Weird techniques and prepared bass

[pklima]

In the classical world these would be called extended techniques, I guess, but I've watched a few old live videos of Cop Shoot Cop recently, and it was fun to finally see how they made some of those weird noises with basses. Quite a few of them involved a metal bar or slide being used to hit or rub the strings, for example. There was, of course, lots of pick scrapes, the classic "hold notes and pound your fist on the body", and at one point one of them just kept whacking away at an open string while turning the tuner to change pitch to something ridiculously low.

So what are some of your favorite extended techniques, or preparations (which mostly means sticking things on or between the strings I guess)? I like to do a lot of weird bowings on DB but mostly seem to stick to just plucking notes on BG.

 

[Lobster11]

Another popular kind of "prepared" bass involves attaching wooden clothes pins to some of the strings so they rattle around when you pluck a string. You can get a lot of interesting sounds with different numbers of clothes pins placed in different locations on the strings.

 

[fu22ba55]

Paging @damonsmith

Previous discussion here as well:

Extended Techniques/Prepared double bass

 

[Bob_Ross]

- alligator clips on the strings
- thin metal rods or wooden dowels/coffee stirrers woven between the strings, then struck or rubbed with another object
- motors, transformers, analog telephone transducers, or other electro-acoustic sources held near the pickups
- strike the strings with large cardboard mailing tubes
- clip a pager (remember those?) set to vibrate mode to the strings, then dial the pager # from your cellphone

 

[Ed Fuqua]

Does that mean that a bass without any of these accoutrements is an unprepared bass?

 

[Les Fret]

This has been done in the free improv guitar world already many moons ago....so nothing new. You can do the same things on bass.

 

[Les Fret]

Does that mean that a bass without any of these accoutrements is an unprepared bass?

When you go to a rehearsal and didn’t do your homework you can just say ‘I play unprepared bass’. Works every time!

 

[pklima]

This has been done in the free improv guitar world already many moons ago....so nothing new. You can do the same things on bass.

I mean, yeah, it'll largely be borrowing stuff from electric guitar or double bass, and not really inventing anything new.

I did, however, order a set of super-fat strings with a 0.190 on the bottom, so that might make some of these classic techniques sound different in the end, and maybe a little new.