BSOs in the school orchestra

[ThumpPlunkJunk]

In my orchestra, the majority of attention is placed upon the violins. They have the decent instruments, the better violinists, the most and best solos and to keep this short, the conductor favors them a lot.

So, if the violins had slipped pegs or if somebody breaks a bridge or something like that, they're fixed quickly. They get their strings changed twice during the year--basses are lucky to get theirs changed once every five years.

The violins are taken care of very well. They've got big, metal and plastic lockers to put them in, which lock, and in their cases, the humidity doesn't get to them. The basses are kept out of their cases and put on a rack. Our school does not have heat past the time that the school closes, and in the winter, this threw us out of tune regularly.

Now, tragically, our best, carved, German bass has cracked twice this year, and the heel has a large, noticeable crack in it as well as the fingerboard starting to come loose.

The next-best bass we have is a 20 year old ply that has a constant rattle on the G string, can't play up past thumb position because the rattle gets too intense and you're not making notes anymore after that, just horrible, groaning sounds.

We have one last bass that's worth playing--it's the newest addition and is something like two years old, now. It's a quality instrument, from Lemur, and besides some fingerboard wear, it's in good shape. You can't play G sharps on it, though, because something about the nut causes a bad rattle.

There are four more basses in our orchestra, and they're all horrible. The others have problems that can be fixed, but these are money-sinks and I can't seem to get the conductor to look at this of her own accord. They're bass-shaped-objects, really. The fingerboard on one is far too low, so that playing above thumb position is made impossible. Not a problem, though, considering it's rare for us to exceed third position (because we only play accompaniments to violin solos, really). The endpin on another is like a pissy badger--you have to coax her out and when she does, she charges out full bore and you won't get her back into the bass without muscling it. The same bass has what me and another bassist call "stretch marks" around the endpin hole--they're five or six cracks in the wood that have only gotten deeper in the last year or two, and have only spread farther up the bass.

All of these, except the carved bass (I don't let that one out of my sight!), have dead strings that are coated in thick globs of rosin, and in faster passages, white dust rises from the bass section's strings because of this. Nobody cleans the basses regularly, either, so we've got those dustings of rosin on the tops of our basses, now, and they won't come off without a fight. Our cases are moldy, so when we put the cases on them at the end of the week and rack them up, they come out smelling like dead cats and having fine mists of black stuff on them that takes ten minutes a piece to clean off--it gets everywhere, in the scroll, in the tuners, in the bouts and inside the basses, as well.

To make this worse, we've got bows that are 20 years old. At first, when I heard this as a freshman, I thought: "Cool, old stuff, I like old stuff!" but when I saw the Germans, they were falling apart. It looks like some bassist went through five German bows and broke them all and then donated them to the school. The french bows are all the wrong size (half-sized bows for 3/4 instruments) and their bow-hairs are oiled-up from peoples fingers touching them.

But, enough of the whining and belly-aching. Now that you know the bass situation at my school, what is advisable? I've told the conductor that we need to get some of the basses repaired, but I'm afraid to tell her that some of them are just horrible basses to begin with (Those $300, Tennessee basses you see on eBay). She might get one of them repaired now and then, but by that time, there are more problems that she ignored that are getting worse and worse by the day.

So what should I do? I need to bring this to her attention because we sound absolutely horrendous. It's not even a little bad--the whole section sounds bad and it just makes the our section less-cared about, because we're seen as the section that can't play. It's not that we can't play--we have a few good bassists, I think--it's that even when we're making the right notes, we sound bad. It makes it hard for anybody to care about us because we're viewed as already being bad to start off with.

Help!

[drurb]

I suggest you send this written plea to your conductor. What else can you do short of supplying the funds to rectify the situation? I suspect $$$ are much of the issue. It'll probably take more than a bake sale.

[ThumpPlunkJunk]

Originally Posted by drurb

I suggest you send this written plea to your conductor. What else can you do short of supplying the funds to rectify the situation? I suspect $$$ are much of the issue. It'll probably take more than a bake sale.

We could just sell off the bad ones and use that money to get the decent ones repaired.

Those who have their own could bring their own bass in, perhaps?

[Eric Hochberg]

You can get Shen SB80s for $1500, so figure out a way to raise 6k. If it's a bake sale, the cookies better be killer!

[LouisF]

Where in Pennsylvania are you?

This SO reminds me of my own HS (45 years ago!) - the basses and bows were crap with ancient gut strings (there was one 1/2 size blonde Kay that actually sounded worse than the old German basses; when they did buy a new bass, it was a Roth fiberglass bass!)

