Anyone playing Heart Shaped Box with a 5 string?

[LowNloud1]

Although I see a lot of tab for 4 string with different tunings, I've only seen one with tab for a 5. I elected to play it with a 5 (standard tuning) and for me, it sounds correct, makes it easier and I do love my B string! Nirvana bass lines are some of the oddest I have played as far as progressions go. Just wanted to see if anyone used a 5 for it as well.

 

[Steve Freides]

I just started working on this with a student, and I assumed a 5-stringer but then I saw YouTube tutorial showing the 4th string on a 4-stringer tuned down to C#.

Is there any live video or does anyone know this band enough to answer definitively?

I know this is an old thread. Thanks in advance for your replies.

-S-

 

[_Obra_]

I played it on 5 string bass for years.

 

[Steve Freides]

I played it on 5 string bass for years.

I've been working with a student on it on a 4-string bass and we just put up all those low parts by an octave, so the C#-C# octaves find both notes an octave higher - still sounds fine, IMHO.

Just curious as to what the original recording/performances were done on.

Thanks.

-S-

 

[_Obra_]

There is an original isolated Bass on YouTube.
It's recorded on 4 string bass with E string detuned to D, so G,D,A,D.
The melody is really not very common. I had to remember the chorus before every performance.

 

[Steve Freides]

There is an original isolated Bass on YouTube.
It's recorded on 4 string bass with E string detuned to D, so G,D,A,D.
The melody is really not very common. I had to remember the chorus before every performance.

The low note is a C#. I don't follow the rest of your G-D-A-D. The tutorial I saw is just the 4th string tuned down to C#, so it's C#-A-D-G from the bottom up.

-S-

 

[_Obra_]

It's GDAD, but all tuned half step down. That doesn't matter. You just play it from D instead from C#.

 

[Steve Freides]

It's GDAD, but all tuned half step down. That doesn't matter. You just play it from D instead from C#.

I'm guessing we come from different worlds. My student brought me sheet music for this. I assume "play it from D" means you'd use the isolated bass track and learn from that - not what we're doing.

-S-

 

[turf3]

OK, so low to high, the "original" recording is done on a bass tuned C#, G#, C#, F#?

But some people think of that as "tuned DADG, only half a step down" - those are the finger-pattern players - and some as C#G#C#F# - those are the "concert key notes" players.

I guess.

or, maybe some people play this tune with a bass tuned C#, A, D, G (low to high)?

Doing a lot of folk stuff, I run into this all the time with guitar players and capos, where they'll say "it's in D, capo three" and you have to figure out whether they mean it SOUNDS in D but they're playing it with the fingerings of B, or it SOUNDS in F but they're playing it with the fingerings of D. There is not a standard terminology.

Down-tuning on electric bass is kind of the same thing only in reverse (making the pitches lower not higher).

Frankly for ME it's a heck of a lot easier to say what key it's sounding in and let the players figure out how to play it.

I'm not a real electric bass player, so take this with a block of salt, but I think I'd almost always prefer to just play a standard tuned bass and play the notes where they are - if the tune's in C# (or if some kind of bass line that must be played has its lowest note C#) it seems a lot easier TO ME to just play it on a 5 string bass and play the actual notes that are sounding. I do recognize that there are certain difficult patterns that really want an open string in there.

 

[Steve Freides]

@turf3, I'm with you. My student and I are reading sheet music and playing the notes we see. She's never tuned her bass differently to date, so even tuning the 4th string down to C# will have a learning curve.

Frankly, and more than you need to know, but she's working on this tune because she - high school student - and some of her friends were talking about forming a band that now seems unlikely to happen. This isn't her first instrument, it's her third, and probably what we're going to do is just find a new tune to work on and save further exploration of this one for when and if she needs to perform it. For now, flipping the C# octaves up an octave sounds just fine as we're playing along with the recording.

Again, more than anyone needs to know but I grew up playing guitar with a teacher who forbade the use of capos, and I also have perfect pitch, so I'm listening to things and thinking things like, OK, that's in Bb but it sounds like a guitar with a capo on the third fret and playing in G because that particular chord voicing doesn't lend itself to becoming a bar chord.

<sigh> For some of us - that would be me in this case - just can't take a simple approach to a thing that's simple for other people.

The one thing I've had to get used to over the years on guitar is dropping the low E to D - there are a fair amount of classical guitar transcriptions and even some original compositions that work that way, e.g., most every transcription of the Prelude to Bach Cello Suite #1, right back to Segovia, has been in the key of D with that drop D last string.

-S-

 

[turf3]

Well, stringed instruments are funky. I spent 40 years playing instruments that have a tuning, and that's it. But guitar, bass, etc., it's common to change the pitch of the open strings. To me, that seems real difficult, as all your fingerings are going to change with each re-tuning. Because I still think (and I suppose I always will) of notes, and then I learn the fingerings that get those notes - as opposed to memorizing finger patterns - having the fingerings for each note constantly changing with each re-tuning freaks me out. I want to learn the fingerings of a note and then play the note using those fingerings. Memorizing finger patterns doesn't work for me at this point. If I were 20 years old, maybe I'd learn a whole new concept, based on tablature and memorization of finger patterns, but I'm an old guy and I don't think I want to invest in that.

Now if you have an instrument and you're finding yourself needing notes that run off the top or off the bottom of the instrument, to me, the most logical approach would be to add range, while leaving all the fingerings of all the other notes the same. That's why for a part that runs off the bottom of the bass down to a (sounding) C#, it seems most logical to me, to just add a low 5th string to B, and all the other notes are the same as they ever were.

 

[turf3]

I listened to the song in question: sounds like a grand total of four notes alll told. I wouldn't stress out over it.

 

[Steve Freides]

Now if you have an instrument and you're finding yourself needing notes that run off the top or off the bottom of the instrument, to me, the most logical approach would be to add range, while leaving all the fingerings of all the other notes the same. That's why for a part that runs off the bottom of the bass down to a (sounding) C#, it seems most logical to me, to just add a low 5th string to B, and all the other notes are the same as they ever were.

If I had a 5-string bass, I'd give that a try.

I listened to the song in question: sounds like a grand total of four notes alll told. I wouldn't stress out over it.

I think you've missed my point. I'm not asking about all the possible ways in which one could play this song; I asked about how it was played by the band that plays it, and my question was answered.

It's more than 4 notes.

I'm not stressed out. We worked out a way, by flipping some parts up an octave, to play the song on a standard tuning after the first time we played through it. I mentioned that above.

The issue for me is moot since my student is going to stop working on this song, as I also mentioned above.

The options for how to play this song are indeed many.

Thanks for your input.

-S-