Is there another instrument which calls the size larger than bass "double bass", or does everything else in a larger-than-bass size get called "great bass"? The other instruments I can think of either don't get that large or call the next size "great bass", but I've got this nagging feeling I've forgotten something.
Going from bass to double bass makes me think that there's a lost instrument in between. Doubling an instrument makes it an octave lower. Most instrument families go in half-octave sizes. With recorders (shawms, krumhorns, etc) you'll find alternating C and F instruments through the size range -- a very wide range for recorders. (You can also find G altos, but that doesn't break the pattern.) Violin/viola/'cello doesn't seem to work, until you learn that there used to be something midway between the viola and the 'cello -- the tenor violin. The names I recall for large recorder sizes are bass (f), great bass (c), contra bass (F -- keep doubling size, we're past 6ft/2m now). Beyond that are the sub-contras, but I've never encountered one in the flesh. They'll be very, very big, very, very expensive, and very, very, very soft. (Unwieldy, inaudible, and expensive -- even by the standards of instruments -- no wonder we don't encounter them.)
So, um, it's the bowed instrument tuned the same as a bass guitar,
That was one of the things that clued me in to realizing that the bass was not quite-so-close kin to the violin/viola/'cello -- v/v/'c are tuned in 5ths, not 4ths. Viols and guitars are (mostly) tuned in 4ths. And the bass.
(no subject)
Going from bass to double bass makes me think that there's a lost instrument in between. Doubling an instrument makes it an octave lower. Most instrument families go in half-octave sizes. With recorders (shawms, krumhorns, etc) you'll find alternating C and F instruments through the size range -- a very wide range for recorders. (You can also find G altos, but that doesn't break the pattern.) Violin/viola/'cello doesn't seem to work, until you learn that there used to be something midway between the viola and the 'cello -- the tenor violin.
The names I recall for large recorder sizes are bass (f), great bass (c), contra bass (F -- keep doubling size, we're past 6ft/2m now). Beyond that are the sub-contras, but I've never encountered one in the flesh. They'll be very, very big, very, very expensive, and very, very, very soft. (Unwieldy, inaudible, and expensive -- even by the standards of instruments -- no wonder we don't encounter them.)
So, um, it's the bowed instrument tuned the same as a bass guitar,
That was one of the things that clued me in to realizing that the bass was not quite-so-close kin to the violin/viola/'cello -- v/v/'c are tuned in 5ths, not 4ths. Viols and guitars are (mostly) tuned in 4ths. And the bass.