But there was a band/orchestra parents association that finally helped.

But the real issue (I think) is your conductor and others just expects student bassists to sound bad etc; She would be the first educator with that POV

Louis

[chris1125]

Sounds like a major issue... First of all, I would bring my bow in. It's not bad to carry around a bow case, or atleast no as bad as a bass
If you get one of the double cases you can let another bassist borrow one too. Through highschool I learned how to do simple repairs. Bridge adjustments, string replacements (yes I have donated used strings to the school in the past), even the occasional seem repair. Cracks are a whole different story. I would think you could find away to remove that mold... Hmmm... I guess if you have an extra case around you could bring in your own?
The obviousely problem with these suggestions is that they all require money unless you are lucky and I've equiped. Might not hurt to do fundraisers, talk to the teacher, talk to the school board, etc.
Schools in pa don't have much of a budget right now (trust me, I know from experience) so you may have to give the teacher the benifit of the doubt. Violin repairs are fa more inexpensive then bass repairs which can be a huge investment. You mentioned 2 cracks and a broken neck, that repair could easily cost you over $1000.
I would start by talking to the teacher about necessary repairs and go from there.

[chris1125]

Sounds like a major issue... First of all, I would bring my bow in. It's not bad to carry around a bow case, or atleast no as bad as a bass
If you get one of the double cases you can let another bassist borrow one too. Through highschool I learned how to do simple repairs. Bridge adjustments, string replacements (yes I have donated used strings to the school in the past), even the occasional seem repair. Cracks are a whole different story. I would think you could find away to remove that mold... Hmmm... I guess if you have an extra case around you could bring in your own?
The obviousely problem with these suggestions is that they all require money unless you are lucky and I've equiped. Might not hurt to do fundraisers, talk to the teacher, talk to the school board, etc.
Schools in pa don't have much of a budget right now (trust me, I know from experience) so you may have to give the teacher the benifit of the doubt. Violin
repairs are fa more inexpensive then bass repairs which can be a huge investment. You mentioned 2 cracks and a broken neck, that repair could easily cost you over $1000.
I would start by talking to the teacher about necessary repairs and go from there.

[ThumpPlunkJunk]

Originally Posted by Eric Hochberg

You can get Shen SB80s for $1500, so figure out a way to raise 6k. If it's a bake sale, the cookies better be killer!

Our German club (which I belong to) raised $4,000 in pie sales recently--the orchestra could do that, as well as some t-shirt sales. Whatever would sell.

Originally Posted by LouisF

Where in Pennsylvania are you?

This SO reminds me of my own HS (45 years ago!) - the basses and bows were crap with ancient gut strings (there was one 1/2 size blonde Kay that actually sounded worse than the old German basses; when they did buy a new bass, it was a Roth fiberglass bass!)

But there was a band/orchestra parents association that finally helped.

But the real issue (I think) is your conductor and others just expects student bassists to sound bad etc; She would be the first educator with that POV

Louis

Eastern PA, in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton area.

I haven't known any other conductor to think the way she does about basses in an orchestra. We're a tertiary thought, to her, really. My teacher brings up a good point--that basses are a different animal in comparison to the rest of the viols, and that might be why she doesn't care about them too much. She doesn't know how to play the bass, which is fine, but what's not fine is that her lack of knowledge causes her to just not care about the way we sound at all. If there's a tough passage, she'll just change it so we play eighth notes or quarter notes, she won't work us through it like the other sections.

Originally Posted by chris1125

Sounds like a major issue... First of all, I would bring my bow in. It's not bad to carry around a bow case, or atleast no as bad as a bass
If you get one of the double cases you can let another bassist borrow one too. Through highschool I learned how to do simple repairs. Bridge adjustments, string replacements (yes I have donated used strings to the school in the past), even the occasional seem repair. Cracks are a whole different story. I would think you could find away to remove that mold... Hmmm... I guess if you have an extra case around you could bring in your own?
The obviousely problem with these suggestions is that they all require money unless you are lucky and I've equiped. Might not hurt to do fundraisers, talk to the teacher, talk to the school board, etc.
Schools in pa don't have much of a budget right now (trust me, I know from experience) so you may have to give the teacher the benifit of the doubt. Violin repairs are fa more inexpensive then bass repairs which can be a huge investment. You mentioned 2 cracks and a broken neck, that repair could easily cost you over $1000.
I would start by talking to the teacher about necessary repairs and go from there.

