NBD: Why is a 4 string tuned standard EADG and not BEAD ?

[Gravedigger Dav]

The history of the electric bass part four: how many strings? | MusicRadar

"The first time a bass guitar received more than four strings was when Danelectro introduced the UB-2 bass as early as 1956."

It was 6-string, though:

View attachment 2888928

That was the second bass I ever owned.

 

[Bassbeater]

I always thought those were baritone guitar tuned.

 

[bassist4dalord]

Eddie ate delicious grapes.

Bobby Eats All day.

I love my Schecter tuned BEAD. Feels great, sounds great.

I’m very seriously considering making my Ibanez AEB5E acoustic bass into a Piccolo BEAD bass. It just feels right!

 

[Gravedigger Dav]

I tune all my basses CCCC. It really avoids any confusion.

 

[bassbenj]

I tune all my basses CCCC. It really avoids any confusion.

Are you sure C is the right note? I mean "Ostrich tuning" invented by Lou Reed for Guitar is DDDDDD and aren't basses tuned like the 4 lowest strings of a guitar?

 

[Vara La Fey]

Not to add insult to injury , but check out Michael Manring and some of his odd tunings .

I'd love to only ever use 1 tuning: standard BEAD/G/BE. Much as I love the sound of the D-A interval on drop-D, it's just too much hassle to arrange setlists around guitar changes.

 

[TKnights]

On my 5er , I rarely go as low as B anyways . But , it is easier on the finger stretch to be able to play lower notes on higher frets . Especially at my age where my fingers don't stretch out like they used to .

 

[IamGroot]

Are they paying you to play traditional covers for an aging traditionalist generation who fell between the modern sub-E1 sounds and the older classical tuning that

Are they paying you to play traditional covers for an aging traditionalist generation who fell between the modern sub-E1 sounds and the older classical tuning that was below A440?

was below A440?

Yes, but actually it was the guy paying me who was the aging traditionalist. If I was more in tune with the younger audience, Id probably get some tats and dye my hair purple.

 

[popcat]

I find it easiest and less memory taxing to just tune ABCD.

 

[isaac42]

Conventions are frequently dumb, or at least arbitrary. Why are there 5280 feet in a mile? Now thats a mystery.

I've lived with English measurements all my life and I still can't tell you how many ounces in a cup, cups in a pint, pints in a gallon.

/Rant off

At least with bass, you can tune it as you like!

I think I can answer at least that one, morgansterne. A mile comes from the Latin word for 1000, being 1000 paces, a pace defined as two steps, one with each foot. Meanwhile, the inch, foot and yard evolved separately. So the mile was 2000 Roman steps, and that was 5280 English feet. No connection, really.

 

[Bassbeater]

...or 4000 Roman half-steps

 

[Garret Graves]

Big Eddie Ate Delicious Grapes

Big Eddie Ate Delicious Grapes, Captain!
That’s a 6 string bass, lol

 

[ShowKing]

Big Eddie Ate Delicious Grapes, Captain
That’s a 6 string bass, lol

Big Eddie Ate Delicious Grapes, Captain Falcon

7 string lol

 

[mje]

The first orchestral basses were tuned A D G, because the pure gut strings weren’t heavy enough to tune down to E. That had to wait until wound strings were invented in, I think, the 18thC.

Basses are tuned in fourths rather than fifths, like the rest of the orchestral strings, because they evolved from the viol family and not the violin family.

 

[retslock]

I totally disagree!
My Fender ADPV or my Sadowsky MV5 make is sound absolutely fantastic and are both 34". So does my Lakland 55-02 with 35" scale. It's sounds just different, but it sounds great in both 34 or 35 scale.
There is this common thing about 35 scales having a better B. I don't know where does it come from, but it's just nonsense to me.

Totally agree. I don’t know what basses some of these B nay sayers have been hearing but I have three fivers that all sound damn good all the way down to low B and I use ‘em. I started out on four but changed to five ‘cos my wife (the singer in the band) often needed to change the key of a cover normally sung by a man. This would often kill the bass part so I switched to five strings to keep the songs in D still with a good bass line. I haven’t looked back. Now five is all I play.

 

[retslock]

I don't know how much more of this I can Handel!

You guys are off my Liszt!

 

[isaac42]

You guys are off my Liszt!

Chopin for some new friends?

 

[retslock]

Of course you're right. Because obviously upright bassists, pianists, pipe organists, gospel composers (a unique style), shred metallists (not a unique style), tuba players, contra-bassoon players, harpists, mariachi bassists, and EDM composers all ignore their notes lower than D1, because it tends to put the general public's teeth on edge, sounds harsh on the piano, and leaves a gap in the band.

Why these notes have even been available "for centuries(?)" is a total mystery.

(People who spout self-contradictions as laughable excuses for objective rules of thumb.... no comment.)

The internet has demonstrated that any kind of forum brings out the loonies who think they know how it all should be. Narrow minds come from out of the woodwork. I enjoy what happens when human ingenuity does things the way it shouldn’t be and comes up with something brilliant. When it comes to creativity, imagination is way better than certainty most times I reckon.

 

[KohanMike]

Leo Fender hybridized that instrument with a guitar and the "precision" bass (because of the frets) was born.

Fender didn't add the frets to an electric bass, Tutmarc of AudioVox did in the mid 1930's. Leo took that and with better marketing got it out to the masses.

 

[popcat]

I feel as if I've drifted into the "misinformation" thread. Uh oh, I've warped my dimension.