Being able to play below the open E string is an essential part of the skill set for the modern bassist. Most orchestral bass parts reach below the low E, and not being able to play these notes means not really having all of the professional tools necessary for the job. Reaching these low notes means either having a five string bass or an extension.

I am not a luthier and am therefore basing these comments solely on my own experiences and those of my colleagues. I welcome any comments or insights into the world of extensions and five string upright basses.

In many ways, having a five string bass is the ideal low note solution. Being able to play the low notes on the fingerboard makes life much easier, and it helps with good finger patterns. The major disadvantage to five string basses is the difficulty in finding a decent instrument. Luthiers seem to build five string basses much too thickly. This produces a boxy, tight, “woofy” sound unfortunately associated with five string basses. Disadvantages also include closer string spacing (requiring an adjustment of left hand and right hand technique) and probably a more difficult sale when you decide to move on to another bass (although there are always people hunting for good five string basses).

I have a colleague who has converted four string basses to five string basses, and he has reported positive results. This is a radical procedure to perform on a bass. It requires adding another tuning peg (and usually having to rearrange the layout of the other pegs in the peg box), and will almost certainly require a new fingerboard. A new neck is also advisable for this procedure, although I have played conversions that kept the old neck and just had an extra wide fingerboard mounted. This procedure adds more tension to the instrument as well, which may or may not affect the structural soundness of the instrument.

Most bass players already own 4 strings, so putting an extension on is usually the most practical option to acquiring low notes. Getting an extension involves a lot of fairly permanent hardware modification to your existing bass, although this modification has been minimized by many modern extension makers. Still, at the very least your scroll will be somewhat defaced and your nut will be altered to make room for the extended fingerboard. One big advantage of an extension bass over a five string bass is that the spacing between the strings remains normal, so no new bow techniques need to be learned to play the instrument. Also, the extension will not negatively affect your tone (unless it’s a poorly designed extension that is plagued with buzzes) and will most likely help the tone of the G string. I found that fact out when I got my first extension. My open G string (and all of the harmonics on that string) always sounded a little closed when compared to the other strings, but leaving that low extended C string open let the G string spin much more freely. People were always amazed when I demonstrated this—it was a very obvious transformation.

Extensions come in three flavors: the Stenholm-style machine, the “stick”, or the “stick” plus closers. The simplest of these extensions is commonly called the “stick”. It has a closer for the low E—no other moving parts. This is the cheapest of all the extensions and in many ways is the easiest to learn to play since there is no additional mechanism. The disadvantage of these is obvious once one starts playing with it in a bass section. Holding low notes gets extremely tiring on the “stick”, and shifting from low notes to high notes makes you look like a fool. Both other extension styles are an attempt to solve these problems.

The traditional extension for orchestra players is the Stenholm extension. This machine consists of a series of levers beyond the E string that close the low notes. Low notes are very easy to close, and the left hand never has to reach above the scroll. Unfortunately, these extensions are very heavy. Basses with Stenholm-style extensions are often so scroll-heavy that the bass rests on the top rib and the scroll when on the floor, not on both ribs. Also, many luthiers refuse to work on Stenholm-style extensions, so it can be difficult to get them repaired. They are also fairly complicated devices with many moving parts that can get bent, rusted, broken, and buzzy.

The newest form of extension is an amalgamation of the previous two styles. It is a “stick” extension with closers (like a permanently mounted guitar capo) for each individual low note. These have become very popular in recent years. Playing a low pedal note is even easier on this style than on the Stenholm style. The player can simply close the appropriate lever and blast away. It is nice to be able to just have a low Eb, D, or Db string. They are certainly more complex mechanisms than the “stick”, although not as complex as the Stenholm.

My extension is of the latter type, and it was made by Chris Threlkeld-Wiegand of the Heartland String Bass Shop. He used to work for the Robertson & Sons Violins Shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he is currently based in Iowa City. He makes, hands down, the best extension I have ever seen. It is a low B extension and works like a charm!

technorati tags: double, bass, extension, reaching, low, notes, capo, stenholm, jakstadt, fingered

Tonight I went down to Chicago’s beautiful Millennium Park to check out the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra. This orchestra moved into the facility just a couple of summers ago, and it is a massive venue improvement for this fine ensemble. Frank Gehry designed the pavilion, which is obvious to anyone familiar with his work.

Millennium Park is a really outstanding addition to downtown Chicago. It sits just north of Grant Park and is built on top of functioning train tracks. It is amazing to check out before and after photos of this project.

The stage and seating area are set significantly below street level to help control noise pollution during the concert. This definitely helps with the concert experience. The old venue (The Petrillo Music Shell) was at street level, and traffic, ambulances, buses, and the like constantly interrupted the listening experience. The new set up is much improved, although no outdoor venue in downtown Chicago can be completely rid of these distractions.

Those who do not live in Chicago may not realize that the Grant Park Music Festival is free! It consists of a ten week season in the summer, and all events are free to the public. This orchestra is really excellent. It consists of many Lyric Opera of Chicago orchestra musicians and people from out of town who don’t have a summer season with their hometown orchestra.

I hadn’t checked the program for this evening before leaving to attend the concert, and I groaned when I opened the program book. Liszt’s Fantasy on The Ruins of Athens and his Totentanz, and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 made up the program. These are actually two of my least favorite commonly played composers. The orchestra sounded spectacular fro the Liszt, as did soloist Louis Lortie. Emmanuel Villaume, whom I have worked with for a few summers at the Spoleto USA Festival, was the conductor for the evening, and he did a magnificent job. But nothing could make me stay for the Bruckner–I can’t stand his music, so I had to leave after the first half.

Here is a short clip (again, sorry about the horrible video quality) of the concert venue:

technorati tags: grant, park, music, festival, millenium, chicago, orchestra, orchestral, symphony, symphonic, bruckner, liszt, frank, gehry

My Libertyville students did a recital last month, and I assembled a small montage of their efforts set to the music of Vivaldi:

Because I have WAY too much time on my hands this summer, I decided to make a “bad film school” version of the same recital:

I’d like to mention that I have just started contributing to BIG BOTTOM, a really excellent website for both electric and double bassists. BIG BOTTOM is managed by Dale Cruse, and it is full of varied and interesting posts by several contributors. I will be writing some original posts for the site, and some posts will be both on this blog and BIG BOTTOM.

One of the contributors is Matt Heller. Matt and I go way back. Matt currently plays in the New World Symphony. We were roommates for the American-Russian Youth Orchestra and the Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival in the late 1990s. This is a photo of us in Carnegie Hall (I think) in 1997.

Please do check out BIG BOTTOM. It is a great site!

I have just created a double bass podcast of my solo performances. It is called Jason Heath’s Double Bass Performances, and it consists of live recordings of my double bass playing over the last few years. It is listed in iTunes–just search for “double bass” or “Jason Heath”. Also, you can subscribe with the iTunes chicklet below. Just click the “iTunes 1 Click” to automatically subscribe with iTunes. Click the “Feed” chicklet to subscribe to it using services other than iTunes:

Click this to add my podcast to your iTunes:

Click this to add my podcast to another program:

This is the first of several double bass podcasts that I will be rolling out over the next few weeks. The others will be educational in nature, and links will be available on my blog here as I get them set up.