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Double Bass Your Practice Routine

#61
MDE preaches the gospel truth. The more time I work on scales and arps the easier the rep becomes! I'm at about an hour each of scales/ arps and bowing books- Sevcick and the "A and E" book. An hour for etudes and solo, and excerpts til my girlfriend complains. Less of that stuff on gig days...

I personally feel that every day we should focus very much on tone production, relaxation, and letting the bow work naturally. Lessons with a variety of different high-level teachers can help to change perspective, as well.:bassist:


VERY IMPORTANT- if we continue to play beyond the point of comfort or forward progress, we're actually doing damage! Fix some issues, refine the sound, and go enjoy life!
 
#62
chicagodoubler said:
MDE preaches the gospel truth. The more time I work on scales and arps the easier the rep becomes! I'm at about an hour each of scales/ arps and bowing books- Sevcick and the "A and E" book. An hour for etudes and solo, and excerpts til my girlfriend complains. Less of that stuff on gig days...

I personally feel that every day we should focus very much on tone production, relaxation, and letting the bow work naturally. Lessons with a variety of different high-level teachers can help to change perspective, as well.:bassist:


VERY IMPORTANT- if we continue to play beyond the point of comfort or forward progress, we're actually doing damage! Fix some issues, refine the sound, and go enjoy life!
Click to expand...

HI, What is the A&E book?
 
#64
fergus currie said:
Years ago Ninian Perry told me that it is very important not to practice mistakes. He means if you get something wrong in your practice then you have to unlearn it (even if you only got it wrong once) and then relearn it correctly. A waste of valuable time. So really slow pracice to begin with. The piece will eventually reach a metronome marking of about 162 so I set my metronome at.... 22 (44 played at half speed)! Yes very, very slow.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this and your other insights Fergus, I've been applying them the past couple of months when practicing Bartok's Divertimento for strings, a piece I found very challenging.

I have a question about your slowing down of parts - when doing so alters the way you have to bow something, how do you approach it? A trivial example may be when it gets so slow that two bow strokes are necessary rather than one; a less trivial example may be when the type of bowing differs, e.g. when playing fast quavers at speed, one might use only wrist articulation, but when slowing down you may not have enough bow to make the note last long enough.

Interested to hear how you tackle this!

Jennifer
 
#67
endorka said:
Thanks for this and your other insights Fergus, I've been applying them the past couple of months when practicing Bartok's Divertimento for strings, a piece I found very challenging.

I have a question about your slowing down of parts - when doing so alters the way you have to bow something, how do you approach it? A trivial example may be when it gets so slow that two bow strokes are necessary rather than one; a less trivial example may be when the type of bowing differs, e.g. when playing fast quavers at speed, one might use only wrist articulation, but when slowing down you may not have enough bow to make the note last long enough.


Interested to hear how you tackle this!

Jennifer
Click to expand...


Hi Jennifer, sorry about the late reply. Are you working in Glasgow? That's where Ninian is! He's the man behind the Paragon Ensemble. If you don't know him ask around and track him down, then tell him that you know me and I sent you and he will be delighted to help you in any way! He's an amazing guy! If you run into Alan Ferguson or Derek Hill in the BBCSSO, say 'Hi' to them too!


Now about the bowing at slow tempos... here's the trick.
If you are going slow to concentrate on intonation the bowing should be sacrificed sometimes but if you are doing 'slow motion' practice then obviously you shouldn't go so slow that the bowing gets messed up. If you have a piece with a fast scale then a long tenuto then your practice tempo might cause some problems. Here's a tip. if you do get a long note that needs more than one bow at slow tempi but will get one at the real speed then use 3 bows rather than two because you'll come out upside-down! Never replace one bow with two, always three.

If there is a fast spiccato passage then practice the spiccato too. Play these passages at slow tempos using sutained bowing for the intonation and spiccato bowing for expression practice and, of course, speeding up you'll use more and more the spiccato bowing.

I recorded the Bartok Divertimento a few years ago With Christopher Warren-Green and the only advice I can give you about this piece is 'count like hell!' If you are doing the little solo in the first movement use plenty of bow contact and work on the intonation a lot - go across the strings rather than up and down for intonation and don't worry about losing tone on the d string it's all forte!

I hope that helps.

All the best and give my regards to old Glasgow town!
Fergus
 
#68
The Bartok Divertimento... wow, I had the most amazing experience one time with that. I was still at high school, and the university orchestra were doing it... at the time they had no bass students. They contacted the local symphony, they called my teacher, I think she took one look at the parts and called me, since I had rather surpassed her technical capabilities.

So I ended up doing playing the divertimento by myself, on less than a week's notice. You really need four players to do it completely as written... but with a bit of careful arrangement you can actually get all the notes by yourself. So I did. I think the orchestra's conductor was rather surprised this high school student could do that. I don't know myself how... I know I didn't do anything but practice that week.

Anyway, it's a wonderful work... and yes, count constantly, there's no other way to do it.
 
#69
Fergus & Andrew, thanks for the replies, I've now played the piece and it was a most excellent learning experience! Andrew, you're definitely more experienced than myself, it took several months of intense practice for me to get to the point of being able to play through the piece on my own from begining to end without any major howlers... I'm relatively new to the double bass, and there were many techniques I had to learn from fresh along the way. If I could get to the point of being able to play this piece after a week of practice I'd be well chuffed :-)

Jennifer
 
#72
What kind of sight-singing, or ear training practice routines do you guys have? I usually will practice singing before I practice my bass, that way my sense of pitch is at it's best.
I usally start out with major and minor scales by step, then major and minor arpeggios, then the scales in 3rds, and finally 4ths. No 5ths, 6ths, 7ths, or 8ves yet. After that I sight sing a little from the Music For Sight-Singing book.
 

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