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An eight-string bass guitar is a type of bass guitar with double course strings normally tuned in octaves, with both strings in a course usually played simultaneously. As on a 12-string guitar, this produces a natural chorus effect due to the subtle differences in string pitch.
The eight-string bass guitar was invented by electrical engineer and musician Eric Krackow, who had played with Al Kooper's early band, The Aristo-Cats, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It bothered Eric that 50% of the quartet would be tied up with the guitar doubling the bass line while playing tunes like Jimi Hendrix's "Manic Depression". Eric, finding it too awkward to play the unison octaves himself on complex songs, remembered the 12-string guitar principle and made a prototype eight-string bass from a modified four-string bass. The bass was strung with paired, octaved strings, similar to those of a regular 12-string guitar.
In 1967, Eric and business partner Steve Wittels brought it to Sid Hack of Univox, the company that imported Hagström guitars. Hack liked the idea, and ordered a trial run of 500 units. The success of that test run resulted in further production and sales. From 1967 through 1969, Hagstrom made 2,249 eight-string basses.
Standard tuning is usually thus:
Chris Squire of Yes often tuned his Ranney 8-string bass eE-aA-aD-dG, so that notes played on the upper two courses sound as open fifths.
Eight-string basses are usually fretted; however, fretless basses have infrequently been made. Many well-known guitar manufacturers offer eight-string basses, including Dean Guitars, ESP Guitars, Hamer Guitars, Schecter Guitars, Washburn Guitars, Rickenbacker and Hagström. Warmoth Guitars also offers an eight-string "conversion" intended to make a standard bass body into an eight-strung instrument.
Often, the 8-string bass is played with a plectrum to have a better attack and to increase the 'ringing' of the higher-register strings, but is not essential. Funk players have used finger and slap and pop techniques with the 8-string bass (such as Victor Wooten).
Guitarist Jimi Hendrix also played 8-string bass on tracks from his Electric Ladyland album, namely "Crosstown Traffic" and "1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)". Bassists who at some time have utilised the eight-string bass include Abraham Laboriel, Mark Egan, Nick Lowe, Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam, Paulo Pinto of Sepultura, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, John Entwistle of The Who, Mike Rutherford of Genesis, Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Gary Shea of Alcatrazz, Bent Sæther of Motorpsycho, Thom Bone of Butt Trumpet, Lemmy of Motörhead, Yoshihiro Naruse of Casiopea, Baron Blood of Necromantia, Brandon Curtis of The Secret Machines and Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick.
10-string basses incorporate a high b and low B string (like that of a regular 5-string bass, but double-stringed).
Michael Manring plays a 10-string bass made by Zon Guitars. He uses a variety of tunings, but rarely uses octaves, instead preferring thirds, fourths and fifths. John Paul Jones used a 10-string bass made by Manson guitars at Led Zeppelin's 2007 reunion concert.
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length, and typically four to six strings or courses. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has largely come to replace the double bass in popular music due to its lighter weight, the use of frets and, most importantly, its design for electric amplification.
The double bass, also known as the upright bass for distinguishing purposes, or simply as the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched chordophone, in the modern symphony orchestra. Similar in structure to the cello, it has four or five strings.
The guitar is a stringed musical instrument, that is usually fretted and typically has six or twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A guitar pick may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant hollow chamber on the guitar, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier.
A mandolin 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 eight strings. A variety of string types are used, with steel strings being the most common and usually the least expensive. The courses are typically tuned in an interval of perfect fifths, with the same tuning as a violin. Also, like the violin, it is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass.
The charango is a small Andean stringed instrument of the lute family, from the Quechua and Aymara populations in the territory of the Altiplano in post-Colonial times, after European stringed instruments were introduced by the Spanish during colonialization. The instrument is widespread throughout the Andean regions of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, northern Chile and northwestern Argentina, where it is a popular musical instrument that exists in many variant forms.
A twelve-string guitar is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in octaves, with those of the upper two courses tuned in unison. The gap between the strings within each dual-string course is narrow, and the strings of each course are fretted and plucked as a single unit. The neck is wider, to accommodate the extra strings, and is similar to the width of a classical guitar neck. The sound, particularly on acoustic instruments, is fuller and more harmonically resonant than six-string instruments. The 12-string guitar can be played like a 6-string guitar as players still use the same notes, chords and guitar techniques like a standard 6-string guitar, but advanced techniques might be tough as players need to play or pluck two strings simultaneously.
The acoustic bass guitar 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 and the double bass, the acoustic bass guitar commonly has four strings, which are normally tuned E-A-D-G, an octave below the lowest four strings of the 6-string guitar.
The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings, originally played in the Appalachian region of the United States. The body extends the length of the fingerboard, and its fretting is generally diatonic.
The seven-string guitar adds one additional string to the more common six-string guitar, commonly used to extend the bass range or also to extend the treble range.
Guitar tunings are the assignment of pitches to the open strings of guitars, including classical guitars, acoustic guitars, and electric guitars. Tunings are described by the particular pitches that are made by notes in Western music. By convention, the notes are ordered and arranged from the lowest-pitched string to the highest-pitched string, or the thickest string to thinnest, or the lowest frequency to the highest. This sometimes confuses beginner guitarists, since the highest-pitched string is referred to as the 1st string, and the lowest-pitched is the 6th string.
A course, on a stringed musical instrument, is either one string or two or more adjacent strings that are closely spaced relative to the other strings, and typically played as a single string. The strings in each multiple-string course are typically tuned in unison or an octave.
An extended-range bass is an electric bass guitar with a wider frequency range than a standard-tuned four-string bass guitar.
The octave mandolin or octave mandola is a fretted string instrument with four pairs of strings tuned in fifths, G−D−A−E, an octave below a mandolin. It is larger than the mandola, but smaller than the mandocello and its construction is similar to other instruments in the mandolin family. Usually the courses are all unison pairs but the lower two may sometimes be strung as octave pairs with the higher-pitched octave string on top so that it is hit before the thicker lower-pitched string. Alternate tunings of G−D−A−D and A−D−A−D are often employed by Celtic musicians.
On a stringed instrument, a break in an otherwise ascending order of string pitches is known as a re-entry. A re-entrant tuning, therefore, is a tuning which does not order all the strings from the lowest pitch to the highest pitch.
There are many varieties of ten-string guitar, including:
Each bass guitar tuning assigns pitches to the strings of an electric bass. Because pitches are associated with notes, bass-guitar tunings assign open notes to open strings. There are several techniques for accurately tuning the strings of an electric bass. Bass method or lesson books or videos introduce one or more tuning techniques, such as:
The 12-string bass is an electric bass with four courses of three strings each, though they occasionally have six courses of two strings.
The Hagström H8 was the world first mass-produced 8-string bass and was produced between 1967 and 1969 for a total of 2199 units.
Nashville or high-strung tuning refers to the practice of replacing the wound E, A, D and G strings on a six-string guitar with lighter gauge strings to allow tuning an octave higher than standard. This is usually achieved by using one string from each of the six courses of a twelve-string set, using the higher string for those courses tuned in octaves.