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06-27-2009, 10:01 PM
| | |  Holy Grail of Questions: Why is it spelled "Bass" & not "Base"??
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Bass players around the world....I need your help, please. After years and years of exhaustive research, I have failed to arrive at an answer to the question that has haunted me all the days (and nights) of my life. I've searched from the highest mountains to the deepest seas (well...I sent out a few e-mails, anyway), and the answer seems to elude everyone I ask. I am so obsessed with finding the answer that my wife divorced me, my kids left me, I lost my job, and now live in a pup tent next to the trash shed behind a Long John Silvers....existing on shrimp shells and crumbles.
This "question" that has taken over and nearly decimated my life??? Here it is: Why is it spelled "Bass" (like the fish), but pronounced "Base"? Why isn't it spelled "Base" and then pronounced "Base"? Where'd the "Bass" spelling originate? I realize that "may" be more than one question, but you get my point. How come "bass" is pronounced "base" when referring to an instrument? Any info. you can provide will be greatly appreciated. I look forward to any/all replys, and I'll read them all when I return from a fishing trip with some friends....we're going lake fishing for trout, catfish, and base. Thanks Everyone. |
06-27-2009, 10:22 PM
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06-27-2009, 10:35 PM
| | | Quote:
Originally Posted by Buzz Fluhart  Bass players around the world....I need your help, please. After years and years of exhaustive research, I have failed to arrive at an answer to the question that has haunted me all the days (and nights) of my life. I've searched from the highest mountains to the deepest seas (well...I sent out a few e-mails, anyway), and the answer seems to elude everyone I ask. I am so obsessed with finding the answer that my wife divorced me, my kids left me, I lost my job, and now live in a pup tent next to the trash shed behind a Long John Silvers....existing on shrimp shells and crumbles.
This "question" that has taken over and nearly decimated my life??? Here it is: Why is it spelled "Bass" (like the fish), but pronounced "Base"? Why isn't it spelled "Base" and then pronounced "Base"? Where'd the "Bass" spelling originate? I realize that "may" be more than one question, but you get my point. How come "bass" is pronounced "base" when referring to an instrument? Any info. you can provide will be greatly appreciated. I look forward to any/all replys, and I'll read them all when I return from a fishing trip with some friends....we're going lake fishing for trout, catfish, and base. Thanks Everyone. | This is an easy one. Way back in the dark ages when music was first being discovered and defined. There was this famous singer in Italy, Leonardo L. Bassus (that became Basso, once the italiand stopped speaking latin). He had a voice that the likes of most Europeans had never heard He could cover the E flat in the lower stave all the way up through the F above middle C. his voice was so deep, and so hip that a guitar maker, Luthier something, probably Fender, but I wouldn't swear to it, built an instrument to duplicate Leonardo's voice. By the way, he went by L.L. Bassus or LL Basso ( I think thats where that Cool-J guy got it) on all his records.
Well, this strange new instrument became so popular, that it eventulally founds its way to English speaking countries where it was renamed the Bass, the English speakers having a tendancy to drop the ending "O" in words they adopted from the Italians, sort of like we did with Spaghetti which in Italian was Spaghetti-O's.
That my friend, is why we call it a bass. 
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06-27-2009, 10:36 PM
| | | | WOWZERS, Widdershins !! Thanks a million for the link. You're invited to my place for supper anytime...well....if ya don't mind shrimp shells and crumbles. I was stupid not to ask you Great people at TalkBass in the first place. Live and learn, I guess. Thanks so much again, Widdershins. Be well, stay safe, and live long. |
06-27-2009, 10:41 PM
| | Registered User | | Join Date: May 2000 Location: Chicago, IL | | | I always thought it was because "bassist" looks better on paper than "basiest"!
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06-27-2009, 10:41 PM
| | | | Many Thanks to you as well, rcarraher. What wonderful, kind people you all are. I was told TalkBass was the best place to find answers. TalkBass is NOT the best place...it is the BEST of the BEST place...with the BEST of the BEST members. NONE better !!! |
06-27-2009, 10:54 PM
| | | | One of these days, I'll get the nerve to ask another question that plagues me. Ahhh....what tha heck: How is Jaco Pastorius' first name correctly pronounced? "Jock - O" or "Yauk-O" ? I've heard it pronounced both ways. |
06-27-2009, 11:04 PM
|  | Groovin' Eskrimador
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One of these days, I'll get the nerve to ask another question that plagues me. Ahhh....what tha heck: How is Jaco Pastorius' first name correctly pronounced? "Jock - O" or "Yauk-O" ? I've heard it pronounced both ways.
| It's actually pronounced "William" - it's a Czechoslovakian pronunciation. 
