Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

Double bassist Tyler Bakken sent me a link to this story about the Houston Symphony’s newest PR idea–trading cards! Kurt Johnson, the violinist mentioned in the following quote, is an old acquaintance of mine. We both attended Northwestern University and played in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago masters degree fellowship program in [...]

Courtney and I liked the idea of a beach wedding, and we eventually settled on Hanalei on the beautiful island of Kauai as the ideal location. As you can see, the wedding party was really dancing with joy at the setting:

My brother was so excited about this beautiful place that he couldn’t keep [...]

Yesterday I posted a video sent to me by Peter Szczepanek featuring Stringfever (a U.K.-based string quartet) playing Bolero on one cello all at the same time.
After asking when bass players would try the same thing, Márcio Domingues from Portugal [...]

The highly useful podcast text search tool EveryZing continues to both amaze and amuse me daily. It does a good enough job with the speech to text transcription to allow for really useful search results, but if you actually sit down and read the transcripts, you’re likely to find yourself rolling on the floor, [...]

EveryZing, the podcast speech to text service that I use to archive Contrabass Conversations content, is really amazing. This is the kind of thing that makes podcasts really amazing, and it is what makes the podcast such a useful and dynamic resource. Type a key phrase into the search box in the sidebar, [...]

M R ducksA R notO S A R - C M wings?L I B - M R ducks!

more bass content tomorrow…

Grant Park Symphony bassist John Floeter recently wrote a post about the difference in audience and orchestra enjoyment of pops concerts. Reflecting on a summer concert with The Decemberists, he writes:

I’ve played lots of rock concerts in the backup orchestra, and usually it’s a very uncomfortable experience with repetitive parts, deafening sound despite earplugs, [...]

This bizarre story comes from double bassist Andrew Harmon and is about a wacky experience he had while taking the Chicago El with his bass. I take this train all the time with my own bass, and I can certainly relate, although I’ve certainly never had this sort of thing happen to me!
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My CTA [...]

After hearing this song played incessantly on MacBreak Weekly (one of my favorite podcasts), I find that I can’t get it out of my head. Now you won’t be able to get it out of your head either:

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Plane Trips with Basses Are Fun – If Fun for You is Getting Attacked by Rabid Weasels
Traveling with a bass is an annoyance by cab and an irritation by train, but the real drama occurs when we intrepid (or foolhardy) bassists venture out to our nearest airport to load our instruments on a plane.
After all, [...]