Double Bass, largest and lowest-pitched member of the violin family.
Three-stringed basses were common in the 18th and 19th centuries and survive in Eastern European folk music. Early basses of the 16th and 17th centuries had four or five (or, rarely, six) strings. Modern dance-band basses occasionally add a high fifth string tuned to the C above the G string. Until the 19th century, bass players used bows with the stick out-curved in relation to the bow hairΓÇölong after the in-curved bow was standard for the violin, viola, and cello. The out-curved bass bow continues in use alongside two in-curved models developed in the 19th century. Virtuosos on the double bass have included the Italian Domenico Dragonetti, the Russian-American conductor Serge Koussevitzky, and the American jazz bassist Charlie Mingus.
