Double Bass New upright student.

[Worstdayever]

Hey everyone, Iv lurked around the forums for a while ago but havent been around in some time. Im brand new to the upright and am looking to play bluegrass/rockabilly. Any ideas of what topics to learn first, i want to get a good strong start without being bored to death. So anything you can offer other than "get a teacher" would be great. Im not in a position to get a teacher at the moment.

Thank You

 

[Mr Ralph]

At the very least watch the available you tube videos so you learn some proper technique and do not injure yourself before you get started. Chris Fitzgerald has an awesome series as does John Clayton, Geoff Chalmers and the Mr. Karr how to drive a double bass series.

 

[Jay Corwin]

The Chris Fitzgerald stuff is awesome on YouTube.

At a minimum I would recommend at least learning major and minor scales in every key with proper fingering. That will get you half way home for most rockabilly and bluegrass.

Practice root-five playing to a metronome in 1-4-5 patterns in common keys, as again this will be half or more of what you end up playing in bluegrass.

As for not getting bored to death....if practicing drills bore you that much, then upright is going to be a steep climb for you. It's a difficult instrument to progress on without focused practice doing boring skills and drills. However if you have say 45 minutes set aside for practicing, split it up so for 20 minutes you are doing drills, and the rest is playing music. Both are important.

Good luck.