I'll do that. I've pestered her about it before but she tells me that she knows and that it's not urgent. My thought is, if you know about these problems, you also know the longer you turn a blind eye to them, the worse they'll get.

I'll hound her on it, though. It's going to cost us more in "necessary" repairs when one of these instruments implodes or something than it would if we'd had gotten it fixed.

I found a decent bow at school last year--it was tossed in the "German" pile that's accumulated over the years. The conductor accepts these trash bows through donations and puts them behind the bass rack because nobody uses them, but I found a usable one in the lot. It should be re-haired soon, though--it's got half as many hairs as the one I use at home. What's funny is that we also have a bow case at school. I have no idea why. We don't travel with them and if we do it's short trips to old folks home to play with the serenata group--all the pieces we play are pizzicato, so.

I'll pitch a bake sale or something to her as well.

We usually get a good turnout for concerts, so maybe we can arrange a pops concert with our honors orchestra to pony up some extra money.

T-shirts sell well, also, but people don't buy them very often because the other clubs sell them for like $20 a pop--which nobody I know would ever pay for a t-shirt that costs $1 to make.

[chris1125]

Originally Posted by ThumpPlunkJunk

Our German club (which I belong to) raised $4,000 in pie sales recently--the orchestra could do that, as well as some t-shirt sales. Whatever would sell.

Eastern PA, in the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton area.

I haven't known any other conductor to think the way she does about basses in an orchestra. We're a tertiary thought, to her, really. My teacher brings up a good point--that basses are a different animal in comparison to the rest of the viols, and that might be why she doesn't care about them too much. She doesn't know how to play the bass, which is fine, but what's not fine is that her lack of knowledge causes her to just not care about the way we sound at all. If there's a tough passage, she'll just change it so we play eighth notes or quarter notes, she won't work us through it like the other sections.

I'll do that. I've pestered her about it before but she tells me that she knows and that it's not urgent. My thought is, if you know about these problems, you also know the longer you turn a blind eye to them, the worse they'll get.

I'll hound her on it, though. It's going to cost us more in "necessary" repairs when one of these instruments implodes or something than it would if we'd had gotten it fixed.

I found a decent bow at school last year--it was tossed in the "German" pile that's accumulated over the years. The conductor accepts these trash bows through donations and puts them behind the bass rack because nobody uses them, but I found a usable one in the lot. It should be re-haired soon, though--it's got half as many hairs as the one I use at home. What's funny is that we also have a bow case at school. I have no idea why. We don't travel with them and if we do it's short trips to old folks home to play with the serenata group--all the pieces we play are pizzicato, so.

I'll pitch a bake sale or something to her as well.

We usually get a good turnout for concerts, so maybe we can arrange a pops concert with our honors orchestra to pony up some extra money.

T-shirts sell well, also, but people don't buy them very often because the other clubs sell them for like $20 a pop--which nobody I know would ever pay for a t-shirt that costs $1 to make.

Sounds like you have a good plan! Yeah I have done some fundraisers for things like that with tshirts and they turn out pretty well. The school had a deal with a tshirt company so we get basic shirts for $5 or so and can sell them for 10. Your program certainly sounds Bette then what we have in Erie... Millcreek townships highschool (where I live) barely has enough musicians to make one orchestra and there is not much talent to say the least. To bad you were not at the states festival last week, there were tons of vendors to talk to.

[PaulCannon]

You have two distinct complaints which I think you will want to address separately. The first is the quality and condition of the educational equipment your school has provided, second being your instructor's perceived lack of interest in double bass students. The latter issue is probably worth a frank conversation with your teacher and nothing further. The first issue, and the topic of this thread, may require a little more effort.

I think the specific problems you have enumerated here should be brought to the school administrators' attention. If you've already discussed this with your teacher (which should be your first step), I would suggest writing a letter that explains the issues in non-technical terms and send it to your school principal, district superintendent, the school board, and the local PTA. You could even send an abbreviated version to your local newspaper as a letter to the editor.

You may want to identify a luthier who would be willing to come to your school and give repair estimates. Some shops will do this as a free service if there is an understanding that the school has a budget for at least some of the repairs.

Finally, if school teachers are going to insist on only changing bass strings every 5 or 10 years, they could at least use Spirocores. They're about the only string that still sounds ok once it's dead.

