Thank you Don, Spongebob has definitely made his way north of the border, and is one of the reasons why a lot of the kids are interested in clarinet.
Ben, I am looking for a few different things but likely did not express that very well. The first thing that I am looking for is music either featuring the double bass in a solo/melodic role, or prominently and memorably in an accompaniment role that the kids entering the program will be familiar with. One of the big adages of our program is "You like classical music, you just don't know it yet" where we like to draw upon things like movie themes, popular jingles, video game music, pop music, and anything else that is mainstream that both our kids and their parents will be familiar with featuring "classical" instruments. It helps to showcase the possibilities for orchestral music outside of symphony concerts, and to prove it isn't the dying art form that people like to debate about.
For example, our horn teacher usually plays something from Star Wars because it is easily recognizable and prominently features her instrument. We just played the William Tell Overture at a pops concert this summer, and the trumpet teacher has been getting a lot of mileage out of it for the same reasons. Our flute teacher likes to play Peter Pan's theme, not only because it is a flute melody and a movie that at least the parents of our kids will have watched, but it introduces the idea of thematic material related to a character. In a perfect world I would find a melody or theme that is played on double bass from pop culture somewhere, and in a not so perfect world I am looking for something where double bass is prominently featured. I know there are classical music excerpts which I do show to my older students especially when they are worried about how we never get anything interesting to play, and I know there are things like The Elephant that are well known to bass players, but I am not finding a whole lot of "here's a good example of our instrument getting the spotlight". I know it is more common in jazz and other genres like bluegrass, but we don't really have a prominent scene for either of those here.
I will also be incorporating familiar melodies, folk songs, and other things into our classroom. Aural learning is a big part of what we do, and the kids who have been involved for a while have developed a good ear for singing melodies back and call and response type stuff, which is one of the reasons why I think improvising should not be a huge leap. While we do have a strong focus on classical music, getting kids excited about the music we are playing and music in general is a big part of that, and Simandl studies are not the kind of thing you find yourself singing in the shower. I did expand my own bass library significantly this summer with a mind towards accessible repertoire for my students, and will see how that evolves over the year.
As far as improvisation goes, I know it can be very nerve racking. It really did not come naturally to me and while I can walk over chords and come up with bass parts, soloing still is not a strong point of mine. Improve does involve exercising a different part of your brain, or at least thinking in a different way than we typically do with written music, and I would like to build some of that into what we do as well.
