I've been doing musical theatre gigs more and more lately and I've noticed that almost all of the books I've seen have a significant amount of notes below low E. Why is that? Do the big-time Broadway players all have extensions?
Are they specifically DB? Do you have originals of the show? I've found a lot of musicals usually feature BG (5 string, at that) and have DB as an "aside" kind of thing.
That, or the arrangement is ignorant and untransposed.
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Originally Posted by HollowBassman
Doesn't she know that they're not really people until the age of about three?
I was referring to the double bass parts. The show that I had in mind when I posted was Ragtime, which is all DB. I do a solid number of musicals on bass guitar as well but I have a five string plank so the low notes aren't an issue.
Oh yeah, very common. Musicals are just funny tht way. I think perhaps a lot of bass parts are (poorly done) transcriptions from other instruments (tuba?? organ? piano? ????) that go lower than bass.
I wonder if other instruments run into range problems too.
Kind of makes me feel better about all my orchestration blunders.
Ragtime, as I remember was one of the most well-written scores of the several shows I've had the pleasure of doing, so I wouldn't put this one in the category of one that was from a tuba part copy. I've run across several bass parts that have extended low notes which are usually in arco sections. Once I borrowed a five-string for a show and the effect is pretty dramatic. A lot of times you will see where previous players have marked when to open or close extensions so, at least with the shows that tour out of NYC, evidently they come across a lot of players that have instruments with extensions or 5 strings.
In 10 years of doing shows I've never encountered this problem. Where are you getting the score books from? Any of the big name librairies in NY have the real deal score books.
Sounds like someone took the left hand piano part and wrote it out as bass....in which case it will sound terrible.
Thanks for all the feedback, fellas. Ike is right; Ragtime is very well written.
mm5string, the book I was referring to is from MTI. I've played books that were clearly ordered from lower quality publishers but this gig is not one of them.
At last night's rehearsal I was able to make out a few previously erased notes about where to open and close extensions. This is perhaps the only time I will ever answer my own question on TalkBass.
As for me, I'll be playing up the octave for the many years that it takes me to even dream about a bass worthy of an extension.
Musicals and Low Notes 
