Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog

Quick Tips to Avoid Practice Burnout

petertambroni — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:07:33 +0000

Hi everyone, Peter Tambroni here for some quick tips to avoid practice burnout.

We all get to a point in our practicing where we stagnate, feel burned out, or are just plain sick of it! This is normal. As musicians, we tend to have the attitude that we “must practice many hours a day, every day or else”! Try a different approach. If we consider that musicians are just ’small muscle athletes’ we can approach practicing like athletes approach workout sessions.

Here are some ideas.

1. Try a 3 weeks on, 1 week cycle. Make the 3 weeks intense but know that you have a week off coming up.

2. Try the 2-a-day approach. Do one practice session early in the morning and another in the evening. I feel great when it’s 9am and I’ve already done my scales and Sevcik.

3. Listen to your body. If your left hand hurts, do bowing exercises.

4. It’s not always about distance running. Try sprints - practice really hard for 20 minutes then take 5 minutes off. Repeat.

5. Mix it up! Been practicing every day for years from 6-8pm? Try practicing in the morning instead.

6. Get some new exercises! We stagnate when do the same too long. Buy a new etude book. Work on new excerpts. Start your scales at the top.

For more tips visit MostlyBass.com.

Animusic - Aqua Harp

Jason — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:00:32 +0000

Folks out there may already be familiar with Animusic videos–they’ve been around for many years. To me, however, they are a great example of how creative people can be when envisioning music, and they are excellent videos to show young students and get them excited about music. Hope you have fun with these videos!

My wife is a harpist, so this one holds special significance for me!

How many bass players do we need on this gig?

Jason — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:00:32 +0000

Grant Park Symphony and Northern Illinois University bass professor John Floeter put out a really interesting blog post earlier this fall, posing an excellent question:

How do people determine the proportion of basses to other string sections for a particular orchestra?

John writes:

I’ve often wondered what the “perfect” balance or even the “normal” balance of bassists is in an ensemble. Obviously, this is a quirk of orchestral music,where more than one person is playing the same part in a section. If only one person plays on the part, he or she just needs to adjust their volume in order to balance with the rest of the ensemble. I have to admit that there is a lot of freedom to make artistic choices when you are by yourself, including the proper balance of bass with the rest of the ensemble.

Read the complete post here.

Vito Liuzzi performs Romanza Drammatica by Bottesini

Jason — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:00:27 +0000

Doublebassblog.org contributor Vito Liuzzi performs the Romanza Drammatica by Giovanni Bottesini:

Vito Liuzzi - double bass

prof.: Rosalba Lapresentazione - Piano

Quick Teaching Tip

petertambroni — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:02:25 +0000

Hi everyone, Pete Tambroni here for a quick teaching tip.

I find when I teach German bow, the frog often slips to the base of the thumb. This limits arm and wrist flexibility.

To help the student keep the frog near the base of the fingers, I tell them to rest it on their ‘handlebar callous’. Almost all of us rode bikes as kids and got those callouses on the base of our fingers! So this gives the students a reference that has meaning to them - something they can relate to.

For more tips visit MostlyBass.com.

Animusic - Resonant Chamber

Jason — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:00:56 +0000

The following video is one of my favorite, especially once the bass strings kick in. Imagine if this instrument actually existed!

Parking in the Projects

Jason — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:00:32 +0000

I get really sick of shelling out $20 or $30 (or more!) for parking every time I play a gig. Add in expensive gas, the clogged Chicago freeways, and the aggrivation of maneuvering a bass in and out of cars and buildings, and I have to think long and hard about a job before accepting. My days of cheerfully accepting $75 gigs are long gone!

Even when I’m being well compensated for my playing, there’s just something about throwing down a few twenties just to park my stupid car that really sticks in my craw. I dread downtown jobs for this reason, being more inclined to take a job in the burbs–even for a little less cash–than to fight m way into the city.

I often take the train with my bass, an activity fraught with peril (and one that I’ve written about in the past). What if it’s rush hour? What if a Cubs game just got out? What if there are bikes on my train? Fat people? Gangbangers? Taking a bass on a train is undesirable for a whole host of reasons.

I also seem to be perpetually under a cloud of bad parking karma whenever I look for a free place to park in the city. This never seems to work out for me. I circle and circle, getting more annoyed by the minute, peering in vain down urban corridors uniformly packed with cars. I generally give up and park it in a garage, eating the hefty and chalking it up as a cost of doing business in the city center.

It was with great excitement, therefore, that I spotted an open spot on the street on my way to a near North side gig recently. No meter? No funky parking restriction from 4-6 pm, tow zone sign, or 15 minute loading zone sign? Perfect! The parking gods were finally blessing me!

