Double Bass Spicatto

[basteout]

Wanted to hear everyone's thoughts on spicatto. How do you approach it/come to it? What tempo's do you practice at and how do you practice it? Anything you want to say about the stroke is welcome. Looking for input from both French and German players.

 

[emilio g]

When practicing spicatto (or anything), a few days after I've successfully worked something up to speed I like to start moving the tempo around more drastically. For instance, I like to practice slow, then move right to a fast tempo at the upper limits of my technique, then somewhere between.

The logic behind this is that in a performance situation, I don't have the luxury of working up to a tempo 5 bpm at a time...it needs to be immediately available.

 

[Eli_Upright12]

Wanted to hear everyone's thoughts on spicatto. How do you approach it/come to it? What tempo's do you practice at and how do you practice it? Anything you want to say about the stroke is welcome. Looking for input from both French and German players.

I'm a German bow player, and spiccato is something I've really been working on the last couple weeks. I feel it is a very nuanced stroke and I'm really glad I waited til after my first year of college to really learn it. I feel like my control of the big muscles in my arm and back is pretty good now, but this stroke seems to involve a hell of a lot of the small muscles. I'm finding that the thumb and pinkie come more into play, not that they are controlling anything but they have to be a bit more firm. One of the big challenges I'm finding is getting the fingers to act like shock absorbers. The stroke seems like two parts to me: down bow and up bow. On the down bow the bounce has to prepare the up bow so the plane of the bow rotates around the string. The same is true on the up bow. If you can get it to work the next one will fall in line and it will work like a chain reaction.

 

[Bill Bentgen]

Andy Anderson's videos are extremely helpful.

 

[Les Fret]

true, these videos are really good.

My teacher taught me this way: dampen the strings with your left hand. Than do the spiccato stroke and try to get a very muted sound. Like a skipping pickup needle. Not a scratchy sound, hard to describe. Like your bow hair sticks to the string and then lets loose. First vertical than horizontal.

Curious what other teachers think is the best approach to teach spiccato.

 

[chicagodoubler]

talk to cellists about this.

everything starts from the string.

somewhere we as bassists started hurling our bows at the string. sacrificing fundamental for articulation starves the orchestra of warmth.
depending on how live the hall is we may need to play more "off the string" but it's surprising how many professional orchestral sections play the vast majority of their work on the string.

+100 for Andy's videos on youtube.

do a search here. we go over this every couple of months.

 

[BMason]

I believe Ed Barker talked about this in his interview on CBC, but the method that I learned from him was to, with a relaxed grip, drop the bow on the D string (from about 4-5 inches to start) in a down bow motion, let it bounce freely, then repeat the same on the A string in an up bow motion, back to D, then A, etc. Always down on D, up on A. Gradually increase the speed at which you do this and decrease the height from which it's dropped until the action is done on one string (in this case the D). The idea is that the down bow spicatto glances the string on its left side, up bow on the right. Keep decreasing the height at which the bow is dropped and the speed at which you bow successively, and eventually you will have a wonderful, articulate, controlled spicatto. It's actually wonderfully easy in no time and is one of the hallmarks of one of the cleanest, most off-the-string traditions around. This is all easier demonstrated than written, but the best of luck, anyway!

 

[Dr Rod]

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=619362