Double bass
acoustic stringed instrument of the violin family
The double bass, also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, the bass fiddle, the string bass, the contrabass, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions such as the octobass). It has four or five strings, and its construction is in between that of the gamba (viol) and the violin family.
The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, violas, and cellos, as well as the concert band, and is featured in concertos, solo, and chamber music in Western classical music. The bass is used in a range of other genres, such as jazz, blues, rock and roll, rockabilly, country music, bluegrass, tango, folk music and certain types of film and video game soundtracks.
The instrument's exact lineage is still a matter of some debate, with scholars divided on whether the bass is derived from the viol or the violin family.
Being a transposing instrument, the bass is typically notated one octave higher than tuned to avoid excessive ledger lines below the staff. The double bass is the only modern bowed string instrument that is tuned in fourths (like a bass guitar, viol, or the lowest-sounding four strings of a standard guitar), rather than fifths, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2.
The double bass is played with a bow (arco), or by plucking the strings (pizzicato), or by slapping the strings for certain rock and roll and rockabilly styles, or via a variety of extended techniques. In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Double bass” is acoustic stringed instrument of the violin family. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Double, bass and acoustic, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Double bass” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.