Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

You are browsing the archives of 2007 May.

How quickly time flies! It feels like I just started this blog, and it is hard to wrap my head around the fact that I have pushed that ‘publish’ button one thousand times (and many, many more times than that if you count edits, rewrites, and the like). Think about it—if you [...]

Double bassist Matt Heller (New World Symphony, hellafrisch blog) just started a series of posts about his recent successful audition for the Calgary Philharmonic. Matt is a perceptive and compelling writer, and his tale is likely to be of interest for musicians of all disciplines.

There is a special kind of symmetry to Matt’s [...]

Bass trombone player Mark Fry sent me a link to this fun video of a brass player’s wedding. Like a nerd, the groom hired a brass quintet to play at his wedding, and the group started to get a little too excited while accompanying the ceremony. This video is pretty hilarious to musicians, [...]

Double bassist Joel Negus recently sent me a clip of him playing the Gigue from the first Bach solo violoncello suite. Joel is a senior in high school here in the Chicago metropolitan area, and he will be attending the Cleveland Institute of Music this fall.

I had a lesson with a new adult student this past week. The lesson went really well, but it seemed like the bow was having a hard time grabbing the string. I asked her if I could try the bow, and I immediately noticed that the hair seemed old. Very old.
“It’s been [...]

Jean-Yves Bénichou (member of the Strasbourg Philharmonic and author of the recent article on polishing ebony fingerboards on this blog) recently sent me a link to this wonderful rendition of the Hans Fryba Suite by double bassist Christophe Dinaut.
This is, in my opinion, a great piece that is worth serious study by double bassists everywhere. [...]

I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback on my most recent Road Warrior Without an Expense Account post. This series is wrapping up (two more installments to go), and these last two articles will have a more positive and constructive orientation.
If you haven’t checked it out, you can click on any of the links [...]

There has been some really positive feedback coming in about the latest Ira Gold Contrabass Conversations interview. People seem to be really getting a lot out of hearing advice from this excellent performer. It is great to hear how people are enjoying these episodes in general. You can always leave a comment, [...]

Of interest to bass nerds only:
I just put up scale sheets for all three octave major scales. These sheets have no fingerings at all, allowing for teachers and students to add their own fingerings as they see fit. I have had several requests for this kind of scale sheet, so hopefully people will [...]

I found these videos of Frank Zappa on the Steve Allen Show. Zappa appeared on this episode in 1963, well before he became famous as a performer. Both Frank and Steve Allen use a bass bow to create aleatoric sounds on two bicycles, and they plus the studio band and audience perform along [...]