Shlomobaruch asks:
"How about Sevcik? I have a bass transcription of his stuff, but am at a similar loss as to how to use it."
Do you have the transcription George Vance did and published in 1995? You can order it at his website
Link Removed for $10.00. Also, George is a terrific guy, who is a full-time professor at the University of Maryland. His wife is a talented cellist. A marvelous dimension of his own 3 method books,
Progressive Repertoire, is that he uses a lot of simple folk tunes, and each book comes with a CD with the phenomenal Francois Rabbath playing each exercise, folk song, and etude. This makes it very enjoyable for the student as well as inspiring to listen to Rabbath playing what you're trying to learn. Also in contrast to Simandl's somewhat unmusical exercises, George gets the student playing harmonics and other ways to become familiar with the large fingerboard of the bass from the beginning, rather than Simandl keeping the student in the lower positions for the first year or more.
My teacher swears by Simandl. So for almost 2 years now, as a beginner, I am still only in the lower positions below "D" harmonic on the "G" string. What helps me from being totally discouraged is doing the Simandl exercises and supplementing them with the simple folk songs from George Vance's 3 books, but only playing them in the lower positions.
If you or anyone wants to email George Vance on how he recommends using his transcription of Sevcik or any other question, he usually writes back fairly quickly, since he teaches a lot and uses the computer frequently. His email is
[email protected]
