Double Bass Bowing in 3/4 - rules of thumb?

[Sean Ormiston]

Hey you bass playin monsters you,

Here I am still sawing away at Simandl's New Method.

I'm having difficulty with the exercises in 3/4 time. I haven't gone over 3/4 time with my teacher yet, specifically, but we have gone over how to use the bow a bit more intelligently...how to detect where you'll need to "recover" to gain a downbow on a downbeat, how to avoid running out of bow on whole notes and such.

I got the impression that downbows on downbeats were a hard and fast rule. And that makes waltzs really cumbersome, havin to clip the third beat and recover like that all the time.

Simandl doesn't have any bowing marks on these exercises.

It's much easier just alternating downbows and upbows and keeping the downbeat accented. But then again, this stuff isn't easy and now's the time to figure it out. Thoughts?

- Sean

 

[bassplayer57]

3/4 isn't that different, besides that there is only 3 beats per measure. The first note of each measure doesn't have to be extremely accented, just accented enough so that it is a "noticeable accent" of the first beat.
Hope that helps!

 

[shostkontrabass]

You've got it right, just keep it alternating. I've never seen a point to change it to something like down-up-up, or down-up-down-retake. You've got it right, of course, that you want to have that accented feel on the first beat of each measure. Notice I say "accented feel" but not "accent." The first note should be heavier, but just enough to re-emphasize the beginning of the measure. You don't want to always crunch it or anything. For instance, when I play Strauss waltzes, in which the bass notes are mostly the downbeat for each measure, I tend to make each note a down bow, simply for consistency in tone/dynamics, and because I have 2 beats to retake. The same holds true (talking about having time to retake) for the Simandl exercises. If you have time to retake (a beat or more, generally), then do it. Otherwise, just take it as it comes and try to be consistent in tone. The goal is to make your up-bows sound like down-bows, and your down-bows sound like up-bows, depending on where you are in the measure. Have fun sawing away!