Double Bass What is best 2nd instrument to learn????

[RobMac]

[QUOTE="Reiska, post: 2289I have a idea of tuning the guitar in fourths EADGCF and use it as my learning tool for increasing fingerboard awareness while I`m at it.[/QUOTE]

There is a whole school of jazz guitar playing using EADGCF tuning. The general opinion is that it makes simple things like major and minor chords harder, but more complex jazz chords/scales easier. Research Ralph Patt.

 

[Steve Freides]

Bass guitar

Tough to consider that a separate instrument if you're already an upright player.

Rereading the first post in this thread - which I've enjoyed reading, lots of good points made - I'm wondering why it's in the upright bass section if the OP says his main focus is on electric bass. Does he play upright and is adding electric? Maybe the question is better asked on the other side of the forum?

-S-

 

[Steve Freides]

[QUOTE="Reiska, post: 2289I have a idea of tuning the guitar in fourths EADGCF and use it as my learning tool for increasing fingerboard awareness while I`m at it.

There is a whole school of jazz guitar playing using EADGCF tuning. The general opinion is that it makes simple things like major and minor chords harder, but more complex jazz chords/scales easier. Research Ralph Patt.[/QUOTE]

When I played 6-string electric bass, I used an all-4ths tuning: B-E-A-D-G-C. I liked it, but I think its applicability for guitar is going to depend very much on whether you're playing simple chords much or not.

But "fingerboard awareness" in this instance is a double-edged sword. It's way easier to play patterns and not have as much understanding of what you're doing, IMO, when the tuning is the same all the way across, but I don't know that this is necessarily a good thing. I think one would develop more of what I'd term "fingerboard awareness" by sticking to standard tuning.

-S-

 

[koricancowboy]

The correct answer is assault trombone. Real talk though. Learn piano. It’ll help with explaining theory in a much better way than guitar.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

I'm wondering why it's in the upright bass section if the OP says his main focus is on electric bass. Does he play upright and is adding electric? Maybe the question is better asked on the other side of the forum?

-S-

There is no theory forum on the other side. Since music theory is the same for all musicians, someone decided that one is enough and it would be better placed on the DB side than the BG side.

 

[Aloe]

drum kit. and piano.

 

[Aloe]

There is a whole school of jazz guitar playing using EADGCF tuning. The general opinion is that it makes simple things like major and minor chords harder, but more complex jazz chords/scales easier. Research Ralph Patt.

heh, the only reason I miss a high B string in an EADGC bass is that 9 in a typical jazz chord, it's a fret below on a bass and rather inconvenient to finger. or that's just me.

didn't Ralph Patt use G#CEG#CE tuning (major thirds, not fourths)? Stanley Jordan advocated EADGCF though.

 

[RobMac]

Did he? My bad! I had it my head he was a 4ths man. Apologies.

 

[RobMac]

You are righg, 3rds tunings: The Major 3rd Tuning

 

[Steve Freides]

There is no theory forum on the other side.

<raises eyebrows>

-S-

 

[jj.833]

Piano. You can play any voicing you want, any range you want, and all the notes are right in front of your eyes.

Plus: you can play a keyboard, which probably contains a sequencer good enough to create any rhythmic or harmonic patterns you need to practise advanced playing, or to polish your musical ideas.

 

[BarfanyShart]

This is my experience playing folk/old time music. 90% of the time I'm watching a guitar player's hand playing some song only they know and don't have the chords to, and usually transposing up three because they've got their capo on.

I never played much guitar until after college, when I figured I new all the chords after years of watching guitar players' hands. I actually started teaching guitar to beginners as a side gig (desperation) based on that knowledge, a Martin Level I book, and not much else.

But, yeah, +1 for Piano and/or Guitar as being the most useful choices for a second instrument. After playing guitar mostly for a few years and then going back to bass, I adopted a new right hand technique for bass guitar that is a four-finger classical guitar thing, and I kind of wish I had picked it up years ago instead of trying to dig into my electric like it was an upright, as I did with limited success for years.

 

[BarfanyShart]

Also, some good advice I have never, ever followed: If you learn a second string instrument, learn it in its standard tuning instead of modding it to adapt to be more similar to your primary instrument. You will get more out of the study by doing it the "right" way.

Again, I now play three bizarrely tuned stringed instruments, while trying to teach my son standard upright, so this is not advice I follow - but I recognize it as fine advice all the same.

 

[SteveC]

The answer is always piano.

 

[Steve Freides]

After playing guitar mostly for a few years and then going back to bass, I adopted a new right hand technique for bass guitar that is a four-finger classical guitar thing, and I kind of wish I had picked it up years ago instead of trying to dig into my electric like it was an upright, as I did with limited success for years.

I'm repeating myself, repeating myself, but if you take a typical electric bass and pretend it doesn't have the first 5 frets, it's spaced like a guitar, and 1-2-3-4 instead of 1-2-4 works fine there. I look at it this way: upright's have 40+ inch scales, guitars 25 inch, and electric bass at 34 inches is in the middle. The Hal Leonard bass method book teaches 1-2-4 to start, then right before they teach major scales, they teach 1-2-3-4, which they call OFPF for one finger per fret. Seems like a fine approach to me. I think it makes sense to sometimes play your EB like an upright and sometimes to play it like a guitar insofar as fingering is concerned.

-S-

 

[210superair]

Piano or guitar. Guitar is an easier leap if you already play bass imho. I also use the uke to write quite often. It's small and easy chord fingerings, good writing tool.

 

[Neon Scribe]

Either or both is good, whatever works for you. Guitar might feel a little more familiar, especially if you play bass guitar already, plus it has the advantage of portability. Piano is still the standard for music education, and it gives you access to more chord voicings.

Non-standard guitar tunings are interesting for lots of reasons, but probably a bit of a distraction. There is a vast wealth of material for learning to play guitar with standard tuning, and pretty much everything about alternate tunings assumes that you already know how to play in standard tuning.

 

[BarfanyShart]

Piano or guitar. Guitar is an easier leap if you already play bass imho. I also use the uke to write quite often. It's small and easy chord fingerings, good writing tool.

I've known a lot of bass players who write music on a uke tuned EADG or DGBE (Aquila makes string sets for both, I think, or the top four strings of a nylon guitar set works). I still have a uke tuned two octaves up from my bass tuning, and it's a great tool.

 

[Neon Scribe]

Every literate musician should be able to read the great staff (grand stave in Britain) and find the notes on the piano keyboard. You don’t have to be fast, just do it.

 

[BrotherMister]

I always recommend the piano for various reasons that have kind of been covered already, you can get so much more mileage hearing how everything fits together in terms of left and right hands. As well as experimenting with different things and actually hearing how it relates to the harmony or melody.

I strongly disagree with the notion of being able to read a guitar players left hand. What if there isn't a guitar player on the gig? Or the guitar player is playing a rootless voicing or some voicing where they aren't playing the root? For me, I'd rather someone had their ears together so they can hear what the changes are or hear what harmony is implied from the melody. In my experience sitting at the piano playing chords and progressions and singing stuff really helped me get that together and I can't play anything on the guitar.

With that in mind, do what you think is best for you!