Archive for the ‘Bass Guitars’ Category
If you have started playing guitar and have just purchased your first electric guitar with great difficulty because of the many types and styles of guitar, your not alone. The selection is so hard because of the great finishes, and features each guitar has to offer.
The guitar use choose is also very hard to narrow down when you take into consideration there are acoustic guitars, as well as electric guitars, with many different styles in each catagory. Alot of times after you have made your decision you have second thoughts, should I have picked up that other guitar instead of the one I purchased?
As a first time guitar buyer you might be surprised to know that other guitarists like yourself own quite a few guitars. It’s not uncommon for someone to own 4 or 6 guitars. There guitar collection might include an LP style, Telecaster, Stratocaster, they might even own 1 or 2 bass guitars, not to mention a few acoustic guitars.
When you started your musical career you bought yourself a cheap electric guitar, or a cheap acoustic guitar. After much practice you have now progressed to where you are now an intermediate to good guitar player and are ready for the next step.
The first question you ask yourself is, “should I spend alot of money and get myself a really good electric guitar”, my answer is not necessarily. If you are one of the fortunate people who have thousands of dollars to spend, then I say be my guest and go buy one of the great guitars that are manufactured by one of the big names in the industry. If you fall in the majority of people that don’t have alot of extra money to burn there are alternatives.
Whether you interest is in electric guitars, acoustic guitars, or bass guitars, you get what you pay for. As I stated before when you started you picked up a cheap electric guitar because you weren’t sure if you were going to stay with it but now are ready to move on. Depending upon how cheap a guitar you bought, if it was at the low end you can step up to a much better knock-off guitar, again you get what you pay for, the more money you spend the better the finish, pick-ups and other things might be. If you already purchased one of the higher end knock-offs you can consider gutting it in favor of better pick-ups from Fender or Gibson and improving its sound.
OK so you have been in the market for a new electric guitar, or bass guitar, or you already own a guitar and would like to upgrade to a better model. This task while enjoyable can be very nerve racking.
There are two decisions facing you, one is what body style are you looking for, the other is the price you would like to spend and the price that you can afford.
If it’s an electric guitar your looking for there’s the stratocaster, telecaster, LP, or possibly even the semi hollow body jazz guitar just to name a few styles. Bass guitars have there own choices, it can either be a J-Bass, P-Bass, there’s an LP bass, or violin bass.
After you have decided what your new guitar is to be, your faced with checking out the price for your new instrument against the amount you have set aside for it, if the two don’t match what do you do? How about purchasing a knock-off guitar that looks like the higher price guitar. One with a terrific finish, one that sounds OK stock but you can also gut and finish with parts from the higher price guitar. You can buy pick-ups, switches, volume and tone knobs to make the cheaper guitar look and sound like the more expensive guitar.
There are many different styles and shapes of electric guitars. There’s also a few different styles of acoustic guitars. When I started to play in the mid 60’s your color choices were also limited.
These days you can get a guitar in just about any shape imaginable, I’ve seen guitars and bass guitars in a vee shape, and shaped like a star. A guitar that I think has a weird shape is the Gibson Firebird. Gibson produced this guitar to compete with the Fender Telecaster guitar. A guitar that was pretty much made famous by heavy metal bands is the Gibson Explorer.
For me the best style guitars are the ones that have become a standard in the industry. Guitar shapes like the Les Pauls, Telecasters, and Stratocasters have proved themselves to be ergonomically balanced, and the most comfortable.
One thing that has changed dramatically with electric guitars, bass guitars, and acoustic guitars is the color and the finish you can get on them. In my day there was a choice of standard colors like black, red, blue,white, and sunburst. Today you can get the same colors but you can also get those colors in a metallic finish, and different color bursts. You can find guitars in hot pink, purple, green, animal stripes, anything you can think of you can find. Some of the finishes I particularly like today are the ones that show off the wood grain. Woods like quilted maple, and ash, with transparent colors, or different color stains like walnut, along with a high gloss lacquer finish makes them among my favorites.
I am 57 years old, I grew up listening to music in the late 50’s and 60’s. The sound of electric guitars and bass guitars inspired me so much I studied bass guitar and have been in several bands in my day.
My daughter Ashley is the youngest of my three daughters, she will be 14 in about a week, she reads my blogs and likes the ones I have written that are about Freddie Mercury and Queen, and Pink Floyd but doesn’t get my obsession with others involving guitars.
