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Bass guitar = classical guitar, right?

If you can play bass, you can play classical.

  • True - They're pretty much the same thing. Just two more strings to play with.

    Votes: 7 2.3%
  • Kinda True - They're similar. But you still need to put in a lot of work.

    Votes: 37 12.3%
  • Carrots (by popular demand)

    Votes: 25 8.3%
  • Kinda false - They're more different than they are similar.

    Votes: 83 27.7%
  • False - They are two totally different things. Just stick to the bass.

    Votes: 148 49.3%

  • Total voters
    300
I think they are closer than many here are saying. If you want to see something that is different than a classical guitar watch this doubler. Who also sings.



Compare bass to clarinet, accordion, or marimba to see some real differences. If your experience goes beyond rock bands into other instruments, classical and bass seem very similar. You can play bass lines on classical which is how I learned before I got a bass. I can play a lot of finger style tunes on bass.

I think any musician in western music should get familiar with piano and drums just for how much it will expand you musical understanding. And if you expand your listening choices enough, bass and classical seem like siblings. Pull out a Bass VI and you have a close cousin.

The car analogy from earlier would make more sense as saying if you learn to drive a car does that carry over to driving a station wagon or pickup truck.

EDIT: I just noticed in the video above the bass and guitar both play non ferrous strings, have many similarities in their construction, and share the same notes but the guitar gets two more strings. Which becomes more like if I can play a 4 string will that carry over to a 6 string.
 
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This will have to do. You can even order a six string version if that's what you want.

akustik-bass-guitar-acoustic-legendary_stoll_DSCN2369-3.jpg
 
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I tried a bajo quinto in a music store recently and I started playing it like a bass. The tuning was ADGCF (double courses), so I was able to play some bass lines on it because D Standard (DGCF) tuning is natural to me. That being said, the bajo quinto is much closer to a bass for me than a classical guitar.
 
Or are they two totally different animals?


They are clearly different, but maybe not worlds apart. IF you want to find any similarities or transferrable aspects of technique I would look more to the left hand and not the right.

Reagarding the right hand, whilst the concepts of Tirando and Apoyando apply to the electric bass the execution is not the same.

And of course synchronisation of left and right hands is crucial to both and can be practiced/developed with similar exercises.

YMMV
 
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They are distantly related; I studied classical guitar as a teen-love classical guitar music-and while it made learning bass later "easier," they are too different to properly compare. One can apply a bit of guitar technique to the bass, but most of the time, finger-style bass playing is pretty different.

In addition, I read musical notation with guitar back then, and have yet to do it with bass, for better or worse.

(Ironically, I have never properly played electric guitar, nor am interested in starting-not that it is bad to do so, of course.)
 
Although I vote as "kind of", they are not really. But I did play classical guitar. And some techniques I did managed to incorporate into my bass playing, but all because of it's my own songwriting material. In reality, things might be a bit different.
Anyway, knowing more can't hurt. :D