Bass (instrument)

There are a range of musical instruments that can be collectively be regarded as bass instruments. They belong to different families of instruments and can cover a wide range of musical roles, often going well beyond simply providing a rhythmic and harmonic foundation for other instruments to build on. What they have in common is that they are the lowest tuned instruments of their respective families.

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As will be seen from the page on musical instrument classification, categorising instruments is far from simple but examples grouped by general form and playing technique include:

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• Bass guitar (also known as electric bass) and acoustic bass guitar from the guitar family (although owing much of the their lineage to the double bass)
• Double bass from the violin family
• Tuba and sousaphone from the wind family and low-tuned versions of specific types of brass and woodwind instruments, such as bass clarinet, bass trombone and bass saxophone
• Washtub bass, a simple folk instrument

A musician playing one of these instruments is often known as a bassist, certainly in the first two cases, although other terms such as 'bass guitarist', 'double bassist', 'bass player', etc may be used instead.

Related Topics:
Musician - Bassist

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