[ThumpPlunkJunk]

Originally Posted by chris1125

Sounds like you have a good plan! Yeah I have done some fundraisers for things like that with tshirts and they turn out pretty well. The school had a deal with a tshirt company so we get basic shirts for $5 or so and can sell them for 10. Your program certainly sounds Bette then what we have in Erie... Millcreek townships highschool (where I live) barely has enough musicians to make one orchestra and there is not much talent to say the least. To bad you were not at the states festival last week, there were tons of vendors to talk to.

I'd rather have a small group of kids who want to play than a big group like we have, with most not wanting to be there.

That'll change next year, though--they're going to squeeze a lot of kids out of the orchestra because they're making it a 5-day a week thing, meaning you have Orchestra every day, which most kids don't want. I'm expecting our orchestra to be cut in half, really.

We sent two violinists to states with our director. I wasn't one of them xD.

Originally Posted by PaulCannon

You have two distinct complaints which I think you will want to address separately. The first is the quality and condition of the educational equipment your school has provided, second being your instructor's perceived lack of interest in double bass students. The latter issue is probably worth a frank conversation with your teacher and nothing further. The first issue, and the topic of this thread, may require a little more effort.

I think the specific problems you have enumerated here should be brought to the school administrators' attention. If you've already discussed this with your teacher (which should be your first step), I would suggest writing a letter that explains the issues in non-technical terms and send it to your school principal, district superintendent, the school board, and the local PTA. You could even send an abbreviated version to your local newspaper as a letter to the editor.

You may want to identify a luthier who would be willing to come to your school and give repair estimates. Some shops will do this as a free service if there is an understanding that the school has a budget for at least some of the repairs.

Finally, if school teachers are going to insist on only changing bass strings every 5 or 10 years, they could at least use Spirocores. They're about the only string that still sounds ok once it's dead.

I'll talk to her on Tuesday about it. If she won't do anything I'll ask to start a fundraiser or two and grab some other kids who want to do it and we'll do it on our own. I wouldn't want to start any sort of trouble with the director if I sent a letter to the PTA and administrator and the reason the basses have been so neglected is because we haven't had ample money in recent years to take care of them, and the conductor doesn't care about them, so I have a feeling we'd get denied some green to purchase new ones or get repairs on the ones we have. If we can't raise the money on our own I'll write up a letter to the administrator to pick up the difference, if we can manage, and if not, to notify her about the state of the basses in our program so that they're given some priority over the other things our schools will need.

I think we use Heliocores or somesuch spelling of the word. They don't get changed because she forgets about them, so I'm thinking we may have some extras lying around somewhere, just nobody's changed them.

[vejesse]

It could be worse. The Governor of my state has decided to pay off the state's deficit by taking money out of public school system. 834 million dollars will be removed in the next two year budget.

Wisconsin's public school upright basses are facing deferred maintenance in the extreme.

[bassist1962]

When I was in HS the director/conductor/teacher had an arrangement with the local Philharmonic to come in once or twice a year. A couple players from each section, who assessed your technique and instrument maintenance. What you described would not have been tolerated, and something would have been done about it. Being in the area you are, is there not some similar arrangement with the symphony?

[ThumpPlunkJunk]

Originally Posted by vejesse

It could be worse. The Governor of my state has decided to pay off the state's deficit by taking money out of public school system. 834 million dollars will be removed in the next two year budget.

Wisconsin's public school upright basses are facing deferred maintenance in the extreme.

Walker...

Originally Posted by bassist1962

When I was in HS the director/conductor/teacher had an arrangement with the local Philharmonic to come in once or twice a year. A couple players from each section, who assessed your technique and instrument maintenance. What you described would not have been tolerated, and something would have been done about it. Being in the area you are, is there not some similar arrangement with the symphony?

Not that I know of.

[longfinger]

Some things the bassists of your group could do for free according to your OP.

- Clean the strings. Use rubbing alcohol or simple vinegar and a rag. Perhaps even de-tension 1 string, clean it and re-tension it before moving to the next string.
- clean the top of the basses, remove the rosin specs. A rag with some vinegar could work. Dry the bass afterwards.
- borrow a vacuum cleaner and clean out the bass cases. (The "mold" may more likely be flaking plastic or foam from the case itself.)
- Every bassist should clean the strings and the bass at the end of every class with a dry cloth
- bag the basses every night to protect them from humidity and temp changes. (though now this may be less of an issue weather-wise.)
- if possible, have each bassist set their end-pin and leave it. So the hard to move ones are not moved.

There is a thread somewhere in the "bows" folder of how to clean the hairs of a bow. Try doing that with one of the worst 'oiled-up' bows first, before moving to a less problematic bow.

Ask your parents to bring this up in the next parent-teacher meeting.

