What’s the difference between learning electric and bass guitar?
Question by Ariel: What’s the difference between learning electric and bass guitar?
I’m learning to play an electric guitar right now (6 strings), but I would like to know if once I lean completely to play the electric, will it be easy to play the bass guitar?
Is the music completely different? As in reading music, and the notes, fingering, etc?
Please don’t tell me the difference of “importance”, or the sound effect because I know bass is lower…
I’d prefer someone who plays one or both to answer, but whatever is fine. Thank you
Best answer:
Answer by Wowomg
First of all, there’s no real way to learn how to play the guitar completely. Even people who would be considered some of the best musicians in the world still have room for improvement.
Once you have been playing for a year or two and have the basics down, the switch wouldn’t be that difficult. I originally started with guitar, but I decided to pick up bass as well after a few years. You have to shift your technique quite a bit but once you get used to playing differently they both feel natural to you and you can pretty much play the same things on either; although you can’t play many guitar solos on a bass for a multitude of reasons.
The notes on the neck are the same (except for the obvious addition of two strings on guitar) but bass reads music in bass clef and guitar reads music in treble clef.
The only real difference in learning them is that when you learn to play bass you focus mainly on the rhythm parts and when you learn guitar you focus mainly on lead parts. Learning both of them is pretty useful so if you are willing to spend money on both then you should. If you do decide to play both you have to buy everything separate since running a bass through a guitar amp will break the speakers.
What do you think? Answer below!
Reader Comments
I play both.
The notes and fingering are essentially the same, with the bass an octave lower. A standard four string bass is tuned EADG, compared to the guitar’s EADGBE. That makes scale patterns translate directly.
Music for both is commonly found in tabs, and you read them pretty much the same way for both.
The main differences are these. First, the feel of each instrument is very different. Also, they each play a different role in a band setting, and although they’re very similar it’s good to approach them differently. For me, I associate the bass more closely with the drums than I do with the guitar. Finally, even though there’s some things that are features of both, they each have certain techniques that are native to each instrument.
It’s no easier or harder than guitar, it’s just different.
Let me tell you, bass is easy to learn without any guitar skills, even easier to learn if you already know how to play the guitar. If you’re at least halfway decent at guitar, you’ll be able to pick up a bass and play it right off the bat.
If you’re reading sheet music, bass guitar music is always in bass clef. So that will be a bit different than guitar music.
As for fingerings, usually you don’t play chords on a bass. It has to be tuned perfectly and you have to be really good at it to make it sound right. You usually only play one note at a time.
Another important note is that for bass, you’ve got to have a really good sense of rhythm since you’re basically the backbone of everything, apart from the drums. You won’t get the same sense of fullness if you’re playing out of rhythm.
And you can’t really learn how to play a guitar completely since there’s always room for error and improvement. Always. If you learn how to play both at the same time, you could potentially teach yourself how to play even better by techniques used with the other.
Happy guitar-ing!
Other than the fact that they’re visually similar, guitar and bass are completely different animals with completely different functions. In fact, “bass guitar” is a misnomer, since a bass is not a guitar at all. It’s a portable version of an upright bass and it’s part of the rhythm section.
A bass should be played as support to the drummer, since it’s a rhythm instrument. Bassists usually follow the beat of the bass drum, adding melodic rhythm to the percussion. Most guitarists make the mistake of playing bass like it’s a four-stringed guitar, which results in aural chaos. They play too many notes and operate independent of the drummer, so the sound winds up being cluttered and unpleasant. But if a guitarist understands that the bass should not supply its own separate melody, he should be able to make the transition. It’s about learning to follow the drummer, rather than the melody.
Physically, you shouldn’t have much trouble transitioning from guitar to bass since the instruments feel similar. The additional pressure you’ll need to fret bass strings will be offset by the fatness of the strings (much easier on the fingers than guitar strings). And your bass lines will come from the root notes of the chords being played on guitar, so crafting your own bass lines should seem very easy for you.
If you make it a point to single out bass lines when you’re listening to music, you’ll have a good feel for the function bass serves. It’s about finding a groove with the drummer, settling into it, and adding a little melody that compliments the song. As long as you embrace your role in the rhythm section (as unglamorous as it is), you should be fine.
Baxterville has the correct answer. Yes, it will be ‘easy’ to learn bass – provided you unlearn all the nasty chords and leads you learned when you were a guitarist.
There is an important exception – there are jazz bassists and funk bassists who play ‘leads’ – but that is a rare form of the art. There is also various 5 and 6 string basses for very strange stuff.