The Bach Cello Suites.

[Yngwie 4String]

Yeah Ive been exposed to Yngwie Malmsteen and I now want to learn how to play that type of classical influenced stuff. So I decided to start with the Bach Cello Suites. Any general pointers on how to play these would be appreciated. It is by far my most ambitious endeavor.

[liltommyg]

I'll quote a piano player i've met re Yngwie: " listen to that ! Bach played badly and it still sounds good".
But to your question, I've being doing the two and three part inventions for the best part of 15 tears now and it is down to the basics - one finger per fret spacing ,arch your fingers while playing , start slowly and bulid speed, try a few different fingerings to find the easiest and of course stamina( which only comes from hard work)

[Yngwie 4String]

I'll quote a piano player i've met re Yngwie: " listen to that ! Bach played badly and it still sounds good".

BADLY!?! Yngwie is the man, I dunno what the piano guy was smoking. Maybe he just didnt like the electric guitar or something (Ive met those people).
At any rate thank you very much. Ill work on the fingerings, I have all the stanima you could ask for, I play all the time.

[22w1st3d]

i find it more meaningful to be very rubato about the time and feel. if you see the cresendos and decresendos o the music you might like the dramatic points bach put in, as i noticed. i put my own according to where to felt the music sounded best to climax and slow. i did that and found them great fun to play, especially when i used it for my exams.

[BassChuck]

They are a challenge and a good one. Get a good recording of them played on cello (there are hundreds) and a few recordings played on guitar. Search YouTube and you'll find a few played on electric bass, although a good number of them are of questionable quality.

Remember that they were written for an instrument that has it's strings tuned in fifths. My children play cello and most kids can play these pieces by the time they are in high school. They are a bit harder to play on bass than cello.

Some people insist that they be played at the same pitch as the cello. There is no reason for this, but with Bach, like most older masters, there are people that have very little flexiblity in performance and interpretation. IMO; do what you need to do to let the music come out. I've found that with the 1st Suite its easier to play in the key of A instead of G. But like I said, the Purity Police might have an issue with that.

If you find the suites a bit too difficult, but you still want to play music in that general style, go to BassBooks.com and find the book, "77 Baroque Bass Lines" compiled by UMMP Press. (do a search for 'etudes')

Good luck. Once you really get into this music you'll find that you find great personal pleasure playing it. And one more note: You'll never stop working on them, Cello Suites are a life time journey.

[beggar98]

I have this book, which I like a lot. It comes with a CD of some pretty bland performances of the songs, but it is a good place to start.

[One Bad Monkey]

+1 on getting a good cello recording; I really enjoy the Rostropovich double-CD set of them.

The hardest part I have found isn't so much the notes; you know how to work on that. It's getting the actual feel of the pieces themselves. Practice it until you can breeze through them technically, and then go back and start playing them with expression and motion.

[JimmyM]

BTW, there are many translations of the Bach cello suites, and according to Dave LaRue, the version that Bass Central sells is the version best suited to bass players. I wish I knew which version it was, but Bass Central has a forum here and I'm sure they can tell you.

BTW, I have a version of the suites on MP3 made by someone who I never heard of, and you should hear this guy grunt while he plays! I wish I could remember his name. My favorite is Yo Yo-Ma's, because it's recorded really well.

[Marcury]

Originally Posted by JimmyM

BTW, there are many translations of the Bach cello suites, and according to Dave LaRue, the version that Bass Central sells is the version best suited to bass players. I wish I knew which version it was, but Bass Central has a forum here and I'm sure they can tell you.

BTW, I have a version of the suites on MP3 made by someone who I never heard of, and you should hear this guy grunt while he plays! I wish I could remember his name. My favorite is Yo Yo-Ma's, because it's recorded really well.

If you buy a version printed for Cello, Try to find one that doesn't have the fingerings or bowing articulations written in (most do). That way if you want to you'll have space to write your own in and not be distracted by someone else interpretation. There is an edition by Daniel Vandersall which has just the notes. It really pays to listen to as many recorded versions as you can. I suggest starting with Pablo Casals recordings because they were the first. It was Casals who, rediscovered the Suites and made them a part of the performance repertoire, so by starting there you have a baseline with which to compare the variety of interpretations that have come after and can use that information to craft your own.

Congratulations on starting what is a lifetime exploration The Cello Suites are some of the most sublime music ever written.

[Deathblade Eric]

There are some transcriptions on the nice Graeme Fyfe's website here...

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/fyfeholt/bach.htm

Not tried 'em myself, so you're on your own there.

Originally Posted by Marcury

The Cello Suites are some of the most sublime music ever written.

Utterly. The Pierre Fournier/Deutsche Grammophon recording is never far away from my CD player. Beautiful.

Pete.

[rkgtech]

Originally Posted by Yngwie 4String

Yeah Ive been exposed to Yngwie Malmsteen and I now want to learn how to play that type of classical influenced stuff. So I decided to start with the Bach Cello Suites. Any general pointers on how to play these would be appreciated. It is by far my most ambitious endeavor.

