A contrabass guitar is a low-

register Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), th ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

with four, five or six

strings String or strings may refer to: *String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...

. It is often called, simply, a ''six string bass guitar''. The ''five string bass guitar'' is rarely called a contrabass guitar, even though it typically has the same lowest note.

History

Contrabass guitars have been around since 1899, when a "Grand Concert Contra Bass Guitar" was listed in Joseph Bohmann's catalogue. Bohmann Catalogue 1899 with image of "Contra Bass Harp Guitar"
at harpguitars.net Bohmann, a

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

, guitar and

zither Zithers (; , from the Greek word ''cithara'') are a class of stringed instruments. Historically, the name has been applied to any instrument of the psaltery family, or to an instrument consisting of many strings stretched across a thin, flat bo ...

manufacturer Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a ran ...

from

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, developed a large 6-string guitar. While some logically speculate that this instrument was tuned one

octave In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...

lower than a standard guitar, no reliable information is available about its

tuning Tuning can refer to: Common uses * Tuning, the process of tuning a tuned amplifier or other electronic component * Musical tuning, musical systems of tuning, and the act of tuning an instrument or voice ** Guitar tunings ** Piano tuning, adjusti ...

. A "classical contrabass guitar" is tuned E₁–A₁–D₂–G₂–B₂–E₃, like the

classical guitar The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor o ...

, but one octave lower. It is popular in

Fado Fado (; "destiny, fate") is a music genre that can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar Rui Vieira Nery states that "the only reliable information on the history of fado was ...

bands in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

. In this sense, it may actually be considered as an

acoustic bass guitar The acoustic bass guitar (sometimes shortened to acoustic bass or initialized ABG) is a bass instrument with a hollow wooden body similar to, though usually larger than a steel-string acoustic guitar. Like the traditional electric bass guitar a ...

, for it shares the same low-end range. Although called a contrabass guitar, the fact that it is tuned only an octave lower than a normal guitar makes it—in modern terminology—more an acoustic bass guitar than a

contrabass Contrabass (from it, contrabbasso) refers to several musical instruments of very low pitch—generally one octave below bass register instruments. While the term most commonly refers to the double bass (which is the bass instrument in the orchest ...

instrument. Its strings are much thinner than a conventional acoustic

, so it lacks the "thick" tone of those instruments. Contrabass guitars from the 1970s are often tuned B₀–E₁–A₁–D₂–G₂–C₃ (B₀ being the lowest B on a standard 88-key piano). Some players prefer B₀–E₁–A₁–D₂–F₂–B₂, which preserves the intervals of a standard guitar tuning (lowered by a twelfth) and makes the top and bottom notes the same pitch. They are usually

electric Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...

instruments with a solid wooden body. After guitar maker Carl Thompson made a first, arguably non-satisfying attempt to create such an instrument in 1974, Ken Smith built the first entirely usable electric contrabass guitar in 1982. This was again at the request of bassist Anthony Jackson, who later asked Vinnie Fodera and Joey Lauricella of Fodera Guitars to build several instruments according to his ideas."Contrabass Conception: Anthony Jackson's Journey To 6-String Supremacy
interview with Chris Jisi
(

Bass Player magazine ''Bass Player'' is a magazine for bassists. Each issue offers a variety of artist interviews, lessons, and equipment reviews. The magazine was founded in 1988 as a spinoff of ''Guitar Player'' magazine, with Jim Roberts as its first editor. The ...

US) The contrabass guitar influenced the development of the six-string electric bass.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Contrabass Guitar Bass guitars Guitar family instruments Contrabass instruments Bass (sound)

History

See also

References