Double Bass How to Get Better in a Hurry

[christianharger]

Hey guys,

I'm usually on the other side of the forum, but I've got a bit of a situation here. Long story short, I'm needing to increase my upright abilities in a hurry. Before I say anything else please know that I realize these things take YEARS of hard, dedicated practice to get the hang of--I know this won't be easy and I won't have any sort of mastery over any aspect of this instrument in a short period of time.

Okay--so I have a potential set of gigs that will require me to play upright about 50% of the time. From what I understand it's a good deal of pizz. but definitely some arco playing, mainly for entrances and endings (classic). I have an upright and where I'm starting from at this point is decent right hand pizz technique and decent left hand technique. The things I really need to work up quickly is sufficient arco and intonation (specifically with position shifting).

SO, if you guys had a month or two to really dig into getting better and about 2-4 hours a day of practice time, what would your practice routines look like? What books/videos should I look into? Any thoughts will help.

 

[Sam Dingle]

SO, if you guys had a month or two to really dig into getting better and about 2-4 hours a day of practice time, what would your practice routines look like? What books/videos should I look into? Any thoughts will help.[/QUOTE]

Here's what I would do and what I do:

Play scales with a tuner at first (people will say just use your ear but the tuner works for me)
-Pick a new key each day I usually go up in 4ths (F monday, Bb tuesday etc). I'll use F as the example scale
-Start on the lowest note of the scale on the E string for all scales so I'd play open E F etc till I'm on the F in half position on the D string, then continue the scale from that F with the open G and go all the way up the G string continuing the scale (3 octaves). Play the sale up and down using exact same fingerings
-Next, start it again but this time when you get to the F on the D string, play a closed G and go up the D string to the next highest F, from there I usually jump to the G string and finish the scale. I do this for all the strings so next play the scale going up the A string then E string.
-This should take some time and if you do it right should help a lot. If you can mentally do it, do the entire exercise twice, once arco and once pizzicato

as technique goes make sure its perfect! Get a teacher and take a few lessons on how to do this (arco technique, left hand technique and pizzicato technique). Thats the best way to go about it.

Another one I do is with pizzicato and getting a good tone out of the bass:

-Start with a metronome on 60bpm
-Play the open G string on every beat, cleanly for 1 minuet getting a nice full tone (I count how many times I've played the string till I get to 60). Do the same on all 4 strings and pay attention to how you will play each string differently
- So the first time you go across all 4 strings just use your index finger, then do it again alternating both index and middle, then do it again using the 2 finger technique (index and middle together).
-After you've done all this…bump up the metronome to 70bpm and do it all again
- Keep upping the tempo till you can't do it anymore. At first you may only be able to do this till 160 bpm but as time goes on you should be able to up the speed gradually

these should take up a good amount of your practice time. Next I would have fun and try to play along to some of the songs you'll be asked to play for your gig and get your chops up both right hand and left, making sure you keep good technique.

 

[Tom Lane]

Intonation, shifting, and acro tone? Vomit exercises is a good place to start: what does vomit exercises mean ? | TalkBass.com

Then, scales, first playing along with a slow recording of the scale, 30 bpm, then a drone and metronome, played arco at first. Since most of what you'll be playing is pizz, I'd recommend switching to pizz after a couple of weeks arco to build up your pizz tone and muscles too but start with arco because it's much easier to hear the pitch. Maybe only arco for 2 weeks, then arco and pizz for two weeks, and then mostly pizz for two weeks. If you expect to play in thumb position, 3 octave scales, sometimes starting at the octave, sometimes starting at the end of the fingerboard, and sometimes at the nut.

For acro, get a lesson from an experienced teacher in arco playing because they can demonstrate the basics to you - weight, speed, and location on the string relative to the bridge and fingerboard. The usual exercise for newbies that was recommended to be by more than one teacher and I found to be very helpful, is to play scales, slowly, arco, using a full bow for each note in front of a mirror with significant arm weight, keeping the bow parallel to the floor.