Good to know someone else took the same route as I did I thought I was crazy.. Anyways, here are 2 books that I bought that I LOVE (since I cannot read music and I have to wait for someone else to tab it out. Of course, the best recommendation would be to learn how to read and do this all by yourself..

http://www.bassbooks.com/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=469

http://www.bassbooks.com/shopping/sh...p?id=809&bc=no

I am also going to buy this one (since it has other works of bach)
http://www.bassbooks.com/shopping/sh...arch=yes&bc=no

Just so much fun to play these that I have stopped playing anything else and am trying to learn the classical guitar now (OK, i took it too far).

IN these books there are paganini's caprices and vivaldi's pieces that are a nightmare to play (for me) too.

HTH

[SLaPiNFuNK]

Originally Posted by beggar98

I have this book, which I like a lot. It comes with a CD of some pretty bland performances of the songs, but it is a good place to start.

I used to have that book, i cant find it anywhere...

[22pauld22]

Originally Posted by Deathblade Eric

There are some transcriptions on the nice Graeme Fyfe's website here...

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/fyfeholt/bach.htm



Pete.

thanks for that .. excellent
it will give me and my new fretless sx (under the desk and work bass) something to do on the lonely night shifts

cheers
Paul

[Hoover]

Originally Posted by One Bad Monkey

+1 on getting a good cello recording.

+2
I've been playing the Bach 'cello suites since I was an undergrad (which means about 25 years...yikes!) but it was only 2 years ago that I heard a real 'cellist play them

...and I realized that for 25 years I'd been playing them wrong!

Not that the notes or rhythms were wrong...but the "flow", the dramatic arc, the general shape of the pieces turned out to be much more...well, for lack of a better word, "organic" than the way I'd been executing them. (Heh...yeah, "executing", that's definitely what I'd been doing to them!)

As electric bassists (especially if you work a lot in commercial music) we tend to strive towards achieving a very uniform attack and consistent dynamic from note to note. But this is completely antithetical to performing the Bach suites! The expression and dynamics which provide clarity to Bach's inner lines absolutely require that you shape notes differently depending on how they function (sic). E.g., there are some passages that are supposed to create a contrapuntal dialog between melody and accompinament that I had been trying to play like one of those Pastorius/Prestia 16th note machine grooves! So wrong...

[Dave Grossman]

I will be playing all six Cello Suites on my 7-string bass in Oakland/Berkeley on Sunday, November 25th.

Click on the link in my sig for more info.

Also, check out: http://www.youtube.com/user/DaveGrossmanSoloBass

- Dave

[Thor]

Originally Posted by JimmyM

BTW, there are many translations of the Bach cello suites, and according to Dave LaRue, the version that Bass Central sells is the version best suited to bass players. I wish I knew which version it was, but Bass Central has a forum here and I'm sure they can tell you.

BTW, I have a version of the suites on MP3 made by someone who I never heard of, and you should hear this guy grunt while he plays! I wish I could remember his name. My favorite is Yo Yo-Ma's, because it's recorded really well.

I saw Yo Yo Ma last year, the guy was absolutely astonishing.
I came away truly humbled. And the tone, OMFG. Unreal.

[rkgtech]

Originally Posted by Hoover

+2
I've been playing the Bach 'cello suites since I was an undergrad (which means about 25 years...yikes!) but it was only 2 years ago that I heard a real 'cellist play them

...and I realized that for 25 years I'd been playing them wrong!

Not that the notes or rhythms were wrong...but the "flow", the dramatic arc, the general shape of the pieces turned out to be much more...well, for lack of a better word, "organic" than the way I'd been executing them. (Heh...yeah, "executing", that's definitely what I'd been doing to them!)

As electric bassists (especially if you work a lot in commercial music) we tend to strive towards achieving a very uniform attack and consistent dynamic from note to note. But this is completely antithetical to performing the Bach suites! The expression and dynamics which provide clarity to Bach's inner lines absolutely require that you shape notes differently depending on how they function (sic). E.g., there are some passages that are supposed to create a contrapuntal dialog between melody and accompinament that I had been trying to play like one of those Pastorius/Prestia 16th note machine grooves! So wrong...

One thing that I do notice in some bass players (not all) who play the cello suites (or part of them) is lack of emotion..

btw, anyone tried asturias on bass yet? or anyone does paganini on bass? or maybe some vivaldi?

[sk8terguy316]

Nothing against Yngwie and what he does, but what is it you enjoy more in his playing the musicality or the speed? If it is the musicality you enjoy I suggest you enhance your musicality and technical prowess by learning bach studying the melodies and possibly trying to learn Voice Leading and different Four-Part harmonies. I haven't tried this, but the way I look at at it four part harmoines that are written for voice (Bass,Soprano,Tenor,Alto) are similar to the strings ([b],E,A,D,G,[C]) so each string could be a voice (or two). I'm sure if you worked on things like this it would help your speed so you can play musically satsfying lines as fast as you please.

[Vengoropatubus]

There's a section of an arrangement of Angels We Have Heard on High that I heard today that would be absolutely PERFECT for rearranging into a two-handed tapping solo

[El-Bob]

Originally Posted by Yngwie 4String

Yngwie is the man.

i'm also a big yngwie fan (i have all or most of his albums), and this cello suite thing sounds like fun, i think i'll give it a try too