Double Bass Bach Suite 1 - questions from Hillwilliam country

[rdwhit]

I haven't said anything in this thread because I really have nothing to contribute of forward moving value however I need to subscrible cause I keep looking at it.

Moreover I wanted to mention that since you started this I've got the charts and some recordings and started to very horridly bow through these things.

It's a total ****ing gas!

I think we are in the same boat, it's nice to have some company! Yes, they are very fun, if frustrating. That's why I'm looking for something a little less chops busting & hopefully as much fun.

Very good thread Durrl. I think You've opened a closet of pizz Bach playing/studying. It seems to have given many of us "permission" to speak of such blasphemy! Sorry Your fingering questions are beyond me, but many of the posts are here are helping me in other ways.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Very good thread Durrl. I think You've opened a closet of pizz Bach playing/studying. It seems to have given many of us "permission" to speak of such blasphemy! Sorry Your fingering questions are beyond me, but many of the posts are here are helping me in other ways.

I didn't really do anything other than admit what I was doing in my own closet. (hint - not anything like R Kelly is doing, and there's no wig involved)

Seriously, I don't see why anyone would or should need "permission" to play any music in the world with their fingers instead of the bow. I'll stipulate that a) the suites were originally intended to be played with a bow (but on a different instrument), and b) studying with a bow will improve anybody's DB playing and will only be helpful. Once that is stipulated, I also firmly believe - even more firmly now than before - that studying these pieces pizz is a great way to improve pizz chops in both hands. These things are kicking the seat of my pants in a very serious but good way.

 

[David Kaczorowski]

Arghhh...internet communication about music notation! I feel like a dummy. The two arpeggiated measures before the last triple stop have the pitches:

G...B...D...B...G...B...G...B...(repeated)// F#...C...D...C...F#...C...F#...C...// (from bottom to top, last chord) G...B...G

Where are you playing the low "D" in the figure> On the first string with the 3rd finger? I just tried it, and it feels almost physically impossible. Or am I misunderstanding something?

Are we talking about the same music, Suite 1 Menuet 1?

 

[Mark Perna]

Arghhh...internet communication about music notation! I feel like a dummy. The two arpeggiated measures before the last triple stop have the pitches:

G...B...D...B...G...B...G...B...(repeated)// F#...C...D...C...F#...C...F#...C...// (from bottom to top, last chord) G...B...G

Where are you playing the low "D" in the figure> On the first string with the 3rd finger? I just tried it, and it feels almost physically impossible. Or am I misunderstanding something?

I play all of the Ds open.

mark

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Are we talking about the same music, Suite 1 Menuet 1?

I was talking about the prelude - I'm okay with the fingering on the Minuet. Looks like the misunderstanding was my mistake, looking back on it. D'oh!

 

[David Kaczorowski]

Those four bars are brutal. I'm not crazy about how my D string sounds up near the second octave harmonic and there's no way I'd play anything on the A up there. If I was going to attempt those 4 bars I would probably use my second finger on the high notes then shift back to an open hand position with my thumb on the D harmonic and the other notes on the G string, but I only looked at it for a minute just now. That's some hard sh!t to play at anything but a slow tempo.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

David, your suggestions on the Courante have been really helpful, especially about practicing everything with a separate attack and then adding the articulation subtleties in later. During this process, I'm discovering that with a lot of practice, the middle finger doesn't stick out as much as I originally thought it did, and that there's a fun kind of "snap" that starts to happen in the strings of 16th notes when played this way that takes me back to my classical guitar days. The other thing that happens is that the legato hammer/pull stuff, when used more judiciously, is a whole lot more effective.

One of the summer goals is to get a halfway decent recording of the whole suite done before school starts back up. If it doesn't totally suck, I have half a mind to entitle it "Bachrilege" and slap it up on my site so that people who don't like it can email me to tell me how wrong it is to play them this way.

 

[mtto]

Bach didn't write any slurs into the music.