Getting out of my car, I paused to peruse my surroundings. Hmmm…. this place seemed a little….. well, nasty. Not totally nasty, but with a definite dose of diciness. The building directly across the street from me was abandoned but not necessarily uninhabited, if you catch my drift, and there were all these weird signs like “Building 1″ on the street. I weighed the suspicious feeling in my gut against the virtual certainty of having to shell out $30 for a few hours of parking and elected to stay. I mean, really–what’s the worst that could happen?

I began the long trudge back to where I left my car late that night, after wrapping up a double rehearsal around 10 pm. As I wheeled my bass through the neighborhoods I noticed how everything was deteriorating around me as I neared the street on which I had parked. Hmmmm….

Did you ever see the movie Candyman? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t–it was a pretty ho-hum cheesy horror movie. Anyway, Candyman made a strong impression on me primarily because of the extreme creepiness of the setting–it took place in the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago, and though it featured all sorts of disturbing horror movie occurances, the scariest thing by far was the housing project, with its towering buildings with broken elevators, holes between the units, and unspeakable horrors lurking within. Though I knew that Cabrini-Green didn’t actually house the Candyman, its reputation as one of the nation’s worst housing projects still made me feel queasy when I heard the name.

As you’ve no doubt guessed, I had managed to park my dumb self right in the middle of the Cabrini-Green housing project! And, to make matters worse, I was wearing my Dockers and brightly colored button-down….and carrying a bass! I might as well have painted a target on my forehead.

I stopped in my tracks, gazing up at the very project towers that had haunted my dreams as a kid (damn that Candyman!). The towers are mostly abandoned now, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Abandoned, huh? Sounds like a perfect place for Candyman to set up a hang…..

To make matters worse, it was a warm evening in late summer and there were dudes everywhere.

Sketchy dudes.
Very sketchy dudes.

And me with my dress clothes, double bass, and big dumb smile.

I had walked the better part a long and decrepit block when I spotted a big bunch of guys hanging out on the streetcorner, being loud and more than a little intimidating. Crap! I was far enough along that turning around would make it look like I was obviously running away, but staying my course would mean that I had to walk right by them (the other side of the street was a fenced-in block filled with abandoned buildings).

I hunkered down, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible (yeah, right!) and powered down the street in a determined speed walk, as if this was a regular part of my day and I was in a hurry. I didn’t want to run since that would call even more attention to myself (as if that were possible) and greatly increase my chances of tripping. I zipped along the side of the fence without incident.

I peered up the block, looking desperately for my big old suburban people mover of a car, but couldn’t see a thing. Great. Was it still there? Towed? Stolen? Who knows?

Cars with music blasting out of open windows rolled past me, and I heard a lot of commotion all over the place–guys yelling at each other, multiple car stereos blasting beats–but I continued at as fast a pace as possible up the street, frantically looking for my car. What on Earth was I going to do if it was gone?

In the end, I had nothing to worry about. My car was right there where I left it, and I got right in and drove away without one single person bothering me.

Looking back on that incident, I feel somewhat foolish at being so paranoid. Nobody gave me a hard time in Cabrini-Green, even though I was all alone, dressed like an idiot, and wheeling a double bass around in the middle of the night. I think it’s mainly that I’ve had this image of Cabrini-Green in my mind ever since seeing Candyman (long before I ever lived in Chicago), and that combined with the reputation that it has as one of the toughest housing projects in the United States (though it is now largely abandoned and being replaced by gleaming condo buildings and commercial development) that made me feel so panicked.

Still, I can’t help but cringe when I picture myself parking my car in the middle of the projects, looking around, thinking “this looks good!”, and wheeling off down the street. What was I thinking? Only the image of me wheeling my bass in my suit through Cabrini-Green in the middle of the night make me cringe more. Next time, I’m shelling out the $30 for parking!

Help! I don’t have time to practice!

petertambroni — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:08:33 +0000

Hello fellow bassists and educators, Peter Tambroni here from MostlyBass.com. Jason posted a great article recently about finding time to practice and auditions being a young persons game (check it out here).

But what if you ARE a young person (or not so young) and you still don’t have time to practice? What now? Well, first - MAKE TIME! I find it hard to believe that a student can’t find FIVE MINUTES to practice. Ok ok… What if you really only have five minutes? This was the topic of discussion at a recent lesson with a student and his parents. I thought he could lighten his class load by not taking so many advanced classes, dropping an elective, or not playing a sport. As it turns out there was an ill family member and he really didn’t have time to practice.

So, how about some practical solutions for the 21st century.

1. Each day, FIX SOMETHING. It could be one note, one shift, one rhythm, but improve something.

2. Do more listening. Most students have an iPod or other music player. Use travel time, chores, or laundry time to really get to know the piece you’re working on.

3. Study the score. Again, there are little times throughout the day that playing the bass is not practical (ie lunch) but you could be studying a score or sheet music.