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06-27-2009, 11:06 PM
| | | | Patience grasshopper, the answer will arise when least expected! |
06-27-2009, 11:11 PM
| | | Quote:
Originally Posted by Buzz Fluhart Where'd the "Bass" spelling originate? | Hi Buzz,
Former music history professor here. Way back in the Medieval period (say, the 12th-14th century AD), music was developing, going from monophony (chant - one melody at a time, think monks chanting in a monastery), to polyphony (more than one melody at a time). Chords hadn't been invented yet.
Early music with two parts (called "organum") sometimes had a singer sing a faster melody, while another singer or a group of singers sang a slower line consisting of held notes. This line became know as the tenor, since "tenor" means "to hold" in Latin (or "tenore" in Italian).
Later, a third, lower part was added, which was called "contratenor bassus," which means "against the tenor low" (bassus = low). Later yet, this was shortened to "bassus."
Presumably, this spelling was carried into English during the transition to the Renaissance (15th-16th century, or a little before), when polyphonic music became very popular and highly developed in England.
Now, as for why the English pronunciation rhymes with "face" instead of "grass," I don't know. The Latin pronunciation for "bassus" is pronounced more like "boss," (think Bruce Springsteen). So, is this all Bruce Springsteen's fault in the end?
Joe
P.S. - for my life's quest, maybe I'll try to figure out why it's not "Springstein" or "Springstene," or…. |
06-28-2009, 12:25 AM
| | | Quote:
Originally Posted by Buzz Fluhart One of these days, I'll get the nerve to ask another question that plagues me. Ahhh....what tha heck: How is Jaco Pastorius' first name correctly pronounced? "Jock - O" or "Yauk-O" ? I've heard it pronounced both ways. | Thats another one of those Italian things, in America we drop the O
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06-28-2009, 12:34 AM
| | | Quote:
Originally Posted by Buzz Fluhart One of these days, I'll get the nerve to ask another question that plagues me. Ahhh....what tha heck: How is Jaco Pastorius' first name correctly pronounced? "Jock - O" or "Yauk-O" ? I've heard it pronounced both ways. | Thats another one of those Italian things, in America we drop the O
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06-28-2009, 12:40 AM
|  | Kingwood freak | | Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Denmark | | Quote:
Originally Posted by Buzz Fluhart One of these days, I'll get the nerve to ask another question that plagues me. Ahhh....what tha heck: How is Jaco Pastorius' first name correctly pronounced? "Jock - O" or "Yauk-O" ? I've heard it pronounced both ways. | Actually, neither...! 
It's pronounced "Jah-coh" - like the Jamaican (I think) pronunciation of God (Jah) + the "co-" in "co-worker" 
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06-28-2009, 12:41 AM
| | Registered User | | Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Woodinville, WA | | Because if it were "base", we'd be players on a diamond of sorts, and if it were "Carp" it would be a stupid fish!!!!
Learn to love it and live with it. It is what it is. ...and I LIKE it!!!!!
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06-28-2009, 01:25 AM
|  | Registered User
Owner: BassStringsOnline.com | | Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: LA California | | Why is it IIII on a watch rather than IV? |
06-28-2009, 03:01 AM
| | | | Sorry to hijack, but I've only heard the Jah-co pronunciation, although it was probably 'Jocko' at first. From Wiki...
"He loved basketball and often watched it with his father. Pastorius' nickname was influenced by his love of sports and also by the umpire Jocko Conlan.[8] He changed the spelling from "Jocko" to "Jaco" after the pianist Alex Darqui sent him a note. Darqui, who was French, assumed the name was spelled "Jaco"; Pastorius liked the new spelling.[8]" |
06-28-2009, 05:20 AM
| | | | Basso is pronounced 'baas-oh', like bas-tard (think british accent) and o. Or like Saab (the car) but mirrored and add o :P
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Originally Posted by Munjibunga You can be sure it's koa because it looks bitchen. If it doesn't look bitchen, it might still be koa, just not bitchen koa. | |
06-28-2009, 05:46 AM
| | Registered User | | Join Date: May 2006 Location: Reynoldsburg Ohio | | | Actually I decided to call it BASS (with long A) , oh I don't know, eons ago in proto-TalkBase and for some darn reason it stuck. Sorry. |
06-28-2009, 05:50 AM
| | Registered User | | Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Garmisch, Germany | | | This is a no-brainer. The name for the instrument (upright, double bass) in most European languages is 'contrabass' or a variation thereof. As an earlier poster pointed out, they are all derived from the Latin word "bassus" which was, and is, pronounced "BAHSS, (as in "say ahhh").
That's why it's spelled the way it is. As for why it is pronounced "base" that's a matter for an entire dissertation. You might as well ask why we pronounce the word 'colonel' exactly like 'kernel." |
06-28-2009, 06:11 AM
| | Registered User | | Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: D'Shaw | | | Much music nomenclature comes from Italian and "Basso" means the lowest adult male voice. So maybe it had something to do with that.
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