• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Double Bass studying bass without learning arco

#62
Hey all,

Paul, I was quoting Chris Fitgerald from reply #2. I pasted the comment below in its entirety, just for persnickityness.

I can understand you taking me seriously, as there were a few posts intervening between Chris' and mine. I really don't mean to offend the "no-stinking-arco-bass-for-me" camp, because I have been a card-carrying (but not bow carrying!) member of their fraternity. In fact I once left my bow in a whole other province for a few years! We've made up however, and I just LOVE my bow. . .

BTW I have heard Mr. Thompson (currently listening to him with Jim Hall and Terry Clark), and believe me, I am most unworthy!

I will not waste (more!) bandwidth by re-re-iterating my earlier curmudgeonly points. Now we can all get on with our plucking and/or scraping.
Ed dubbed me:
LMNOP


LINT FUNGUS,

Yes, it's possible to study from a classical teacher without playing arco, but you have to find an openminded teacher. I've been fortunate enough to have two, and I don't even own a bow. The course of study has still been in classical materials in my case - Simandl and Rabbath. I've found both enormously helpful.

Soon, a group of grumpy bassists with bows are going to descend into this thread and rag us both mercilessly: you, for asking the question, and me, for being a living example of one type of answer to said question. We can but accept their curmudgeonly derision, as they're probably right.

But yes, it's possible.

__________________
Wherever you go, there you are
 
#63
I gotta ask though, if who you are studying with is someone who is well versed in arco technique, why not? I mean my teacher Joe has a lot going on arco wise, he was a student of Joe Levine's. But he also has the whole Lenny background. So I have a choice. But if all I had was the arco thing, what's the point of ignoring it? It's not like he's NOT teaching pizz to get arco, right?

If that's the only game in town, then that's what you play. And get to what you're missing when and where you can.

EDIT - that's what I get for rushing, Joe's teacher was Julius Levine, not Joe Levine.
 
#64
I am a classical player, but also freelance from rock( yes on bass guitar) to jazz, & swing, whatever the gig requires, as all as it's bass..

What I find curious, is when jazz bassists talk about finding "their voice, tone, sound" expressing, themselves, on & on, all the while ignoring, or dismissing the most "expressive" element at their disposal... the bow! The almost unlimited "colors" of sound, dynamic qualities, and the pure singing properties one can accomplish with it are IMHO, simply amazing. I also think it is fear of sounding bad, making horrible sounds. I've heard it, in one form or another, from my students to fellow bassists. I at one time, even shared some of those same thoughts.

Dennis
 
#65
Dennis Frati said:
What I find curious, is when jazz bassists talk about finding "their voice, tone, sound" expressing, themselves, on & on, all the while ignoring, or dismissing the most "expressive" element at their disposal... the bow! The almost unlimited "colors" of sound, dynamic qualities, and the pure singing properties one can accomplish with it are IMHO, simply amazing. I also think it is fear of sounding bad, making horrible sounds. I've heard it, in one form or another, from my students to fellow bassists. I at one time, even shared some of those same thoughts.
Click to expand...

I, for one, agree...but then I use the bow all the time as I continue to explore the doublebass. I can tell you there were many things with the bow that I simply did not hear at all when I started. It's been like learning a new language for me, and now I can't imagine why anyone else wouldn't want to learn this language too with the things it can express.

On the other hand, I now get to hear things in pizz that indicate the possibility for almost unlimited "colors" as well. Hearing someone like Renauld-Garcia Fons use dynamics and accents, for example, in his plucking work sure does sound good too. So I make efforts to be open-minded and keep learning.
 
#66
Dennis Frati said:
What I find curious, is when jazz bassists talk about finding "their voice, tone, sound" expressing, themselves, on & on, all the while ignoring, or dismissing the most "expressive" element at their disposal... the bow! The almost unlimited "colors" of sound, dynamic qualities, and the pure singing properties one can accomplish with it are IMHO, simply amazing. I also think it is fear of sounding bad, making horrible sounds. I've heard it, in one form or another, from my students to fellow bassists. I at one time, even shared some of those same thoughts.
Click to expand...

On the other hand, there are also practical issues involved, such as the number of hours in the day. If none of your gigs require bowing, and if getting a great pizz sound is your top priority, and if you believe that playing in tune is more a function of hearing in tune than training your fingers to sit in a particular spot every time you play the note "Ab", then going bowless makes a little more sense.

I practice slow scales with the bow from time to time, and in an ideal world would have about four times as much time to practice as I do now... so in the ideal world, the bow would be a bigger influence. But in the real world, it doesn't work like that, and I (for one) do the best I can.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jazzbrew
#67
Playing arco revealed qualities of sound, colour, call it what you will that I now look to bring out in my pizz which started to sound dull and lifeless in comparison - I'd have probably gone on a string-hunting bass-blaming waste of time otherwise. It took a while for my arco sound to develop but as it did, so did the true sound of the instrument, and my pizz sound is better for it.
 
