runs dance all around it. In this free music lesson video, learn how to string, tune and play an electric bass guitar. Also find out about the history of the electric bass and learn how to read tablature for the bass.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Steve Bauman here at Summerhays Music in Murray Utah. We are talking about the Bass Guitar, otherwise known as the Electric Bass and the first segment here is called the history of the Bass Guitar, which in fact the history of the Bass Guitar is not very long. Compared to other instruments, take for instance like the violin or a guitar who are a hundred years old or hundreds of years old for those instruments, where the Bass Guitar really has just been made popular in the last century. In fact, the first Bass Guitars were made in like the 1930's, but even still they weren't made popular to the public until 1951 when the Fender Co., Leo Fender working with a couple other people. They were inventors and they came out with the Fender Telecaster Guitar. At the time it wasn't known as the Telecaster but it's what we know today as a Telecaster. Shortly after that in 1951, they came out with the Electric Bass, because they had done so well with the Telecaster. Of course the Upright String Bass has been around for a lot longer than the Electric Bass. So that's really what made this instrument so popular right off the bat, because as music, as bands were starting to get hired for more and more gigs and Rock & Roll was coming in to being, the bass players need to be as mobile and portable as the other instruments. I don't know if anybody has ever tried to lug around a huge Upright Bass, but it can be quite a pain, so this was made to really help the bass players so they'd have another option. It took on really well. Some of the first bass players were big band bass players who switched over to the Electric Bass and it caught on from there. Now, the main reason for the Bass, for the Upright Bass, you don't have threads on an Upright Bass, so it's all about being in the right position, so if you're slightly off, you'll be playing out of tune and the intonation isn't very good or it's harder to play in tune, I should say, and so when Fender came out with his first base it was called the Precision Base because you could play with more precision and be more precise because of the threads. For any more questions or comments please go to SummerhaysMusic.com."