Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

You are browsing the archives of 2007 September.

Royal Philharmonic principal bassist Corin Long died in a tragic accident earlier this year, and his sister Vanessa is organizing a memorial concert for Corin and their other Sheila. She wrote to me recently inquiring if I might spread the word about this event, wondering if any musicians known to Corin or Sheila [...]

Regular bass blog contributor Benjy sent in this great photo from an old International Society of Bassists journal that he scanned, retouched, and framed.

Benjy writes:
I’m sure that it will amuse the bass community- we can actually count the number of strings he played on! If I’m not mistaken, he was very active in [...]

 

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This week’s podcast features an interview with double bass performer, composer, and teacher Donovan Stokes. We featured music from Donovan on episode 13 of the podcast, and it’s a pleasure to feature this great musician again. Gadaha, the album that we feature this week, was recorded with no overdubs whatsoever, which is amazing [...]

Here’s a brief demonstration of how to use chord substitutions on the ever-popular “I Got Rhythm” chord progression.

When I started Contrabass Conversations in January this year, this is the sort of project that I hoped would eventually happen, and I am really excited to begin putting this material out! Lyric Opera of Chicago and Grant Park Symphony bassist Andrew Anderson teaches concepts, ideas, and techniques for this double bass in this [...]

I hope that readers enjoyed Orchestras - A Secret Society of Weirdoes (and I’m one of them!), which I put out on the blog yesterday as part 4 of This Crazy Business. This series has been a lot of fun to write, and I’m in the middle of putting together the next installment, which [...]

This is a post by Bill Harrison - playjazznow.com
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I’m a musician. You know - a man with no marketable skills. Civilians sometimes ask me what I do for a living; musicians I run into often ask me what kind of stuff I’ve been doing lately. These questions always leave me tongue-tied. What on earth DO [...]

In this series we have discussed the alternate mental circuitry developed by musicians, how addictive this art form can be once this circuitry is hard-wired, and how this addiction causes musicians to tolerate employment circumstances that appear untenable to non-musicians, all to get an opportunity to practice their craft (and get their fix) as frequently [...]

Check out the new little video player just below the tabs at the top of this page. I just added this new feature to the blog and, I’ve got to say, this thing is cool. It contains all of the videos we’ve put out for the blog and for Contrabass Conversations, and you [...]

Here is the next track in the Virtual Master Class Project. This is a recording of an excerpt from Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss. Leave criticism, advice, practice tips, and the like by clicking on the ‘comments’ link below the player.
Sometimes these players take 10-20 seconds to load, so give it a little time to [...]