It's an increasingly recurring, ignorant comment that we hear in person, and see posted on 6 and 7 string bass YouTube videos... "That's not a bass, that's a guitar!"
The appropriate response? "It's not a guitar, it's an electric, double-bass voiced, viola da gamba, you mal-educated cur."
Where did the bass guitar come from? We commonly hear that it's an electric guitar oriented, double-bass-replacing invention created by Paul Tutmarc, and improved by Leo Fender, yadah, yadah, yah.
"But...," you may (should) ask, "where did the double-bass viol come from?"
The double-bass is not a violin, it's not in the violin family, it was kidnapped from the viola da gamba family, tortured, and forced to do the bidding of the violin family - it's the Patty Hearst of musical instruments. The attempts at making a true contra-bass voiced violin had failed, with awful sounding things that we should apparently be glad we're living a couple hundred years away from. The solution was to take the viola da gamba, remove some strings, pull off the frets, and have people bow it like a violin.
Early multistring [posted for educational purposes only]:
YouTube - Abel - WKO 207 per viola da gamba - Nima Ben David
That's right! The viola da gamba of yore was a fretted, 6, 7, or even 8 (or however you wanted it) stringed instrument, sometimes played horizontally. It's tuned in 4ths, like our dear bass guitars, not in 5ths like evil violins.
So, in some ways your fretted 7 string electric is more the true animal than a symphonic double-bass... but it is not, my dear friends, a guitar!
The appropriate response? "It's not a guitar, it's an electric, double-bass voiced, viola da gamba, you mal-educated cur."
Where did the bass guitar come from? We commonly hear that it's an electric guitar oriented, double-bass-replacing invention created by Paul Tutmarc, and improved by Leo Fender, yadah, yadah, yah.
"But...," you may (should) ask, "where did the double-bass viol come from?"
The double-bass is not a violin, it's not in the violin family, it was kidnapped from the viola da gamba family, tortured, and forced to do the bidding of the violin family - it's the Patty Hearst of musical instruments. The attempts at making a true contra-bass voiced violin had failed, with awful sounding things that we should apparently be glad we're living a couple hundred years away from. The solution was to take the viola da gamba, remove some strings, pull off the frets, and have people bow it like a violin.
Early multistring [posted for educational purposes only]:
YouTube - Abel - WKO 207 per viola da gamba - Nima Ben David
That's right! The viola da gamba of yore was a fretted, 6, 7, or even 8 (or however you wanted it) stringed instrument, sometimes played horizontally. It's tuned in 4ths, like our dear bass guitars, not in 5ths like evil violins.
So, in some ways your fretted 7 string electric is more the true animal than a symphonic double-bass... but it is not, my dear friends, a guitar!
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