The Many Styles of Playing Electric Bass Guitar

Great Review The Many Styles of Playing Electric Bass Guitar

Many bass instruments are played upright, as a direct result of the fact that the bass strings are usually the longest, and therefore the instrument is naturally much longer than standard ones. However, electric bass guitars are played in exactly the same way as a standard guitar, and the length of the instrument is roughly the same. This is of course an advantage achieved through the fact that the actual sound heard is produced electronically, and the overall tone, pitch and frequency of the note can be altered digitally.

The typical method used to play the electric bass guitar differs slightly from that used in the playing of a standard electric guitar, since the main method used is pizzicato, or the plucking of strings. Obviously those players who perform on standard electric guitars may also pluck the strings, but this is only one of a range of techniques that can be used. Electric bass guitarists almost solely use the plucking or pizzicato technique throughout their performance.

Plucking can be achieved quite happily through using the index and middle finger, or in some cases the thumb and ring finger too, but since the strings are steel, some players prefer to use plectrums or picks. Using a pick can help to increase both the speed at which a performer can hit the notes, and also the hardness with which the string is plucked. Usually the sound produced by an electric bass guitarist using a plectrum or pick is much sharper and harder, than the equivalent sound produced by a performer using just his or her fingers.

Of course, it is also true to say that the nature of the pick itself makes a huge difference to the quality and sharpness of the sound, and thicker, firmer picks will produce a harder, heavier sound, whereas the more flexible lightweight picks will produce a softer and more gentle tone. For a pick which sounds very similar in tone to using fingers would be one typically made from felt.

In some types of music it is preferable to create a sound using an electric bass guitar which evokes an impression more similar to a double bass. This double bass sound is achieved not by using a pick or a plectrum, but by actually plucking the strings. This on its own tends to create a note which is distinctly longer than that produced by a double bass, and so the typical technique is to pluck the string, and then use the flat of the hand to mute the note. This produces quite a thumpy sound, and is used quite frequently in various styles of music.

Yet another method used by some electric bass guitarists is to either slap or pop the strings, creating a sound which is reminiscent of funk music. This technique literally involves slapping a string with the index finger or middle fingers, creating a flatter sound, or by popping the strings with the same fingers. This slap technique has been popularised in such other styles of music as rock and fusion.

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Playing Live - How to Set Up Your Band With Monitors For a Killer Sound

Read Review On Playing Live - How to Set Up Your Band With Monitors For a Killer Sound

You've got your amps, you've been practising in a garage or small rehearsal room and things sound pretty tight. Now you've got a chance to play down at the local pub/bar. How difficult could that be? Well, if you feel that all you have to do is set up and play just as you've been practising then there is a 99% chance of disaster. Many bands sound awful at their first gigs because their PA isn't sorted; they find themselves playing out of time and out of tune.

Why? It's monitoring - or to be precise a lack of it! Your singer will only be able to sing in tune if he can hear what he is singing. Your guitarists will only bend notes accurately if they can hear their own guitars. Bass and drums will only lock in if they can hear each other, and each of you will only know where you are in a song if you can hear the rest of the band. It's wholly different to the confines of the garage or practice space and this can really throw you all. You will be struggling to hear the overall sound and may even have trouble in properly hearing your part of it. No matter how good you all are as musicians, no matter how much you've practised, without good monitoring you will end up out of time, out of tune and wishing you'd stayed at home. When the on-stage sound is wrong, amplifying it will just tell the audience how wrong it is.

For bands of three to six people with electric guitars and bass, a drummer, a singer and possibly a keyboard, playing in small venues to audiences of less than 200 (a typical start up scenario) your amplification needs are threefold:

1) Back line - this includes your guitar and bass amps, your drummer

2) Monitors - these are on-stage speakers relaying "fold-back" - your own sound

3) PA - the front of house sound which the audience hears

Notice that 1) and 2) create your on-stage sound whilst 3) delivers the on-stage sound to the front of house. Lets take them one at a time:

Backline

You will need 30 to 50watts RMS for your guitar to match the drums. The bass will need 50 to100 watts. If you are using keyboards they will need 100 watts as a back-line instrument but if you choose to put the keyboards directly through the PA to the front of house, bear in mind that without a mixer they will be a distraction for the vocalist. Those pieces of kit which do not have a volume control - the drummer and the singer - now need to be considered. The vocals will definitely need a system that delivers over guitars, bass and drums to a room full of noise absorbing people (and audiences absorb the higher frequencies more efficiently than the lower ones), so PA's are first and foremost the province of the vocalist, but also for keyboards and, if you chose to microphone them, the drums.

Monitors

You need stage monitors so the singer can hear themselves and the rest of the band can hear the singer. A monitor is a speaker, often quite small and wedge shaped, which can be pointed at the singer without hiding him and generally raised at the front edge by a stand (or propped up by an old brick) to project better. Add more monitors so the rest of the band can hear the singer and position one of these next to the drummer. You'll need a separate power amplifier to drive the monitors although it needn't be as powerful as a PA power amp, and if you have extra acoustic instruments you will need to put these through the monitors too. Look for monitors of 100W, you can get active ones with built in amps or go for a monitor amp with separate speakers. Understand, too, that your guitar and bass amps are, on-stage, monitors. You need to set these so that you can hear yourself and the other band members, and that they can hear you as well as themselves. This is the trickiest part and when sound wars break out on stage, often a competition over being loudest, it's the audience that suffers. Don't make the mistake of turning up your amps to impress the audience as you will just be unbalancing the band's sound. In very small venues and for mainly acoustic bands, the monitors can be angled to spill sound to the audience.