4. Do counting exercises, air bowing, or visualization. Really! It may look a little silly, but the alternative (sounding bad) is even worse. As long as your brain is involved you can get better.

5. Don’t give up! Schedules go through cycles. Just try to have a better practice schedule next week, next month, or next semester.

Thanks and happy practicing!

PBDB: The SAT’s of Music: Test Prep

jeffweisner — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:59:37 +0000

(by Jeff Weisner; crossposted from PBDB)

Last year, I did some posts about auditioning and how to approach it. You can read them here andhere, but to recap the main points:

- Auditions are standardized tests like the SAT.
- Like any standardized test, they don’t just test your skills and musicianship, but they also test your skills at taking that particular type of test; just as a very smart person can do poorly at the SAT because it isn’t a type of test they excel at, so a good musician can audition poorly because it isn’t a type of performance they excel at.
- When we audition, we need to be good at both the material of the test (the music itself) and at the skills that this particular test requires.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m always happy to beat a dead horse a few times, so I’m going to keep working this SAT analogy a bit farther in this post and see if it yields any helpful ideas for auditioners.

How do we prepare for the SAT? Well, the first way is by being good students in the first place. The SAT tests our general knowledge levels and comprehension abilities, and we all acquire those abilities over many years of schooling and life experience. No matter how many test prep courses you might take, you can’t get a good SAT score unless you can read, write, and do math.

The other way we prepare is by prepping for the test itself. We learn what sorts of questions get asked. We take sample tests to get a sense of how to approach answering the questions. We work on the questions with a timer to improve our response times. We drill ourselves over and over on the test questions so that our responses to them become more smooth and automatic. If needed, we can take all sorts of organized test-prep courses in which we can get expert assistance at doing all of these things. This side of test prep can often seem annoying and even a waste of time, especially if you know that you have already taken care of the first part of prep (being a good student with good skills). But it’s still needed, since the SAT is a required test for most colleges and there is no real alternative offered.

Hmmm, I think this may have been a good dead horse to beat at - these test prep techniques are pretty analogous to what we need to do for auditions!

The first part of SAT prep is about acquiring and internalizing the basic skills that the SAT is testing for. In our work as musicians, we need to have mastered the basics of good playing to be competitive in auditions. We have to be able to play in tune, in time, and with a good basic sound. We need to have mastered all the core technical elements of our instrument. In the case of strings, this would mean bowstrokes, bow distribution and placement, and various systems of fingering and left hand technique. I would say it also means having an understanding of phrasing concepts, music theory and history, and harmony. In other words, it isn’t something you can cram for. It takes years of study and work to acquire these skills for all but the most talented few. And unlike the skills we need for the SAT, we aren’t all required to learn them to become successful members of society. We have to decide to put in the work to acquire them on our own at some point.

The second part of SAT prep is about learning the structure of the questions, developing a system to answer them, and drilling ourselves so that we will be efficient test-takers and not be hobbled by anxiety or inefficiency. This matches up with most of the “audition prep” techniques that people use to prepare for auditions. We practice the audition material over and over so that it becomes more automatic. We play for people to reproduce the stress levels of an actual audition and to get comments on how to improve. We record ourselves to evaluate the details of our playing. We do mock auditions to practice the exact type of surroundings and situations that the real audition might offer us. And we consult teachers and coaches for expert advice on how to better do all these things.

If we aren’t doing as well as we like in auditions, just as in the SATs, we need to ask ourselves whether our problems lie more in the first part of test prep or in the second part. Do we have our core technical skills in order? Are we using our instruments and bodies efficiently and naturally? If not, we may need to spend some time correcting technical problems before we tackle professional auditions. Or do we feel our playing is solid, but nerves or preparation errors are getting in our way? If so, then we need to focus on part two of our prep - making sure that the format and structure of the audition process isn’t getting in our way and keeping us from presenting our best work when we audition.

I have encountered students struggling with this issue many times, and have often found that much of their frustration is that they are focused on the wrong half of their audition prep work. They may have done lots and lots of mock (and real!) auditions without addressing a problem with their underlying technique that is holding them back. Or, they may feel like they aren’t good musicians when in fact they are - they just need to look at how to keep the audition process from overwhelming them. Making sure that we are not beating our own dead horses when it comes to audition prep can bring better results, and better musicianship overall.

Vito Liuzzi performs Beatles Fantasy

Jason — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:00:49 +0000

Regular contributor to doublebassblog.org Vito Liuzzi performs a fantasy on tunes by The Beatles:

Vito Liuzzi - double bass (Italy) prof.: Rosalba Lapresentazione -Piano

Double Bass “Romeo Orsi 1890″

“Beatles fantasy” for double bass and piano has been arranged by italian Maestro Michele Cellaro.