We don't have these pieces in J.S. Bach's handwriting, but we do have Anna Magdalena Bach's copy. There are slurs in her version, which is as close to an original as we've got. She was a musician and possibly working from an original. Either way her husband would have seen the copy with the slurs. So we shouldn't ignore her slurs.

http://www.bylsmafencing.com/

Anner Bylsma discusses the slurs at great length in his book. I recommend it highly. My copy is autographed.

Plus, as it turns out, the slurring in the Prelude to Suite I makes it way more musical, rhythmic and exciting.

 

[David Kaczorowski]

One of the summer goals is to get a halfway decent recording of the whole suite done before school starts back up. If it doesn't totally suck, I have half a mind to entitle it "Bachrilege" and slap it up on my site so that people who don't like it can email me to tell me how wrong it is to play them this way.

Go for it!

So we shouldn't ignore her slurs.


Plus, as it turns out, the slurring in the Prelude to Suite I makes it way more musical, rhythmic and exciting.

We can slur or not slur where ever we want. There is a long tradition of doing so, hence all of the "editions." Some of the editions are even total crap, yet they exist too.

 

[ole Jason]

I think it's a GREAT idea to practice (and perform) the suites pizz.

I haven't had the opportunity to play the suites on upright but I've played my share of Bach. Something my teacher always drilled into my head was the need to recognize the implied polyphony used throughout Bach's solo string works.

It's something that can sometimes be visually apparent just by looking at the notes. He will set up a phrase with a low note and then write sympathetic tones above it. Subconsciously we are hearing that low note as the bass of the chord and 'carrying' it as we hear the following notes.

There's a lot of interesting phrasing that can be done with this idea in mind. You can give the low notes a little more weight and length to really bring out the polyphony... which I see as an excellent skill for any bassist, jazzers included, to have.

Keep in mind the suites shouldn't be strictly metronomic and it was common for Baroque performers to take liberties with things like note length, dynamics, and even ornaments.

I'm looking forward to hearing the recording Chris

 

[mtto]

We can slur or not slur wherever we want.

Sure you can. But Bach wrote slurs. That was my point. You posted that Bach didn't write slurs, but he did. There have been many editions since he wrote the suites that have changed the original slurring, but for those interested in what we actually wrote, it is there. I have the International Music Co. edition with the manuscript on the right and the print on the left so you can compare. Admittedly this is all pretty geeky and the music is so good that it stands up to many, many interpretations. Including pizz.

Something my teacher always drilled into my head was the need to recognize the implied polyphony used throughout Bach's solo string works.

My teacher had me call out the changes as they go by. It's still hard for me, but excellent practice.


Also, every copy of Bylsma's book is autographed, so I feel less special. It's still cool and a good book.

 

[Square Bear]

hmm... i've been working on this suite for a couple months now and have come up with some fingering ideas that i'm not seeing here. i played all of suite 3 for my senior recital (in G, as is standard i believe), which i worked on for over a year, and doing so honestly solved most of the issues in suite 1 before i ever got to them.

first off, the whole thing is playable at pitch with absolutely no changes. that's the way i'm working on it and while some passages are not easy, it's not all that difficult either. pizzacato may be a little strange in this register, haven't tried it that way.

all the broken chords that resemble the first bar can be played with open G, then the next note on the D string, so as to let the G ring out and have the open impression you hear on the cello. This is also the way that i play the 4th bar (no cheating with the g harmonic! i think it ruins the sound, and isn't all that much easier). this also requires the use of thumb position in the lower register for the C chord near the middle of the piece (i play it 0G-2C-1E-TD-1E, etc.)

the scales after the fermata i play all in thumb position with the exception of the one that starts on A - i shift to the A harmonic and play it all on the D string, catch the low A with the thumb (on the D string) making it easy to musically finesse the G-F#-E that follows.