After that, I recommend John Goldsby's book on arco for jazzers. It's tough, but very good for mastering arco: http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Bowing-Techniques-Improvising-Bassist/dp/1562240447

You might want to consider practicing your vibrato too. Not a big deal but practicing it rigorously leads to competence, as always. Practice with a metronome; there are YouTube videos.

 

[Steve Freides]

Christian,

Get a teacher and let the teacher guide you on bowing.

I'm guessing you'll be playing show music - would help to know what sort of music is involved here. I find playing a little bit of arco for a Broadway score to be a whole other thing than playing a Beethoven symphony.

Get a book. I use this book to teach from and I think it's great:

http://www.amazon.com/ABCs-Absolute-Beginner-Intermediate-Student/dp/0825852552

It'll introduce different bowing technique and different positions in a gradual way and give you plenty of things to practice.

Or use whatever book your teacher prefers.

Remember that, as they say in the military, under stress we revert to our training. That means if you're practicing bad technique, that's what you'll end up playing, and that's why a teacher is an important thing. Even if you just take a few lessons, maybe one every 2-3 weeks, it should help.

Make sure your gear is in order. Get different strings if you need them, make sure your bow is at least decent, that the hair is fresh enough, that you use rosin, that you know to wipe excess rosin off your strings as needed, and if you're using a pickup, that your pickup doesn't make your bass sound like a frightened hyena when you bow.

Are you bowing French or German? Just curious.

-S-

 

[Huy Nguyen]

It's not my place to post in a thread like this (tho I may be my having my first student soon) but from experience of learning late in life I would focus primarily on arpeggios and not so much on scales. Scales are important yes, but nailing all those chords are a must. You get paid to walk chord tones more than play a scale. Not to mention that learning intonation is easier as the arp is easier to hear. You can BS your way through a scale, a bit harder with a chord.

I'd certainly find a DB teacher in a hurry.

 

[Jeff Bonny]

The best way to get better fast is to give it ten years. Seriously though (actually I was kinda serious) with only a few weeks you should focus almost exclusively on intonation. You can be forgiven for not playing fast or not having a ton of stamina and even for not being able to draw great huge sound out of the instrument (although that is something to be pretty aware of) but you will NEVER be forgiven for playing out of tune. At the very least be practicing half the time with the bow. Don't worry that it's scratchy and squeaky the point is the length of the notes not the beauty of your tone. Use lots of rosin to ensure the bow engages well and as Steve says wipe the excess off at least once a day....at this point too much rosin is better than too little. Honestly there's so much to work on to come close to sounding good that I would be careful not overload myself by trying to do too much. My advice is simply play major and minor scales and arpeggios (both are important to find the spacing between the notes) and work on the material you'll be playing.

 

[Steve Freides]

"ass Steve" - Freudian slip there, Jeff? Just kidding, just kidding!!

I'll add one more thing. My experience across multiple instruments has been, when I have to play things that are too hard for me in performance, I do better by practicing the basics, and by practicing the performance music at a manageable-for-me speed, than I do by practicing the music to be performed up to performance tempo. Might sound backwards but that's the way it works for me.

-S-

 

[Tom Lane]

Ah, while I was out for my run, I thought of two more suggestions for you:

First, my theory on intonation is that more than half of the issue is not being clear in your mind's ear about what the pitch should be. To remedy that, I practice singing with the piano. It's part of my default practice now. I'll pick a phrase, scale, arp, whatever, play the first note on the piano, then sing the next note, check myself by playing that note on the piano, etc. I find more often than not, when I have an intonation issue it's because my mind's ear wants the note to be different than it really is. As an example, when I first started working with the diminished scale, I could sing it fine until the last note, which I wanted to be a semitone higher and so when I played it on the bass, I'd tend to be sharp. Once I recognized that, no more problem.

