lol made a 'practice' bass

As I slowly (painstakingly) save up for a Ubass, I wanted to get some practice on it.

So in my head, I thought that it would be easy to tune a baritone uke down to EADG.

I ended up having to tune it up to EADG to get appropriate tension, and ended up with strange, ironic "soprano Bass" lol.

Do you reckon there is much musical practicality in a high tuned 'bass' tuning?
Playing bass chords along to songs with this instrument sounds.. well.. interesting.

At least it'll give me bass practice before I get a Ubass (it'll be weeks of saving >_<)

What strings would work on a Baritone to get it to sound like the EADG on a guitar? I imagine it could be classical guitar strings, but I can't figure out which ones..

Any acoustic guitar strings - just use the eadg ones. Bass up an octave is just the bottom 4 strings of a guitar anyway.

However, wouldn't EADG strings on a guitar be too floppy on a baritone uke, due to the shorter scale length?

Shouldn't do if you cut them to length? *shrug* Worth a shot anyway.

I recently bought an inexpensive Rogue Baritone and a set of classical guitar strings, then used the lower four strings (EADG) to tune as a bass. It works fine to my liking, the strings aren't too loose at all. As Phantasm said, it is an octave higher than a standard bass, but is fun and fine for practicing bass fingerings on a baritone scale. And, played along with ukes, it is strung low enough to sound fairly "bassy".

david e said:

I recently bought an inexpensive Rogue Baritone and a set of classical guitar strings, then used the lower four strings (EADG) to tune as a bass. It works fine to my liking, the strings aren't too loose at all. As Phantasm said, it is an octave higher than a standard bass, but is fun and fine for practicing bass fingerings on a baritone scale. And, played along with ukes, it is strung low enough to sound fairly "bassy".

Click to expand...

We need a sound sample!!

I have at various times considered building one of these to learn bass on:

http://dennishavlena.com/db.htm

http://dennishavlena.com/practice.htm

Now all you need is an Electro-Harmonix POG Polyphonic Octave Generator pedal to shift it down an octave for real bass frequency! (I've actually done this with a seven-string guitar to emulate a five string bass - it works but there is a little bit of latency.)

John

I can't lay my hands on the specific video at the moment, but I was very impressed by the Yoppy Bass, where he records a his regular uke (a baritone?) and then lets audacity drop it an octave.

http://www.youtube.com/user/YoppyKyabetsu

I actually have ordered a $30 Danelectro Octave Shifter that I can't wait to test out--my plan (if it works) is that I will have an acoustic "bassolele", one octave higher than standard bass, but when plugged in with a shifter I will be in standard bass tuning/octave. When the shifter pedal arrives, I'll post and let you know how this works out. If if does work, my total $ will be about $30 for the baritone, $6 for classical guitar strings, $30 for the octave shifter, and I'll install a piezo pickup myself for no more than $20 = $86. (Probably this is just postponing an eventual UBass purchase, but it's an interesting and inexpensive project.)

And Sweetwater, I too have bookmarked Dennis Havlena's page--what an interesting amalgamation of musical projects. I hope to build his "Bass Kalimba" one of these days, and have another "acoustic bass" for acoustic jams.

I've also built a 3 string stick bass, modeled after KonaBob's walkingbass, that uses weedwacker strings. It's tuned open g, so the 3 strings from low to high are g-b-d. Virtually no acoustic sound, but just like an upright bass when amplified. My friends are fascinated by it, and so are some bass players I've shown it to. It's alot of fun, and easy to learn the basics with the open tuning--when you fret across the stick, the 3 notes are always the I, III and IV notes of a chord.

Really what all this amounts to is that I am learning some music theory in a very roundabout way!

(and my apologies if I hijacked this thread a bit).

SweetWaterBlue said:

We need a sound sample!!

I have at various times considered building one of these to learn bass on:

http://dennishavlena.com/db.htm

http://dennishavlena.com/practice.htm

Click to expand...

If I was going to make a bass like this I would use a wooden wine crate instead of a washtub, it would be more compact, be shaped mre like a bass, and look better. It would be a great complement to a cigar box uke.