the only other thing worth mentioning is the last few bars. i use the G harmonic, shift back to 2B and thumb on the D harmonic, then shift up to the G harmonic again and play the B's with 1. The next bar uses the same idea - play the G harmonic, shift back to 1A-TD, shift up to G and play the A harmonic with the thumb on the D string. sounds crazy, but it totally works for me. took a lot of practice, but well worth it for the quality of sound. In the last two bars, i shift back to 2 on the F# harmonic on the D string (a tritone down from the C), play the C with 3 and the D with the thumb (all in one position, no ****!). if you use the F# harmonic, be aware that the C will have to be low to be in tune with the F#. The low C sounds fine with the D, and the F# sounds great as a low leading tone because the G resolution is displaced down an octave. the final chord, i use the open G, and shift up to first finger B and harmonic G for the 6th. I take this chord in two bows. If you time it right and roll the chord, you can really make a big sounding chord! It's a difficult shift up to the B, but if you worked it out 3 bars earlier, it's not much more difficult. intonation is just more exposed because of the double stop. i figure that exposed intonation is just an opportunity to learn to play better in tune anyways.

i really hope this makes sense. this is unfortunately off the top of my head, as i don't have the music available at the moment. if anyone tries this and has success, let me know. i've never seen anyone else use these fingerings exactly, but i'm sure it's been done plenty of times.

 

[punkjazzben]

^ I havent used those fingerings exactly, but I'm of the same philosophy as you,Square Bear.

I play the pieces from the 'cello music at pitch without any special tunings; there's a way around every difficulty, and I believe it's just a matter of knowing your way around the bass properly and being open to new(er) left hand techniques - especially things like thumbing below the octave and pivoting. I can't wait to see Rabbath's full edition of the suites.

As for pizz-ing Bach... I don't practice it pizzed, simply because I find that I can develop better intonation with the bow. But, as always with the suites, they can usually help you work on whatever aspect of your playing you want, and I imagine that playing the pieces pizzed at speed would develop your right hand technique an arseload.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Still working on these, and learning a lot by listening to a lot of great recordings. I'm starting to get used to the idea that there is a lot more rhythmic/phrasing freedom there than I first realized. I've been practicing them super slow, and the experience has been amazing. Still planning to do that recording, but not until it's ready. I have to admit that practicing this stuff has done more for my jazz playing than any of the jazz I've been practicing lately. There's a precision of intonation and articulation that this music demands that raises the level of any other style I can manage to migrate it to.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Still working with Bach in many ways. The latest idea is to add a suite movement performance to my video series every so often with a downloadable PDF of the version I'm playing with slurs/markings (plus any register/note changes, obviously) designed to treat the movement as an etude for pizz players in various ways. There isn't a single movement that I can find that doesn't have at least one major technical hurdle in it, and by emphasizing these rather than attempting to hide them, they can make fantastic etudes for pizz players looking to improve their technique, articulation, and intonation.

 

[phill321]

I didn't read this whole thread, but I remember hearing Gerd Reinke's (German bassist that edited the Carl Flesh scale book) recording of the cello suites and he played the first suite in Gmajor from the cello part as written . Not up the octave which most classical bassists do.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I just went and looked that recording up. I can't say I care for it at all, but that has to do with the bits of performance I heard and nothing to do with the octave it's in. I would actually love to hear other performances in the lower octave that are more suited to my taste performance-wise.

 

[phill321]

I totally agree. It wasn't my cup of tea either.
I believe in teaching the suites in a progressive way. I start the prelude in G major as written, then the sterling in C then at pitch. I always have my students playing some sort of Bach.

Obviously, when you teach higher level student, then you get into the artistic side of the suites etc. But at a young age I think it's the best music to have them working on. Why not put it in their ear.

On a personal note, I find I have to really change how I practice them verse how I teach them to a younger student. You can work them as études forever and never have them at a performance level. The finishing touches of Bach are always the struggle for me, but I could practice them for my whole life and be happy.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Still working on these as a practice/technique fallback. I remember someone saying they had an interesting key to play the 5th suite in where everything lays better, but I can't remember what it was. Anyone?

 

[damonsmith]

Gerd Reinke made a really rough anti-Semitic joke while on a tour of Israel around the time that CD came out. The CD was universally panned, but I got a copy out of curiosity and it is horrendous! the rhythm is off, the pitch and tone are garbage.
I think he is blacklisted and only seems to play in Egypt now!