Bass Guitar – 5 String

Most today’s 5 string bass guitars are like 4 string bass guitar with one additional bass string. This additional bass string is tuned 5 notes lower than the lowest (thickest) string on 4 string bass guitar. So, we can play 5 more bass notes (for even deeper effect )

On standard tuned 5 string bass guitar with 22 frets pitch range goes from 0B to 4F. This means 43 different notes (pitches). Like on other guitars many notes are repeated. For example, note 2G is repeated five times. All this five 2G notes have the same pitch, the only difference between them is in timbre.

Let’s observe the positions of some notes:

• Notes 0B, 1C, 1C♯, 1D and 1D♯ on the left side (the thickest string) appear only once, just like the notes 4C♯, 4D, 4D♯, 4E and 4F on the right side (the thinnest string)
• The first repeated bass note is 1E and the last repeated note on the treble side is 4C.
• The most repeated notes are 2G, 2G♯, and 2A. Each of them can be played from five different locations.

Caution: circumstances can change when we change the tuning and/or we have the guitar with more or less than twenty two frets. I used one fret less when designing the 144 Notes application.

With ordinary tuned 5 string bass guitar we can play some really low notes, the lower is 0B. However if we want to compete with standard 88 key piano we need to retune thickest bass string even 2 notes lower, to 0A, so we get the same lowest note on both instruments. Of course bass guitar gives totally different timbre with much more bass in it, compared to piano which gives more light (treble) timbre.
On the guitar same note (pitch) played further from headstock on thicker string gives timbre with more bass. That is good to know.

Some 5 string bass guitars are (tuned) like 4 string bass guitar but with one additional treble string. That treble string is tuned 5 notes higher than highest (thinnest) string on 4 string bass guitar. So, we can play 5 more treble notes.