Summer is almost here....

[tk4207]

Originally Posted by vejesse

It could be worse. The Governor of my state has decided to pay off the state's deficit by taking money out of public school system. 834 million dollars will be removed in the next two year budget.

Wisconsin's public school upright basses are facing deferred maintenance in the extreme.

Wisconsin band student here, just saying that I'm glad my band director's got his head on straight! He finally purchased an upright bass with the band's funds after pleading with him for a year, because I wanted to learn

[ThumpPlunkJunk]

Originally Posted by longfinger

Some things the bassists of your group could do for free according to your OP.

- Clean the strings. Use rubbing alcohol or simple vinegar and a rag. Perhaps even de-tension 1 string, clean it and re-tension it before moving to the next string.
- clean the top of the basses, remove the rosin specs. A rag with some vinegar could work. Dry the bass afterwards.
- borrow a vacuum cleaner and clean out the bass cases. (The "mold" may more likely be flaking plastic or foam from the case itself.)
- Every bassist should clean the strings and the bass at the end of every class with a dry cloth
- bag the basses every night to protect them from humidity and temp changes. (though now this may be less of an issue weather-wise.)
- if possible, have each bassist set their end-pin and leave it. So the hard to move ones are not moved.

There is a thread somewhere in the "bows" folder of how to clean the hairs of a bow. Try doing that with one of the worst 'oiled-up' bows first, before moving to a less problematic bow.

Ask your parents to bring this up in the next parent-teacher meeting.

Summer is almost here....

I actually have a study hall on the day we get back--I may just bring in a bottle of vinegar and a rag and do it myself.

My district doesn't have parent-teacher conferences anymore. Well, they do, but you need to get in trouble to have them. But I'll talk to the director about it. I don't see why she would have a problem with a fundraiser or something to get the basses replaced or repaired, though.

The repairs are what worries me the most, honestly. The broken neck, the loose fingerboard, the crack around the endpin and whatnot. We have a luthier that we call in once a year to look at all of the instruments and he tells the director if they need to be fixed or not, but he's already been through this year. He even sold us a new cello. I don't know how these things got overlooked though, or how they took a back seat in importance.

[chris1125]

Originally Posted by vejesse

It could be worse. The Governor of my state has decided to pay off the state's deficit by taking money out of public school system. 834 million dollars will be removed in the next two year budget.

Wisconsin's public school upright basses are facing deferred maintenance in the extreme.

Same thing is happening in PA. Music programs are being cut left in right. Cutting education is not a way of improving America. Unbelievable

[PostBop]

What does BSO stand for?

[Stev187]

Originally Posted by longfinger

Some things the bassists of your group could do for free according to your OP.

I like this idea, and I had a similar suggestion, though I lack the K-12 music experience to know specifically how to do it. Here's my suggestion:

I agree with the other (more knowledgeable) list members that you should "complain" in writing. Before you do that, though, I would take some preliminary steps.

1. Document the current state of the instruments--methodically photograph them all and perhaps build a spreadsheet listing condition, etc. (should be easy with digital cameras/phones these days)
2. Perform whatever cleaning/maintenance can be done without technical experience (with permission, of course)
3. Research some scenarios for what it would cost to replace/repair some or all of the instruments
4. Sketch out some plans to raise some funds (as was said before, you probably can't cover it all)
5. Seek out potential partners in the area who might help--a local music store, the chamber of commerce, a church, college or university, etc.

In other words, organize yourselves as bassists and take some action steps toward making the situation better. Write it all up in a brief report and attach that to the "complaint." Look for allies or partners in solving the problem. Doing it this way will accomplish a few things. First, it will show to the "powers that be" that you are serious about solving the problem. Second, it establishes a baseline (no pun intended) of the current situation. Third, it removes any conjecture about the current state of affairs (nobody can say "oh, those kids don't care about the instruments" or "those basses aren't that bad," etc.). Finally, it should be fun. I'd counsel you to be very constructive and positive in your approach; resources of any kind in schools are scarce these days. Don't make one of these administrators think to themselves "look, kid... you're lucky we still have a music program." You want them to think, "wow... look at the constructive and positive approach they've taken to this problem; let's do what we can to help these kids achieve their goal."

That might sound like a lot of work, but my guess is that it will get you closer to your desired result than a more aggressive approach. In short, you want to move your issue from the "complaints that require financial resources" pile into the "innovative learning opportunities and community partnerships" pile. If your school is like many others, that first pile is growing faster than the second one.

Just my opinion.

--Steve