Our band wants to cover a song originally in E major, which is sung by female. Since our singer is male, he wants to transpose down a P4 to B major, but the original being a E major I already have notes hitting the open E string.
Without using a 5 strings, what are my options?
1. transpose everything up a perfect fifth. Would it be too high for bass when others (guitar and keyboard) are transposing down?
2. transpose down perfect fourth as long as I could, only transpose up for those chords below A.
3. any other suggestions?
If you don't have a lot of notes to hit on the E string, you can tune it down to the lowest note you'll have to play and play it there. Commonly folks will down-tune the E to D or sometimes C with D being the most common. I did that for years because I only had a 4-string, but it wasn't a big deal because we'd only play one or two songs a night that had to go down below the E. The trick with doing that though is to be sure you tune that string back up after that song!
Then I played with a group that had about 6-songs that needed a drop-tuned E string to play. That "be sure to tune back up" became a bit of a problem because with 6 different drop-tune songs in between normal tuning songs, sometimes I either didn't have enough time to tune back up before someone started the next song (Evil Eye delivered to whoever did that...MR. DRUMMER!) or I would just plain forget to tune it back up. So in 2009 I finally bought a 5-string. It doesn't sound as good as my '82 Jazz does (nothing else sounds that good
) but it does have a decent sound. So then it's a matter of swapping basses between songs as needed. That makes it easy.
Another thing you can do is get a Hipshot Drop-Tuner that fits your bass. It allows you to drop the E string to whatever note you need it to be at the flick of a lever. Usually those will drop it to a D, but you can tune the dropped note to another note that you want. They are quick and easy to change on the fly and if you forget to release back to normal, just takes a fraction of a second to do so. And if you get the correct one for your base everything fits in the holes for your tuning peg and backplate so you don't need to drill any holes in your bass.
One of the things you'll see bands do that are touring all the time or playing multiple nights per week is drop their entire instruments tuning from an E to an Eb. In that case, since it will be used for every song, it just makes more sense to drop your strings from E, A, D, G, to Eb Ab, Db, and Gb. It's easier on everyone singing because you don't have to sing quite as high as you would at concert pitch, but as long as everyone is tuned the same, you can just play int the same positions and fingerings that you did when playing in E. However, if any of the musicians actually have perfect pitch, that can drive them a bit nuts. But that's not what you're playing everything 1/2-step low, so that won't work for you..
So your choices are:
1.) down-tune your E string and transpose those E string notes on the fly - remember to tune back up afterwards.
2.) Get a D-tuner so you can flip it back and forth on the fly as needed.
3.) Buy yourself a 5-string! This choice both looks better on stage; it's the easiest way to do it, and you get to buy a new bass!.
OH.....WAIT....THERE'S MORE:
Another thing that you can do is try playing your entire patterns up in an octave higher register, or just shift part of your pattern to that higher register. If the song calls for a low D that is on a B string, try hitting that note on the D an octave up. Sometimes that works fine and sometimes it doesn't. But if you get used to playing your patterns or your runs in various parts of the neck, that can work out fine without a lot of thinking.
