No open strings?

[FRoss6788]

For example, James Jamerson lines can easily be played closed on a fiver,

Easily?

I kinda doubt that.

In fact I'd bet there a many tunes he played on utilizing open strings as passing tones for position shifts that you're not going to do justice to with a fiver, if you can even play it at all.

Five's are cool, but many times, open notes are essential to being able to execute the tune.

 

[Aussie Player]

This depends as much on the bass and your left hand technique as it does anything else. One of the things I love about my Laklands (especially the 5 string axes) is that fretted and open notes are very consistent in terms of tone. If your muting technique is up to snuff with your left hand, you can work open strings in almost imperceptibly.

I'd respectfully disagree here, because most basses won't do it and that is a separate topic than finger technique. Once you have played an Alembic, you learn finger technique and clean up your playing as it exposes all your faults. An Alembic 5 is more in line with what you state and nearly indistinguishable from open to closed fret playing but that is not common to all basses. Alembic is another league above the usual bass market in that regard.

 

[Aussie Player]

A good example of open and closed notes would be U2's - Within You Without You with open G, Open D then B second fret and G 3rd fret. You learn to damper the open G when you change down so it becomes a technique item to control but on many basses, it wouldn't sound the same if you used closed notes for all 4.

 

[Chris Laarman]

I know Gospel bassists who tuned a down to Eb/Bb standard to maximize the number of open strings they could play in the keys that came up most in that kind of music - I always wondered why I hadn't ever heard of a DB players doing the same for jazz, because open strings sound especially awesome on DB jazz pizz.

Jazz tends (or at least tended) to be played in keys suiting wind instruments, the chords often follow the circle of fifths (just mind entering and leaving the loops), and most of the time the bass will walk. So there is not much use for open strings or lowered strings in jazz.

By the way, my two Harley Benton basses have 0-frets...

 

[JazznFunk]

I'd respectfully disagree here, because most basses won't do it and that is a separate topic than finger technique. Once you have played an Alembic, you learn finger technique and clean up your playing as it exposes all your faults. An Alembic 5 is more in line with what you state and nearly indistinguishable from open to closed fret playing but that is not common to all basses. Alembic is another league above the usual bass market in that regard.

I cleaned up my playing and 'learned finger technique' and how to use open strings to my advantage by spending thousands of hours on double bass AND on plenty of well-set-up electrics over my 26 years as a player thus far. A trebly Alembic is not the sole yardstick.... but this sounds like a well-written ad for Alembic! Pretty much any bass with the treble turned up will expose any sloppiness in your playing. You know what really exposes that and makes you get your stuff together? Tracking for hundreds of hours in the studio.... on various different basses. This also helps you to really know what basses sound consistent with open vs. closed positions and open strings. And my Laklands sound consistent.

 

[JazznFunk]

Jazz tends (or at least tended) to be played in keys suiting wind instruments, the chords often follow the circle of fifths (just mind entering and leaving the loops), and most of the time the bass will walk. So there is not much use for open strings or lowered strings in jazz.

By the way, my two Harley Benton basses have 0-frets...

There's plenty of use for open strings in jazz.... not always for harmonic uses, but often for harmonic uses. But detuning is not common for double bass in everyday situations, that is certain.

 

[Gravedigger Dav]

I do use open strings when necessary, but I try to avoid them because they don't sound the same and muting is more difficult with open strings, for me. YMMV.

 

[evanrunyon]

There's plenty of use for open strings in jazz.... not always for harmonic uses, but often for harmonic uses. But detuning is not common for double bass, that is certain.

Altered tunings/scordatura is a whole other can of worms on double bass. Playing early music, solo music or contemporary rep means you’re often dealing with some sort of tuning shenanigans (whether that’s solo tuning, a=415, Viennese tuning, etc.) which can alter the actual quality of the sound far more dramatically than doing the same on a typical electric.

I have a second bridge and tailpiece for one of my basses for when I need to swap it out for guts at 415 or 430, but if I don’t nudge the soundpost too it’ll respond like ass.

 

[JazznFunk]

Altered tunings/scordatura is a whole other can of worms on double bass. Playing early music, solo music or contemporary rep means you’re often dealing with some sort of tuning shenanigans (whether that’s solo tuning, a=415, Viennese tuning, etc.) which can alter the actual quality of the sound far more dramatically than doing the same on a typical electric.

I have a second bridge and tailpiece for one of my basses for when I need to swap it out for guts at 415 or 430, but if I don’t nudge the soundpost too it’ll respond like ass.

