Double bass

The largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in common orchestral use, also played by plucking in jazz and other styles.

Double bass tuning: The standard arrangement of pitches for the double bass’s four or five strings. Its fourths-based tuning shapes the instrument’s range and fingerboard patterns.
Violin family: The family of bowed string instruments that includes the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. The double bass shares the family’s bowed-string construction while differing in size and tuning.
Orchestral double bass section: The group of double bass players that performs together in an orchestra. The section supplies low notes and rhythmic weight in orchestral textures.
Viol: A family of bowed string instruments used in Europe from the Renaissance through the Baroque period. The double bass’s ancestry and early forms developed alongside the viol family.
Cello: A bowed string instrument tuned an octave above the double bass’s standard tuning. The cello occupies a higher register and is held between the player’s knees.
Scordatura: An alternative tuning of a string instrument’s strings from their usual pitches. Composers use altered tuning to change the double bass’s resonance or facilitate particular passages.
Acoustic resonance: The reinforcement of sound at frequencies that match an object’s natural vibration modes. The large body helps the double bass reinforce low-frequency string vibrations.
Jazz bass: The role of the double bass in jazz, commonly involving plucked timekeeping and melodic improvisation. Jazz made plucked double bass a defining source of pulse and harmonic outline.
Violone: A historical name for several large low-pitched bowed string instruments, including ancestors of the double bass. The term captures the varied instruments from which the modern double bass emerged.
Bass guitar: An electrically amplified fretted string instrument used to play bass lines in popular music. It serves many of the double bass’s musical functions with a different construction and amplification.

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