Jason Heath’s Double Bass Blog

Here’s the second part of the magnificent new video series with Rufus Reid and Tom Hill. This new site from Tyrone Bishop is a really great new destination for jazz double bassists, with forums, videos, and much more to come. Check out our Contrabass Conversations forums here (leave us some ideas for [...]

Calgary Philharmonic bassist Matt Heller just put out a great follow-up post on the topic of practice sessions and overpracticing.  Comparing practicing music to grilling steaks, Matt writes:
The music needs to be prepared just well enough - medium rare, let’s say - so that it still has the juice of spontaneity in it, without [...]

This is a post from double bassist from Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music student Nicholas Hart. Nick will be contributing weekly posts to the bass blog about life as a music student in one of the nation’s most exclusive programs. I think readers will find this different perspective on the double bass world and the music [...]

International Society of Bassists President and Ball State University Bass Professor Hans Sturm and I got together recently and filmed a chat about the Rabbath left hand position technique. This final segment of our chat covers more general mental approaches to practicing the double bass.
If you’d like to watch the complete series, you can do [...]

Double bassist and blogger Joe Lewis wrote a post yesterday that raised some very good questions. He writes:
I’ve often thought much about efficiency when practicing music. I used to park myself in a practice room from dawn until midnight back at NEC and even before then. I would break my practice routines down into [...]

This is a post by Bill Harrison - playjazznow.com
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I’ve been immersed in a fascinating book called This Is Your Brain On Music. The author, Daniel J. Levitin, is a musician/recording engineer/producer turned neuroscientist. Despite the unfortunate title, the book is a serious exploration of the connections between music (from both a listening and playing [...]

This is a repository of orchestral excerpts for the double bass. Click the player for each excerpt to practice along with it. Click the name of the piece to download it as an MP3 file (right-click and choose “save as..”). There will be a short (three second) ad at the beginning of each file if [...]