I recently did an interview with my friend John Grillo. This interview will be featured on the next episode of Contrabass Conversations, and it should be a real pleasure for people to hear.

John also sent me a CD of his recent double bass recital, and I will be incorporating some of these tracks into the next episode of the podcast. John also gave me a great idea which I haven’t thought of before, which is to start a section of the blog that features double bass recitals.

I think that this is a great idea. I will be putting John’s recital up later this week or early next week as the first feature for this section of the blog, and I’d like to invite readers to send me any MP3s from their own recitals that they would like to have featured on the recital showcase.

People often have recordings of themselves that they would like to share, but they don’t have a website (or not a website with a lot of traffic), server space, or the technical knowledge to get these files up there. I’ve got plenty of server space and bandwidth, and this site gets a lot of traffic, so I’d like to do what I can to share the performances of other double bassists.

That is in large part the purpose behind this blog in the first place—the sharing of resources and information within the double bass community. I think that this will be a valuable addition to this webpage, and I encourage anyone with some recital tracks they’d like to share with the bass community to e-mail me at contrabassconversations@gmail.com.

Matt Heller recently wrote about a lesson he had with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra bassist Don Palma. Mr. Palma was a clinician for the New World Symphony recently, and he was working with the double bassists in this orchestra. Matt compares tempi of different recordings of the Bach 3rd Suite Bourrees and discusses exactly what tempo range makes these movements flow. Check it out.

Here is an interesting post from the Chicago Classical Music blog. Bass vocalist Jonathan Miller gives some tips for thinking about intonation in the lower register, and his comments apply to the double bass as well:

First and foremost: sing squarely in the middle of the pitch. Most bass notes work well with this rule, partly because most bass notes (at least in the stuff I sing) are the “roots” of their chords. Everyone lines up on top of your note. It’s quite fun.

Read his complete post here.

My ‘real life’ (although I certainly consider this blog a part of my real life) has been getting in the way of my writing over the past month, making it difficult to create new content and make improvements to the blog. Fortunately, my schedule is easing up slightly starting next week, and I am working on part III of ‘Road Warrior Without an Expense Account’ right now.

One thing I have discovered about doing a podcast is that it takes work. A lot of work. I knew this would be the case prior to starting Contrabass Conversations, and I took several months to set things up right, get the right equipment, purchase the domain and podcast hosting, and all the hundreds of other little details that go into making a successful show. Luckily, I have set things up so that there will always be a new show on Mondays (if not a day or two before) regardless of how busy I am.

My life has become a crazy balancing act and will remain so for the next couple of months, but I will still be posting to my blog every day, and you should be seeing some more original content from be later this week or early next week.

This is a fun video from two guys with a lot of free time on their hands. I like how the letters melt off of the paper about one minute into the video.