What is a bass? In this case, I’m talking about the bass guitar (a homonym of “base”), not the fish (which rhymes with “pass”).
So what is a bass? Is it really a guitar? What function does it serve?
The electric bass (as opposed to an upright, or double, bass) looks like a guitar, but typically with only four strings instead of six (sometimes a bass sports more than four strings, but four is standard). The strings are much thicker than those on a regular guitar, too — whereas the smallest string on a guitar can look like a fishing line, the largest string on a bass looks more like an anchor cable.
The purpose of the bass differs from that of a guitar. For one thing, you don’t normally play chords on the bass (although you can). Whereas a guitar works hand in hand with the vocals, so to speak, the bassist’s main partner is the drummer (and they are usually the closest to each other physically/literally/hyper-geographically). How many millions of times have you seen a singer strumming a guitar? Now compare that with how many singers play bass: there are some (Paul McCartney, Sheryl Crow at times, Geddy Lee of Rush, to name three), but there are definitely far fewer pluckers than strummers who sing.
The bass provides “the bottom” (as opposed to the melody, which rides on top) of the music. In the Sly and the Family Stone song Dance to the Music, it was presumably bassist extraordinaire and originator of the slap technique (who also happens to be my brother) Larry Graham who sang, “I'm gonna add some bottom, so that the dancers just won't hide.”
Thus, the bass is in a band primarily (admittedly, though, depending on the genre of music) to provide the rhythm. The bassist works the beat with the drummer; he’s kind of a go-between linking the drums to the lead (melody-playing) instruments such as guitar, saxophone, or piano — although piano is also technically considered part of the rhythm section, along with the bass and drums.
Another "odd" thing about the piano is that it is a stringed instrument. Yes, it has keys you press or pound, but they are attached to thick strings “under the hood” (lid/top) which are struck by hammers that pressing the keys activate — a situation that may call Rube Goldberg to mind.
Something else to know about pianos, guitars, and basses is their range — that is, the range of notes they can play.
For context, note that people’s voices vary in range: Most of us cannot hit the lowest notes of a Lou Rawls or Tennessee Ernie Ford song, nor can we break glass with high notes a la Ella Fitzgerald. Humans usually have a vocal range of 1.4 to 2 octaves — perhaps up to 2.7 or so after much practice.
Let’s compare the human range to the three musical instruments we are discussing. To get specific, a piano has 88 keys which play 88 distinct/unique notes. That’s a range of seven and one-third octaves — quite a span from the first key (an A) to the last key (C8)! A guitar, by comparison (one with 24 frets, that is), has a range of four octaves, from the open E on the sixth string (the fattest one, nearest the guitarist’s upper body) to the E on the 24th fret of the first (skinniest) string. With the guitar, though, most of the notes can be played in multiple places on the fretboard (although the guitar can only play 48 distinct notes, it has three times that many fret/string combinations: 6 strings X 24 frets = 144, which equals 48 X 3). This means that you can play most notes in three places on the fretboard.
By way of example, the following three places on a guitar’s neck all produce the same exact E note:
String six (open E), fret 12
String five (open A), fret 7
String four (open D), fret 2
The same holds true for a bass, with the caveat that the E is one octave lower than what it is on a guitar — the four strings on a bass corresponding to the lower (in pitch) four strings on a guitar, except that those on the bass are one octave lower in pitch.
This differs from the piano, where each note can only be played on its dedicated key. If you want to play a middle C, there’s only place on the piano’s keyboard to play it (right in the middle).
NOTE: Some guitars have fewer than 24 frets, especially acoustic (non-electric) guitars, and thus their range is a little less than the four octaves mentioned above.
Let’s get back to focusing on the bass, though: it has only four strings (typically, that is, although there are five-, six-, seven-, and even eight(!)-string basses available). That gives a bass with the standard 22 frets a range of three octaves plus one “extra” F note.
In most popular music, the primary purpose of the bass is to support the beat / the drummer, thus moving people to want to dance, or at least make it easier for them to perceive where (when) the beats in the song occur. The bass also provides a bridge between the drums (which some persnickety people don’t even consider to be a musical instrument) and the melodic instruments. Last but not least, the bass is a bona fide musical instrument which must be in tune with the other instruments, and thus can provide harmony, outlining the chords that are usually (in modern popular music) played by the guitar[s] and/or keyboards. In a nutshell, the bass provides both rhythmic and harmonic support to the music/other musicians.
A non-musician, though, having their ears focused more on what is being sung or played by the lead instruments, may not necessarily notice what the bass is playing most of the time or consciously perceive that the notes they are playing are harmonizing with the chords other instruments are playing. However, if the bass player were to suddenly stop playing, most listeners would definitely notice that “something is missing,” although they might not be able to pinpoint just what it is that’s lacking.
To underscore the importance of the bass, a study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed that the human brain finds it easier to understand and find the rhythm in a song when it is played at a lower tone, such as by a bass. Music can sound a little thin and weightless without the bass anchoring it.
There are a couple of anecdotes that revolve around this blissful ignorance on the part of the casual listener towards the bass which underscores the relative anonymity of the poor beleaguered bassist: Some bands have an agreement among themselves (agreed upon when the bassist was not around to participate in the conversation) that if anybody in the band makes a mistake during a live show, they should all give the bass player a disapproving glare, frowning at him or her. The audience will assume the bass player was the one at fault for the sour note. It’s a conspiracy!
The famously stoic and poker-faced John Entwhistle, erstwhile bassist for the Who, once related that during a concert, as he was playing a solo after guitarist Pete Townshend had windmilled his arm to play a chord that he was letting “ring” (his right-hand fingers touching no strings thereafter), the audience thought it was a guitar solo they were hearing and were staring at Townshend nonplussed, wondering how he was playing all those notes while his right hand was suspended in midair away from the strings. It probably didn’t help matters that Entwhistle was standing at the far end of the stage, toward the back, moving as little as possible, as was his wont.
If you are a geezer (like me) or a geezerette, you might remember upright bass players from the 1950s and earlier, and so you know that basses used to be far larger than the bass “guitar” of modern times. Think Bill Haley and the Comets or even the rockabilly revivalists The Stray Cats. These monstrosities (they’re still around) are called double basses or upright basses, and are acoustic (not electric), so it was hard to hear them when they were playing with drummers and electric guitarists and other such noisy folk. The musicians on stage at the time said that they couldn’t really hear, but could only feel, the bass. Although the first electric bass was created in the 1930s, it wasn’t until the 1950s that they made much of an inroad into music studios and concert stages.
Some people still use an upright bass, similar to how some people still drive the older versions of car models that have drastically changed.
In Part 2 of the Bass Chronicles found here, we delve into how, similar to a weight-guesser at a fair, your age can probably be deduced based on (no pun intended) which bass lines you recognize.