Hi! A pretty stupid question, but what do you inperticularly call it?

its called a bass guitar and a bassist is the person who plays it,some basic information: a bass guitar has only 4 strings tuned to E A D G which r all low or flat notes compared to a guitar, the bass cleff is used in bass guitar notation -unlike the treble cleff used for standard guitar notations -. bass guitar is considered easier to play than a guitar once u develop dextirity for it but the fact that u play only bass notes makes a bassist second to a guitarist a bassist doesnot lead the song .. or play rythm!!

<Added>

it is written bass but pronounced base btw

Thank you,hummin9bird. Your information was informing. I'm well aquanted with the bass. I've been playing for about 2 years and guitar for 7. But my real question is, is it really necisary to add the guitar? I know alot of other professional bassist who only refer to it as a bass. Thank you, though.

Yes, there is a distinction, the bass is considered the double bass in classical terms. The guitar designation indicates the instrument is fretted and not played in an upright fashion with a bow typically (although pizzicato is common in jazz, folk and country circles). While there are bass guitars that are fretless as both acoustic and electric (and acoustic/electric combinations) they are not considered double basses. Musically they share the same lineage, but mechanically they evolved from different instruments.

Thanks, that really cleared things up!

But my real question is, is it really necisary to add the guitar?

Or, to put it another way, it isn't necessary to append guitar in a context where it can be reasonably assumed to be understood; in other contexts it is necessary.

(Besides the double bass, there are also bass trombones, bass clarinets, and so on.)

Good point Scotch! Most of the time I'm talking about music is at my school's after school rock club, and when someone mentions bass, it usually refer to the bass guitar. There are no woodwinds in rock club. In other places, it would probably be more proper to add the guitar.

There is one historical oddball worth mentioning. It's not technically part of the bass family but has aspects of multiple instruments. It's called the arpeggione. It is tuned like a guitar and fretted like a viol but played with a bow like a cello. It's been out of favor for more than a century but Schubert wrote some things for it. It is a cousin of the bass viola da gamba . There aren't many of these beasts around and I think a luthier would charge quite a pretty penny to make one for you.

Now here is an oddball situation not many of you have ever heard of. I play the bass guitar tuned like a cello on the same octave as a bass. The tuning is C,G,D,A from low to high. I tune it that way because I also play the cello and don't want to bother changing the fingering and the bass is fretless. My opinion here on this discussion is no matter what instrument you use to do it, the part you play is the bass line. So therefore your assignment in whatever group you are in is bass. The sound is pretty much the same and your produce the bottom end to the music which sounds pretty weak without it. The only difference in the sound is the difference a bowed note to a plucked note to a note produced by a pic or amplified or unamplified. All these different ways produce the same function. Put a nice low end to any piece of music and the music is better with it.
Now what would you call me, a bass player, a bass guitar player or a cellist?