My school orchestra is playing "The Bartered Bride Overture" by Bedřich Smetana. Anybody here ever played it? If so, could I get some tips on how to play the first couple measures?It's a pretty tough piece, so help would be much appreciated. 
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Double Bass So...
- Thread starter alexbrownebass
- Start date
I'm not intimately familiar with the piece, but I know it's an audition excerpt and pretty darn fast. What I'd suggest doing is putting on a metronome at a comfy slow tempo, like 70 bpm, and playing one note to a beat. Once you can hit all the notes this way, start ramping it up, and if you keep ramping it up, eventually it'll be cake at performance tempo.
JimGullen
orch. bassist trapped in a statistician's body...
Greetings!
Good advice given in the post above. If you can't play it slow, you can't play it fast!
Initially, I would leave out all the slurs and play the 8th notes in everything (divide the half and quarters up into 8ths). At this point, you're just working on getting the notes, devising a fingering stategy for shifts, etc.
Once you've got an idea of where you're going to shift and your fingering, you can mix up the rhythms for some variety. Notice, there are lots of 4-note groups.. since you're subdividing, almost everything is a 4-note group. You don't have to always play it as 4 8ths.
First I'd change each 4 note group to a dotted 8th and 3 16th notes. This is a nice pattern as it brings out the "one" of each group for a nice pulse, but also works in some speed. Use different bowing patterns: as it comes {down-(retake)-up-down-up}, hooked {down-up-up-up} and legato {dotted 8th down, 3 16ths slurred up}. After you've gotten comfortable with those, change the pattern to 3 16ths and a dotted 8th with various bowings. Then you can do 16th, dotted 8th, 2 16ths, etc.
Once you're comfortable with those, make the groups into an 8th and a triplet, which brings in more speed. Mix it up with bowings and then put the triplet first.
Then, you can make 8 note patterns like dotted 8th, 6 16ths, dotted 8th...again with bowings.
You can spend A LOT of time working productively on these few bars without ever doing the same thing twice!
After you've done all this, go back to straight 8ths and see how easily it will lay. You can then start to work on the indicated bowings.
Hope this helps a little and best regards!
Jim
Good advice given in the post above. If you can't play it slow, you can't play it fast!
Initially, I would leave out all the slurs and play the 8th notes in everything (divide the half and quarters up into 8ths). At this point, you're just working on getting the notes, devising a fingering stategy for shifts, etc.
Once you've got an idea of where you're going to shift and your fingering, you can mix up the rhythms for some variety. Notice, there are lots of 4-note groups.. since you're subdividing, almost everything is a 4-note group. You don't have to always play it as 4 8ths.
First I'd change each 4 note group to a dotted 8th and 3 16th notes. This is a nice pattern as it brings out the "one" of each group for a nice pulse, but also works in some speed. Use different bowing patterns: as it comes {down-(retake)-up-down-up}, hooked {down-up-up-up} and legato {dotted 8th down, 3 16ths slurred up}. After you've gotten comfortable with those, change the pattern to 3 16ths and a dotted 8th with various bowings. Then you can do 16th, dotted 8th, 2 16ths, etc.
Once you're comfortable with those, make the groups into an 8th and a triplet, which brings in more speed. Mix it up with bowings and then put the triplet first.
Then, you can make 8 note patterns like dotted 8th, 6 16ths, dotted 8th...again with bowings.
You can spend A LOT of time working productively on these few bars without ever doing the same thing twice!
After you've done all this, go back to straight 8ths and see how easily it will lay. You can then start to work on the indicated bowings.
Hope this helps a little and best regards!
Jim
All this talk about playing different rhythms, play the eighth notes straight (that's what is written). And don't practice it under 120 or you will loose the bounce in the bow.
Not saying the different rhythms is a bad idea for turning it into an exercise, but that's not the most efficient way to get the passage down.
You do need to do it slow until you're absolutely sure you have the notes under your fingers. Work out the minimum-effort fingering for it. However, as the last poster noted... it's fast enough that there might be a range of speeds that are very hard, so if you can do it very cleanly well under speed, try it at full speed.
You do need to do it slow until you're absolutely sure you have the notes under your fingers. Work out the minimum-effort fingering for it. However, as the last poster noted... it's fast enough that there might be a range of speeds that are very hard, so if you can do it very cleanly well under speed, try it at full speed.
I tend to disagree. Varying the rhythm is a great way of learning challenging excerpts like this.
Sad truth is, the brain doesn't necessarily learn new tricks quickly and you must be patient.
If you practise immaculately at a slow tempo your brain will tell you when it has accepted new patterns of use and is ready to speed up (when suddenly your fingers move easily through difficult or complex passages without fumbling). The speed at which you don't make mistakes is the speed at which you can genuinely play a passage.
If you push the tempo too fast and make mistakes over and over again you are learning to make mistakes.
This doesn't mean that you don't crank the speed up occasionally to see what progress has been made.
Cheers......
DP
If you practise immaculately at a slow tempo your brain will tell you when it has accepted new patterns of use and is ready to speed up (when suddenly your fingers move easily through difficult or complex passages without fumbling). The speed at which you don't make mistakes is the speed at which you can genuinely play a passage.
If you push the tempo too fast and make mistakes over and over again you are learning to make mistakes.
This doesn't mean that you don't crank the speed up occasionally to see what progress has been made.
Cheers......
DP
The fast sections on the first page that are pp, don't try and take your bow off the string, just sit it the middle/upper half, relax your arm and go for clarity.
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