You now have control and balance issues to consider. Decision one: either you balance the back line to the drummer or you microphone the drums and balance through the PA. There are compromises possible when playing small venues where it may be effective to simply microphone the kick drum.

PA

To the singer, the PA is what an amplifier is to a guitarist, but it's much more besides. What goes to the PA goes through a mixer. These days a mixing desk capable of handling the whole band can be picked up for the price of a low mid-range guitar. Given that many venues, even smaller ones, now have their own PA systems, including a mixing desk, you will need to come to terms with these either way. At the basic level if you only have vocals going through the PA you will only need 100W per channel and a couple of full range speakers with stands. The speakers will have a ten, twelve or fifteen inch bass speaker and a horn to handle the high notes. You'll need to raise the horns above the audience or the people at the front will absorb all of the treble and the rest of the room will get mush. This is why most PA systems feature stands, so use them! Make sure the cabinets are well to the front of the vocalist or your back-line sound could overpower the vocal mike and set up a howling feedback loop. If you've got your on-stage sound right then you won't get this problem from the back-line but if you do then you now know the answer. Turn down the back-line!

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Playing Guitar and the Pickup Selector Switch

Great Review Playing Guitar and the Pickup Selector Switch

How many times do you change clothes in the course of a day? Two? Three? Four? I tried this on myself recently. Upon waking up, I slip on my robe and flannel sleep pants - that's one. After a morning shower I put on whatever clothes will be appropriate for the day, whether it's going out for meetings or staying in front of the computer all day - that's two. As the day winds down I may shift into "yard work" mode, or go for a walk or do some form of exercise, requiring another change - that's three.

Then before dinner, another quick change into something comfortable for the evening, usually involving sweat pants and a pull over - that's four. Throw in a night out for dinner and you get one more change - that's five! Changing clothes five times in the course of one day may, on the surface, seem a bit excessive - but the truth is, each set of attire serves a specific and distinct purpose. You wouldn't wear your robe and flannels to a business meeting; and your business meeting outfit might not be the top choice for lounging around the house in the evening.

An electric guitar is much the same. It has the ability to "change clothes" by use of a selector switch. And like the above example, each change - or setting - can serve a specific and distinct tonal purpose.

In order to understand the tonal choices available with a pickup selector switch on an electric guitar, it is first necessary to understand how the switch works and why.

The pickup selector switch is connected to the guitar pickups, and gives the guitar player the ability to choose various combinations of pickups at any given time. Each combination of pickups produces a different tone that the guitarist may want to use for the particular song they are playing.

Although there are many numerous types of selector pickup selector switches on a wide variety of electric guitars, a good understanding of the subject can be gained by taking a closer look at two of the most common guitar models on the market. These are the Gibson Les Paul and the Fender Stratocaster. Each of these two legendary guitar models has its own legion of loyal supporters who espouse the merits of one over the other Many guitarists see the tonal importance of each and insist on having both available for any situation. . In addition, there are countless guitar manufacturers that produce guitars that emulate one or another of these two famous models.

The differences between the Strat and the Les Paul are many, and literally the topic for another discussion, so let's just take a look at the differences in pickup selector switches between the two.

The standard "Les Paul" type guitar typically is built with a two "humbucker" pickups configuration. In this setup there is a "neck" pickup, and a "bridge" pickup. A neck pickup is, as the name implies, the pickup that is located closest to the neck or fret board of the guitar. The neck pickup produces a "darker" of "full bodied" tone. The bridge pickup is, also as the name implies, the pickup that is located closest to the bridge of the guitar, and produces a "brighter" or "thinner" tone. The selector switch on a Les Paul style guitar is normally a three position or "three way" switch. The three combinations of pickup selections available with the three way switch are as follows:

Position 1 - Activates only the neck pickup
Position 2 - Activates only the bridge pickup
Position 3 - This middle switch position activates a combination of the two pickups

The standard "Strat" style guitar is typically built with a three "single coil" pickups configuration.
In this setup there is also a neck pickup and a bridge pickup, but there is also a middle pickup as well.
The selector switch on a Strat style guitar is normally a five position or "five way" switch. The combinations of pickup selections available with the five way switch are as follows:

Position 1 - The switch in the most downward position activates the bridge pickup only
Position 2 - The next position activates a combination of the bridge and middle pickups
Position 3 - This middle position activates only the middle pickup by itself
Position 4 - This position activates a combination of the neck and middle pickups
Position 5 - This position activates the neck pickup only

A neat trick on the Strat style pickup selector switch is to place the switch in the "in between" position. It's a little tricky to find, but by wedging the switch "in between" either positions 1 and 2, or positions 4 and 5 - you can get an additional couple of "out of phase" tones. This is a technique made famous by Jimi Hendrix and, in essence, turns a five way switch into a seven way selector!

Whether playing a Les Paul style, Strat style, or one of the many other numerous models on the market - the pickup selector switch gives the guitarist the ability to, tonally, "change clothes" on the fly. Which selector position should you use? It depends. It's really a matter of personal interpretation. Different songs call for different tones, and many times you will use different combinations of pickups within the same song. The key is to play around with all of the tones you have available and find whatever works best for you.

Some players get caught in a rut and get comfortable keeping the pickup selector in the same position all the time. Don't let that be you. Always keep in mind the tonal "change of clothes" you have available to you at the flip of a switch, and keep your playing fresh and interesting by "slipping into something more comfortable", or getting "all dressed up", whenever the mood strikes!

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