Second, post your question in the pro forum. Lynn and Patrick have a lot of experience teaching bassists and are among the best teachers available.

 

[Jeff Bonny]

"ass Steve" - Freudian slip there, Jeff? Just kidding, just kidding!!

oops....

 

[christianharger]

Thanks for the suggestions thus far. Very helpful in planning out how my practices will work.

The music will be more closely akin to spunky jazz; certainly not Beethoven symphonies. I am going with the German bowing.

I asked around and got an incredible teacher recommended to me (Gary Raynor) and luckily he had an opening--so I'll be meeting with him a handful of times to kick me into gear! First lesson tomorrow.

You guys are awesome. Thanks for the help.

 

[Steve Freides]

Tom, a big +1. Singing is at the heart of all good musicianship, IMHO, and every musician should be able to sing whatever he/she has to play.

Christian, I think German is easier to learn for most people, so that's a good choice as long as your teacher bows German.

-S-

 

[ctrlzjones]

I know this won't be easy and I won't have any sort of mastery over any aspect of this instrument in a short period of time.

You do not say what genre your focus is. Mentioning arco it could be implicite classical music, where I am a total 'noob' playing. If your hitting at Jazz and Walking I would say the following:

As you well know and confirm: there's no such things as shortcuts in life. And in learning music and to play an instrument there is no voodoo at all.
Everybody is different and therefore every approach of learning should be personalized. If you are in a hurry it would be better to get a teacher that nurtures your needs, that you can have a conversational process with, than going through books and find out by yourselves trial an error. Books are very time consuming ...

This being said, I find that 'methods' or 'schools' are overrated.
The biggest issue is to built a firm imagination of 'sound': How would you sound. This is an inner process, and way more important than strings and technique. To built up an inner (sound-)image that then urges to come out. In the end music is about feelings, an imagination, a personal necessity, an urge that then finds it way out; through a circular process that involves your body, feets, legs, stomach, chest, shoulders, arms, finger(tips); all that better be *very* relaxed. And then the strings, fretboard, bridge, your friends body, air, room ...
and than enjoying all that, not hating yourself because of all is not working like it should, like you would, but enjoying the process a.k.a 'the search'. The latter could be the most important ingridient.

And yesz: intonation, timing and song form (=arpeggios) are key factors for the next superbassist.

Otherwise I find Chris Fitzgeralds videos very much condensing the matter.
Chris Fitzgerald - YouTube

@Chris you are aware that there's a flock of people starving to see the next part of the 'Walking Bass Line' series, don't you?
I am saying that not to force it, but to encourage ;-)

 

[Huy Nguyen]

First, my theory on intonation is that more than half of the issue is not being clear in your mind's ear about what the pitch should be. To remedy that, I practice singing with the piano. It's part of my default practice now. I'll pick a phrase, scale, arp, whatever, play the first note on the piano, then sing the next note, check myself by playing that note on the piano, etc. I find more often than not, when I have an intonation issue it's because my mind's ear wants the note to be different than it really is. As an example, when I first started working with the diminished scale, I could sing it fine until the last note, which I wanted to be a semitone higher and so when I played it on the bass, I'd tend to be sharp. Once I recognized that, no more problem.

I had to remind myself of this just recently after a gig and trying to think of better ways to improve my intonation. I thought about my voice teacher and her advice on learning to intonate against an absolute pitch instrument. Working on arps, melodies, even your own phrasing and working it out so that it's pitch perfect against a true reference almost note for note. Drones are great but don't forget that you can pull out your mobile device and get a keyboard app. I was working with a keyboard app and it's great to occasionally stop and check your pitches and rework them. You don't neccessarily need to own a keyboard/piano.

To chime in with Steve's comment earlier, the key here also is to work at a more-than-comfortable pace. We should be aiming to not only learn it intellectually but also give time and space for the body to absorb new movements and articulations. You can't do that if you're stressed out and trying to practice it way above your head. Slow and steady wins the race.