Amen. I need a 2nd bass set up just for arco!

 

[sethlow3]

Easily?

I kinda doubt that.

In fact I'd bet there a many tunes he played on utilizing open strings as passing tones for position shifts that you're not going to do justice to with a fiver, if you can even play it at all.

Five's are cool, but many times, open notes are essential to being able to execute the tune.

Once you get pivoting between low intervals rather than opens, yes. Depends on the passage, song etc of course, but “Same old Song” is just as easy if not easier if you know how to use low intervals and a pinky.

 

[RGerhart]

I was told when I started playing bass (many years ago)
"A good bass player never uses open strings."
I still find that odd after 37 years playing.
Any opinions on this?

Funny you say this. Up until maybe the last five years or so, I had this stigma about open strings because my first teacher said pretty much the same thing. Though, it was more along the lines of discouragement--"open strings don't sound as good as fretted."

Rubbish. Yes, if you have a traditional bass without a zero fret, it sounds different, not bad. It's part of the beauty of our instrument--it allows for cool pedal tones with riffs and it allows for shifting positions more easily.

Use your open strings. They sound great.

 

[Brent Hahn]

A lot of the rockabilly repertoire depends on the bottom note of a pattern for a given chord being an open string. You can play it without that, but it's pointless masochism.

 

[SteveCS]

Let me just look at Simandl's first two pages of exercises to see if he had any opinions on this...
View attachment 5179501

Oh. I guess it's ok to learn to play and use all the notes in all the positions on the instrument.
...

Playing an open-string whole note on an electric bass is a single action. Of course how you pluck the string - angles, speeds, pressures, positions and so on - will affect the tone, but it is still a single action, and you have limited control over the note once is it sounding.

Playing that same whole-note on a double-bass with the bow, and giving it full value, is a totally different proposition. The primary purpose of Simandl is the development and control of tone and intonation with the bow and the requisite left/right hand independence. As such, a large proportion of Simandl is not relevant to the electric bass player. Ideas of left-hand fingering are useful to the electric bass player, but the open string exercises are designed to remove the left hand from the equation to focus only on the bow. In those early exercies there is no suggestion/implication of the correctness (or otherwise) of using (or not) open strings when playing actual music. Nor is there any 'guidance' or 'rule' on when or why to choose one over the other.

IMHO/IME. YMMV

 

[SteveCS]

"Only play an open string if you mean it."
- Phil Lesh

Yes. Playing almost exclusively fretless for the last 35+ years I am acutely aware of the timbral and dynamic differences between an open note and a stopped note. Use of an open string is a deliberate decision taken on the basis of those differences. An open note that should be a stopped note can quickly make a mess of things - the reverse is rarely true, IME.

 

[braud357]

The only 4 notes I don't have to look at the fretboard for....

You know, most players will tell you that you are not supposed to look at the fretboard when you play. I am guilty of this also - I have to play visually !

 

[Pings Bass]

Playing an open-string whole note on an electric bass is a single action. Of course how you pluck the string - angles, speeds, pressures, positions and so on - will affect the tone, but it is still a single action, and you have limited control over the note once is it sounding.

Playing that same whole-note on a double-bass with the bow, and giving it full value, is a totally different proposition. The primary purpose of Simandl is the development and control of tone and intonation with the bow and the requisite left/right hand independence. As such, a large proportion of Simandl is not relevant to the electric bass player. Ideas of left-hand fingering are useful to the electric bass player, but the open string exercises are designed to remove the left hand from the equation to focus only on the bow. In those early exercies there is no suggestion/implication of the correctness (or otherwise) of using (or not) open strings when playing actual music. Nor is there any 'guidance' or 'rule' on when or why to choose one over the other.

IMHO/IME. YMMV

Yes, you're right, upright is a different instrument. I was just being a little snarky, but the point stands: learn to play every note in every position. There are reasons to avoid open strings, and reasons to use them, too.

 

[TexasEdition]

I was told when I started playing bass (many years ago)
"A good bass player never uses open strings."
I still find that odd after 37 years playing.
Any opinions on this?

Other than the E I try to avoid it. I'll use an open string if I am transitioning from one string to the next, but if I am holding an open note for a bit, I prefer the freted string.

All of this feeds my argument that expensive brass / bone nuts are a waste of money.

 

[Rootzilla]

Start at 1:59. The majority of this is played off open strings. Seems to work

That fill at 2:12 melted the movie frames!