bass

: the lowest adult male singing voice. also : a person having this voice. d. : a member of a family of instruments having the lowest range. especially : double bass.

Technically, the lowest-pitched part of any musical work. The word comes from the Latin bassus, meaning “low” or “thick.” In vocal music, a bass is the lowest range of the male voice; it generally extends from low E or F (an octave and a half below Middle C) to Middle C.

Bass is unique because it forms a bridge between rhythm and melody, accentuating both while tying the riffs and patterns of the other instruments together into a single, cohesive whole. Think about how empty one of your favorite songs would feel if there was no bass – a majority of its exciting appeal would be gone!

The word bass has two main meanings with separate pronunciations - bass with a high vowel sound (like base) ironically refers to very low sounds - bass instruments and singers are in the lowest part of the musical range, like the low rumble of a bass guitar. If you say bass with a low vowel sound, it's a type of fish.

Bass frequencies are low and slow. They are slow enough that the human nervous system can pick up on them, even if the eardrum cannot. They are also large waves, which means they are loud.

The word bass comes from Middle English bars, meaning "perch", despite that none of the commonly referred bass species belong to the perch family Percidae.

The core elements of the rhythm section are usually the drum kit and bass. The drums and bass provide the basic pulse and groove of a song. The section is augmented by other instruments such as keyboard instruments and guitars that are used to play the chord progression upon which the song is based.

Basically, your brain picks up on the rhythms of lower, bassier music faster than it does high-pitched noises. Researchers theorize that this is why music from various ethnic origins around the world is largely designed with background rhythms made up of lower tones.

The lower frequencies, it seems, strong-arm the brain into synchronizing. This helps explain why a bass-heavy sound might make people more inclined to move along: the lower frequencies, as the authors write, boost “selective neural locking to the beat.”

The bass plays a powerful role in how we hear harmonies. When we hear several notes played at the same time, we hear them all relative to the lowest sounding pitch - the bass note. The following examples let you hear the powerful effect the bass note has on the harmony.

The lower frequencies, it seems, strong-arm the brain into synchronizing. This helps explain why a bass-heavy sound might make people more inclined to move along: the lower frequencies, as the authors write, boost “selective neural locking to the beat.”

The biggest, most obvious difference is pitch: the bass is tuned much lower than the guitar. The standard four-string bass is most often tuned exactly one octave below the bottom four strings of a standard six-string guitar.