#68
DUURRRL, I am certainly no arco snob, so don't read any attitude into this. I find that the arco/intonation thing is quite valid, but it has nothing to do with "training your fingers to sit in a particular spot every time you play the note Ab". (Pardon me while I shift into first-person to make the rest of this work.) It has everything to do with my hearing the note louder and more rich with overtones, revealing my intonation to me more starkly and bereft of muddy clothing. Fine movements of the finger reveal changes in pitch that aren't quite audible in pizz-land (not that that's relevant to pizz playing.) In other words, it makes it easier for my ear to do the "hearing in tune" work you mention.

Newbies (especially non-classical newbies) should understand there is no moral failure in not using the bow. Go ahead and play the thing with your feet for all I care, if that works for you and your music. After 7 or 8 months with the thing, I'm starting to see it less as solely a "stick o'pain" and more an instrument of musical experession.

The bow is a complete bitch of a thing to get sounding good, though. I haven't dared take mine out in public yet.
 
#69
When I ran into a wall trying to learn DB on my own and recognized the necessity of a teacher I looked at the prospect of learning arco as a bitter pill. Now I find it hard to practice pizz. After living in the obscurity of woodshedding for the last six months I put myself out there for jazz gigs. I'm meeting with a guitar player and drummer this Thursday. Six months ago I would have been jumping out of my skin about this but I find myself strangely detached, lukewarm about it. Have any of you had this experience? If so, where have you gone with it? How many of you are jazz expatriots who -after learning the stick- haven't looked back?
 
#70
Funny, my teacher never forced me or even said a single word about learning arco when I first started with him. I was the one who brought it up after reading what you guys had to say. He had me focusing strictly on pizz (I wanted to learn jazz) and never mentioned the bow. He's studied with Buster Williams, George Mraz, and Homer Mensch and played with Dave Liebman, and Chet Baker among others. He graduated from Mannes Conservatory no less, so he's def got the skillz.

Very curious... I will have to ask him why next time I see him.
 
#71
I'm meeting with a guitar player and drummer this Thursday. Six months ago I would have been jumping out of my skin about this but I find myself strangely detached, lukewarm about it. Have any of you had this experience? If so, where have you gone with it? How many of you are jazz expatriots who -after learning the stick- haven't looked back?
Click to expand...
How about you play it arco? :)
 
#73
Well, if you lower your expectations to asking for bowed instrument participation of any kind in jazz then I'm sure you'll find a larger number of talented folks there. Bowed bass itself is a little rarer a find because: 1) it takes additional woodshedding to meet both the player's and the public's expectations, and 2) there is a substantial history of pizz-only bass in jazz to warrant complacency on both the player's and public's part, in my humble opinion.
 
#74
Depending on the instrumentation of the band, as an example say a quartet.....rhythm section with a horn....using the bass as a second front line horn in an arco mode is very hip. The timbre of the bass when being bowed is almost that of a tenor sax anyway.
 
#76
Johnny L said:
Dang it, I forgot the name of the tenor sax player you mentioned in a thread a while back who had a killer vibrato, absolutely gorgeous. I'm going to have to search for his name again.
Click to expand...
My favorite tenor player with a georgeous vibrato is Harold Land. He and (here we go again,) Red Mitchell had a band, The Red Mitchell Harold Land Quintet where Red would supply the third horn voice arco bass along with Harold and Carmel Jones on trunpet. Frank Strazzeri on piano and Leone Petties on drums completed the band.
It also might have been Gene "Jug Head" Ammons, whose tenor sound Red said he he was trying to get on arco bass. (and did) The richness of the front line on this band was beautiful with arco bass, tenor and muted/un-muted trumpet!!
I know you're gonna ask, so here's the only info. I have: Hear Ye!!!!Hear Ye!!!! The Red Mitchell-Harold Land Quintet. Vinyl. Atlantic Records.1376. 1962. Leonard Feather provided the liner notes.
Interesting musical conception for this band. Red and Harold were concerned about the lack of strong, kinda hard sounding, be-bopish type bands coming out of the West coast. Art Blakey and Horace Silver type Hard Bop bands were plentiful coming out of New York at this time. This is these guys answer to those bands for the West Coast!
On his way to changing to fifth tuning, Red plays A fiver low B on this record. The bass on the cover is A big Tyrol that John Heard bought from Red later. Paul Toenniges converted this bass to five for Red using Joseph Bohmann machines...The maker of my fiver. My bass has the only complete set of 5 string Bohmann machines in the world! Funny part is, Paul used a four string set of Bohmann machines on this bass...just adding another un-matched machine for the B.
Everyone always wondered why Red never bowed any more after he moved to Sweden. Some drunk in a bar stole Reds beloved Nuernberger bow and that was the end of Reds arco....He was like that.
 
#79
Does sound interesting - apparently it was made into a CD in 2000 and Amazon have copies for sale...

B00004NKC2.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back