Fretboard Making Much More Sense on a 5 String

#8
My journey has taken me to 7 strings… and then gradually back to four. A disclaimer: I treated the Conklin 7 more as a ‘Stick’ than as a bass; my real revelations for bass playing came on 6 strings. Onward.

YES, having more strings makes things clearer from a chord perspective. It’s wonderful to be able to open the RealBook, and run a relatively complex tune without ever changing position. But then, as a result of doing that, I started to see the arpeggios and leading tones differently. And it dovetailed with my desire for an upright tone. In the past year I’ve played my Tobias 6 string less than a dozen times, and my Portamento fretless 6 not at all.

I play the upright every day for at least ten minutes, and usually a half hour or more. And I keep finding new ways to play things as simple as (jazz) blues. I might have been able to get to this level without ever going beyond 4 strings, but I’m certain that my path made the process quicker.
 
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#9
Ritter667 said:
Is it just me or does the fretboard make much more sense on a 5 string bass?

Like easier to get an overview over in terms of chords, scales and intervals across the board.
Click to expand...
Even if I play a 5 string bass for me the main strings are A D G.
The E string seems to be an extra-string, it doesn't sing as the other ones.
I mostly play a 7 string guitar (AEADGBE), when I play in duet, trio without a bassist, people hear a bass and a guitar, they wonder who is playing the bass.

So why a 5 string bass, I tried it and I liked it.
If you work with diagrams, mechanical shapes riffs and licks, oh yes ! It's useful !
About improvisation, sight reading... It's mostly useless.

But wait wait wait...
I play the bass in a big band, the first rehearsal I brought my 4 string bass, but there was a repetitive riff that wasn't uncomfortable, it was more comfortable on a 5 string bass.

So... Yes ! 5 string basses are great !
 
#10
Ritter667 said:
Is it just me or does the fretboard make much more sense on a 5 string bass?

Like easier to get an overview over in terms of chords, scales and intervals across the board.
Click to expand...
Absolutely, and having that light bulb turn on years and years ago opened up my skill set so much further. The additional few lower notes are fun musical flavor but the real improvement is in the positional options that starting on the B string offers.
 
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#11
Once when I was learning - creating my own fingering diagrams for 4 string
I decided to graph out a major scale an imaginary 12 string finger board
(not the doubled octave 12 strings, but one tuned all in 4ths)
It became clear to me that a 4 or 5 or 6 string neck tuned in 4ths
was a narrow window imposed on a larger, singular repeating pattern
Its subsets yield all the usual scale & modal box patterns people learn as different scales
but it's all one big diatonic major pattern
 
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#14
I agree, the visual layout and flow makes more sense to me. The way scales wrap and are continuous across the board without the need to shift as much helps me with processing the info. Having more access to a larger spread of extensions is great.
 
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#15
Ritter667 said:
Is it just me or does the fretboard make much more sense on a 5 string bass?

Like easier to get an overview over in terms of chords, scales and intervals across the board.
Click to expand...

Sure, more strings means less “shifts” needed to go up and down various passages. If I had used a 6 string when I was trying to sight read, I might have done a little better!

Personally I’m still most comfortable on a 4 but use whatever makes life easy for you.
 
#16
No because I came to bass after playing piano, then drums, then guitar. Bass was a subset of guitar in a way for me for a while. Across the board is what I learned first...

Piano: each note in an octave only lives in one place.
Guitar: could be in 2 or 3 places at least, because of multiple strings.

I wish I'd had Mick Goodrick's advice when I started on bass or guitar:

"The simplest way to see notes is in a straight line.
A single string is a straight line.
On a single string there is a direct relationship between interval distance and space."

and then basically learn to play on a single string. Treat that thing like a unitar. One string at a time until you have some mastery. Move on to the next string.

Mick goes on to say:

"If all you know is position playing, you can't even begin to see the whole fingerboard"

And this is true for me. I learned positional playing first and am basically relearning the individual strings on guitar/bass. Bass even more so- because it is often single notes.
 
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#17
5-strings make some things easier to play. However you can also sacrifice some of the unique characteristics of individual notes by remaining in one neck position. For example, an A on the 12th fret of the A string has a very different quality than it does on the 7th fret of the D or 2nd fret of the G despite it technically being “the same note.” And those differences in envelope and timbre can be used to good effect, especially when recording.

Sometimes the easiest way to play a series of notes isn’t necessarily the best sounding way. You have to exercise your musical judgement as a bass player when selecting neck positions.

Note: I mostly string for high-C tuning (EADGC) on my fiver these days. But I’ve also been experimenting with alternate bass tunings recently and it’s been both interesting and a lot of fun. Almost like learning how to play bass all over again. I recommend trying it if you haven’t already.
 
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#18
mambo4 said:
Once when I was learning - creating my own fingering diagrams for 4 string
I decided to graph out a major scale an imaginary 12 string finger board
(not the doubled octave 12 strings, but one tuned all in 4ths)
It became clear to me that a 4 or 5 or 6 string neck tuned in 4ths
was a narrow window imposed on a larger, singular repeating pattern
Its subsets yield all the usual scale & modal box patterns people learn as different scales
but it's all one big diatonic major pattern
Click to expand...
True...

Except there are scales in existence that are not just modes of the same major scale.

But sure, all the regular basic ones, yes.

Also I think some people missed my point.

What I am talking about I think has something to do with how intervals sort of mirrors symmetrically around the middle string as the axis (as I think someone actually already pointed out).

It's about the visual and actual physical symmetry of a 5 string bass, how one orientates themself on the fretboard.

A 5 string bass so to speak has a build in very logical symmetry about it, that a 4 or 6 string bass doesn't quite have in the same way.
 
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