There was a time riding in my GMC pick-up ( what can I say I’ve turned into a redneck) the radio belonged to me, now since Ashley is getting older and developing her own taste in music I must share the radio. Whenever a song comes on that she can identify with she would ask me “What do you think of this song? Most times I would tell her it’s not my style of music but it’s ok.
Two songs Ashley has brought to my attention are “Empire State of Mind” by Alicia Keys and Jay Z, and “Run This town” by Rihanna and Kanye West. I’m sure it’s an age thing but Rap music I just don’t get. I don’t see where it takes any musical talent at all to be a Rap star. Listening to Rihanna on “Run This Town” I wonder whose song is it, She is so good it seems she’s there to make the song better. Alicia Keys role in “Empire State of Mind’” is so good the song belongs to her, she makes you forget about the fact that Jay Z is doing his Rap thing also. The more my daughter listens to this song she is starting to agree with me the song should just be Alicia Keys.
Beatle bass is the name given to a bass guitar produced by Hofner. They have several models of bass guitars this one is The Hofner 500/1 Violin Bass.
It is a semi acoustic bass guitar with amplification. The bass is very light weight due to its hollow body design. Because of the hollow body it has the sound of a double bass. The rich tone and the symmetrically shaped bass guitar body caught the eye of Paul McCartney the bass guitarist of The Beatles, and the rest is history.
Because of the cost of a Hofner Bass it has been replicated by many different manufacturers calling it a violin bass because it’s shape is like a violin, it has even been reproduced for The Beatles Rock Band.
Is there a better or more familiar guitar riff in all of music than that of “Oh, Pretty Woman”. This song was written and released by Roy Orbison in 1964.
It spent three weeks at #1 in the Billboard Charts, has a spot in the list of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll, and is #222 in the list of “500 Greatest Songs of all Time”. The movie “Pretty Woman” was inspired by this song.
In 1989 “2 Live Crew” covered the bass guitar line along with their own words in a parody of the song. Van Halen recorded their own version of this song giving it that familiar hard rock electric guitar sound, but for me there’s nothing like the origonal, the simple sounding twang of Roy’s memphis jazz electric guitar is all this song needsand that’s why it’s a classic.
As with the previous blog this blog deals with riffs played on an electric bass guitar. I will start this list with a classic song by Pink Floyd “Money. Roger Waters plays a great bass riff in the beginning of the song that everybody is familiar with. The next song is a bit of a contradiction because it was played first on a stand up bass then overdubbed on a fretless bass guitar by Herbie Flowers, the song is from 1962 and is sung by Lou Reed and that song is “Walk On The Wild Side”.
Next up is “Penny Lane” a song by my favorite band of all time The Beatles. Paul McCartney has left us so many great bass guitar riffs it is hard to single just one out, but for this blog I chose Penny Lane. To me this is a great example of a song that is existing around the bass line, to listen to it one has to be in awe of this great bass players talent
Black Sabbath not only had the great electric guitar of Tony Iommi, it also had an outstanding bass guitar player named Terry “Geezer” Butler who among other things is the first to add to his bass guitar package a Wah-wah pedal. The front man for this band is known as the “Godfather of Heavy Metal” or the “Prince of Darkness”, He is Ozzie Osbourne.
Next up is the flamboyant front-man for Van Halen David Lee Roth. His showmanship with Van Halen and in his solo career earn him honors amongst the great front-men. Along with the tradition of heavy metal bands Rolling Stone once wrote that he was “the most obnoxious singer in human history”. Although he had a decent baritone voice he was better known for the physical side of his performances.
The band the title refers to is Kiss. Kiss was formed in New York City in 1973. They are identified not by their music but by their comic book inspired painted faces.
The band consisted of Gene Simmons on vocals and bass guitar, his face was painted as the Demon, Paul Stanley on vocals and rhythm guitar, his face was that of Starchild, Ace Frehley playing lead guitar and vocals, Spaceman was his face, and on drums, percussion, and vocals Peter Criss, whose face was that os Catman. With their faces painted they employed such gimmicks as fire breathing, smoking guitars, and the use of fire works in their performances.
1983 saw Kiss perform without their makeup for the very first time. Although some of the original members of the band were replaced, 1996 was the year of a reunion of the original members of Kiss without their makeup.