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Double Bass In defence of movement

#5
In Sweden there are many semi-professional choirs that have choreography similar to this. I think it enhances the overall musical experience for the audience. If the choir is surrounding the sitting audience, the audience aural experience is large (correct English?). Also, mixing the voices (sopranos, altos, ...), my experience is that intonation greatly improves, although the singers has to concentrate harder to keep timing/synchronization good within a section/voice. As an audience you can also to some extent experience the vocal qualities of different individuals, which is often good (if the vocal qualities are not too different within the choir ...).

I believe many of the above observations may be true also in an orchestra situation. It would be interesting further develop this for orchestras, although double bass is a difficult instrument to carry around.

//Anders
 
#15
Don and Paul, are you guys serious? If so, get over yourselves. They're students and they did a great job.

That said, I'm 100% convinced that what we are seeing is not (all of) what we are hearing. There are lots of indications, but here's one example: at right about 6:16 the basses play a big fat low C#. But there's only one bass with an extension (the twirling middle one) and if you look closely, his C# capo is open (and E is closed). The other two are 4 strings.

So who is playing that low note? I suspect the rest of the orchestra is offstage playing with them, or in postproduction some dubbing was done. Leaves a bit of a sour taste for me....especially after reading their director swearing that what you see is what you hear.
 
#17
Paul Warburton said:
We're serious, and both of us have "been over ourselves" for longer than you've been alive.
Click to expand...

I'm not a kid, and I'm not interested in a pissing contest. I said that because I thought your comment was pretentious.

The movement/dance in the performance clearly brought greater appreciation from the audience and attention from critics. So what? Does that make it a "stunt" or a gimmick? Well I don't think so, and the primary reason is because the musical performance is stunningly good. The performers are young students at a music school that is not a world class conservatory. They are not dancers, and there's nothing outlandish or distasteful about the movements that they do. But they do a damn good job of playing and communicating the music, aurally and visually, in my opinion.

I don't know this woman with the supposedly big ego and I'm not qualified to criticize the choreography, but if you are go right ahead.
 
#18
Pretty silly stuff, I'm glad I didn't go to school there. Like the other posters above I just see this kind of stuff as a gimmick.

In some ways, movement can also be a gimmick. I've known clarinet teachers who were extremely strict about the way their students moved and would insist on some pretty outlandish movements that served no pedagogical purpose. That kind of stuff is just silly to me.
 
#20
This video, it's concept, its not implying that musicians should actually move around like that while playing in general, in the practise room or whatever. If you think it is then you've missed the point. Any comments about how much you should move when you play in relation to this video are wholly out of place.

It's essentially ballet. It just happens to be done with the musicians playing. An intriguing idea and it is also realised very imaginatively and beautifully.

Of course, if you don't like ballet, don't expect to like this either. You're missing out, though.
 

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