Composing for Electric Bass--lowest pitch question

[korngold]

Hi All,

I'm conducting the pit for a show and the composer gave me a score with the electric bass way down in ledger land, but his Finale recording sounds like it's in the correct register. Should the lowest note for a (standard E-A-D-G four string) electric bass be 1 ledger line below the staff? If that is correct, when he inputs it into Finale, it should sound an octave lower than written, correct?

Thanks in advance (and the bass player thanks you, as well)!

[Kobaia]

Bass is a transposing instrument by 1 octave.

so the concert pitch on paper is in "no mans land", but if its written for bass its going to be written up 1 octave higher than concert. the lowest line on bass clef is G, the 3rd fret of the E string.

[korngold]

Thanks for your quick response. I just played for a show a month ago myself and didn't recall a ton of ledger lines, but just wanted to make sure before telling the composer to put it up an octave.

[HaVIC5]

It used to be the case that you had to be able, as a bass player, to read both at the transposing level in bass clef (what we do now), and then at the transposing level 2 octaves down in treble clef. This was because a lot of electric bass players were transfered guitarists, and so music written for them would be easier for them to play if they simply were reading the clef that they were used to (treble). In a sense, this is actually a better system, since you can get most, if not all, the range of a 24 fret electric bass on there with at the most 4 ledger lines in either direction.

On top of this, you might be also asked to read tuba music, which isn't transposed and is written at concert pitch (probably the sort of thing you were looking out "way down in ledger land"). This is quite annoying, and takes some serious getting used to.

Anyway, sorry for that aside, Josh answered the question fine.