Bass Lesson 01: parts of the bass
Taught by Lowe, your Change Your Strings Bass teacher ·
A bass guitar has a headstock with tuning pegs, a long neck with a fretboard and frets, and a body holding the pickups and bridge. It usually has four thick strings. From thickest to thinnest they are E, A, D, and G, tuned an octave below a guitar's lowest four.
Watch Shak's Bass Channel's walkthrough in the video above, then read the breakdown.
Welcome to the low end. The bass is the bridge between the drums and everything else, the instrument you feel more than hear. Before we chase any groove, learn the instrument, because every part has a job.
A bass breaks into three regions, same as a guitar, just bigger and lower.
- Headstock. The top end, holding the tuning pegs (machine heads). Each peg tightens or loosens one string to set its pitch. Bass pegs are large because bass strings are thick and hold a lot of tension.
- Neck. The long stretch your fretting hand travels. Its flat face is the fretboard, the metal strips are frets, and the nut at the top spaces the strings. Bass necks are longer than guitar necks, which is why the notes feel farther apart.
- Body. The slab against your ribs. Under the strings sit the pickups, which turn each string's vibration into signal. Near the bottom, the strings anchor at the bridge. Nearby you will find the volume and tone knobs and the output jack where the cable plugs in.
Now the strings, the heart of the matter. A standard bass has four, and they are thick. Held in playing position, the fattest string is on top, nearest your chin, and the thinnest is on the bottom. From thickest to thinnest, they are E, A, D, G. Those are the same letter names as a guitar's lowest four strings, but a bass sounds a full octave deeper. That depth is the whole point.
Know these four strings cold. Everything you play, every root note and every groove, starts by finding the right string.
Practice this
Take three minutes. Point to and name each part out loud: headstock, tuning pegs, nut, neck, fretboard, frets, body, pickups, bridge, knobs, jack. Then pluck each open string slowly, thickest to thinnest, and say its name: E, A, D, G. Let each note ring its full length and just listen to how low it sits. Naming beats speed today.
Where you are
This is Lesson 01, the ground floor of the bass track. Those four strings are the foundation players like Flea build entire careers on, and you can see what actually goes on your instrument over in bass and guitar strings. Next, Lesson 02: right-hand fingerstyle basics, where your plucking hand starts making the notes speak.