…and he also plays the electric bass.
The bass guitar is an amplified contra bass, doing the part in music that bass does, not what guitar does, shaped like a guitar only because Leo Fender et al thought it would make it easier for guitarists to sub on a bass.
“A bass is a kind of a guitar” has always irked me, as function is WAY more important than form.
Is it function really all that important when it comes to naming instruments?
A justified question, because following that logic, you could call a tuba a “bass”.
Bass doesn’t have just one function. Plenty of melodic bass out there.
And it’s a guitar. It’s designed to be played horizontally and has frets, from the get-go. It’s not just an amplified double bass.
Yeah, I have no issue with the nomenclature. You have regular guitars. You have baritone guitars. And then you have bass guitars, at the lowest range. While I do agree that a good bass player does not generally play the bass as if it were simply a normal guitar (with notable exceptions, like Peter Hook), they’re all types of guitar, IMHO.
Oh, and another point in favor is that there are actual acoustic bass guitars which are different than regular acoustic basses.
Yes. For the extreme example, a fiddle and a violin are completely identical aside from their function, and yet they’re called two different things (yes, they usually have different kinds of strings, but not always: A steel-stringed instrument used to play classical is still a violin, and a gut-stringed instrument used to play bluegrass is still a fiddle).
I’m fond of saying that, in high school, I played first bass at all the football games. And to be strict about it, the instrument you’re referring to is properly referred to as a bass tuba: “Tuba” is a subcategory of brass instruments that also includes, for instance, the cornet.
That’s an argument that a bass guitar should have a different name than a double bass.
They are all different types of lutes.
NO. I was going to comment that Stayin’ Alive was disco thus decidedly not Rock. I loved the Bee Gees early stuff. I hated the disco.
You defined the function that narrowly, not me. The double bass has been used to play melodically well before the adoption and subsequent parallel use of the electric bass. It’s kind of the whole idea of these instruments, venturing both in rhythm and melody, bridging the gap and laying a foundation, not to mention some soloing. Plenty of melodic double bass soloing out there.
Frets have been used in all kinds of stringed instruments over the millennia & the globe. They do not make a guitar, neither does playing horizontally. And even the double bass has seen (removable) fret use, for beginners. That’s what an electric bass is. A stringed bass instrument easier to play (and haul) than the double bass. No, it’s not just an amplified double bass, those are a separate kind. But it is an electric bass, just like a car-shaped helicopter would still be a helicopter and not a car.
So, wait, exactly the same function as electric guitars, then?
Not on the normal contrabass, though. Which was what you said the electric bass was just an amplified version of.
You haven’t listened to enough Beatles, or Elvis, though Im’ not an Elvis fan.
Yacht rack gets almost as much hate here as disco. And while I’m not a fan of YR, I acknowledge that it (much like disco) is a product specific to a certain time in music history. The heavy metal of the early 70’s is fading out, hair metal hasn’t started, neither has speed/death/trash. Van Halen just put out the debut album and AC/DC was starting to get traction. Punk was not for mainstream radio so rock was in a limbo, sorta, not unlike rock’n’roll in the early 60’s.
People loved FM’s Rumours and if The Long Run isn’t YR, I don’t know what is.
Which brings me to an artist - but not the song - mentioned in the OP: Christoffer Cross. A guy who really can shred. I was made aware of this because Rick Beato and he does a great video on Ride Like the Wind. But when I was looking for that, specifically for this post, i found this . FF to 3:30.
Indeed he can. I saw that Rick Beato video too. Apparently when they mixed “Ride Like the Wind” they toned down his guitar and buried it under a lot of other Michael Omartian over-production. If you can find a video of CC playing it “live,” it will really give you a better appreciation of what an outstanding guitarist he is.
“Ride Like the Wind” is a great song, in my opinion. Unfortunately, a lot of his other songs, while catchy pop ditties, are not as exciting. I’ve always like “The Light Is On,” however. It was the flip side of one of his hits. I’ve also always enjoyed “Sailing,” but mostly because I was vacationing in Newport Rhode Island during the America’s Cup that year, and the song fit the ambiance of the event perfectly.
How and if it drives.