Review: Progressive Repertoire for the Double Bass by George Vance

I’ve been using Progressive Repertoire for the Double Bass by George Vance and Annette Costanzi ever since I started teaching the bass.

This series of books and the underlying philosophy behind it has transformed the way that I think about learning the double bass. In fact, it has had a bigger impact on how I teach the bass than any other resource.

Discovering These Books

When I first picked up these books nearly 20 years ago, I had no idea who George Vance was or that that these books fused the Rabbath technique with the Suzuki method.

They just seemed like a cool collection of pieces to me.

I started off by “cherry picking” some of the pieces and randomly assigning them to students. They seemed to resonate with students, but I didn’t really know how to teach them effectively or what the purpose was behind the pieces and how they were sequenced.

I had so many questions:

• Why these pieces?
• What’s the logic behind this specific sequence?
• Thumb position so early? What?!?
• Should I jump into the middle of the books for a more advanced student or start from the beginning?
• Why no half position for so long?
• What’s the deal with these position numbers?
• Pivoting for beginners? Are you crazy?
• What else should l have people work on?

It wasn’t until I’d been teaching for several years that I started to actually go through these pieces in order, and it was even longer before I started speaking to people about how they taught these pieces.

Over time and through conversations with a great number of folks about George Vance and the method, I got answers to those questions.

I also ended up taking dozens of students through the books from the beginning, and I’ve refined my approach to teaching this material considerably over the years.

Now I’m a true fan.

I’m convinced that the Progressive Repertoire approach is one of the biggest factors for this new level of playing in young bassists. It’s turning pieces that we used to audition on for college into middle school pieces.

Much has been written and spoken about regarding these books, and I’ve set up a special page on the blog dedicated to resources for these books. This is a great way to dig into the hours of conversations and multiple articles written about George Vance and his work.

I’ve never actually taken the time to sit down and do a thorough review of the series, so that’s what we’re doing here now.

Here’s what I love about these books, what drives me a bit crazy even still, and how I use them in my own teaching.

What I Love

There are so many things I love about this approach. I’ll try to contain myself and share the most notable items.

1 – Starting at the Neck Block

This was totally confusing to me at first. I mean, what kind of logic is there to not starting in first position? It’s called first position for a reason, right?

Actually, starting the bass at the neck block makes a ton of sense. The notes are closer together. The strings have less stiffness than back in first potion. The hand position can be molded easily with the neck block as a reference point.

For me, the biggest benefit is that you can play pentatonic scales right off the bat at the neck block. This is a huge advantage to this approach.

Rather than grinding away on first position notes or introducing the lower strings right away, starting students on the G and D strings at the neck block gets them playing melodies right away.

The very first note played in book 1 is actually a bowed harmonic on the G string. This is both simple and brilliant.

Starting on a harmonic gets the player going with both right and left hands, is easy to find, and sounds clean and clear. It’s actually easier than bowing an open string, and it gets the student started making a good sound from the moment they pick up the bass.

My goal in the first bass lesson is to have the student learn Short’nin’ Bread, the first piece in the book. I’ve pretty much got it down to a science at this point. It’s such a cool accomplishment to have the student walk out of their very first lesson having already learned a tune.

One of the most confusing things to people at first when encountering this method is the position numbering system. International Society of Bassists past president Nicholas Walker has put together a wonderful chart that explains it beautifully.

2 – Early Introduction of Thumb Position

This is another thing that I initially thought was nuts, but now absolutely adore about this approach.

While it might seem surprising to introduce a concept that most methods leave until much later, it’s another stroke of genius on the part of George Vance.

After all, there’s nothing inherently more challenging. It’s the fear of thumb position that is the challenges. This method eliminates that fear by diving into it in the first few pieces.

The way that this series teaches thumb position is important to note. The first thumb position tune is Scotland’s Burning, which is first introduced at the neck block.

This allows the student to play something that they already know up in the new position.

Scotland’s Burning works particularly well as an initial thumb position selection because it’s made up of so many harmonics. In fact, only the A and B have to be closed, and the student knows how the tune goes since they learned it at the neck block already.

Scotland’s Burning also re-appears at the beginning of book 2 up in 6th position at the end of the fingerboard.

I also thought that putting a student that far into thumb position that early was nuts, but again, there’s nothing inherently more challenging about playing up there—it’s only the fear of the unknown that makes it seem challenging.

3 – One New Concept With Every Piece

The name ‘Progressive Repertoire’ is perfect, because that’s exactly what these books are. Each new piece adds one additional concept. While as a teacher I’d love to have the skill more obviously stated (see Challenges below), there’s a beauty to moving through this orderly sequence.

As a younger teacher, I’d finish a piece with a student and then move on. Experience has taught me the value of constantly going back and reviewing past pieces with students. It’s a great way to reinforce the fundamentals, and students also feel how far they’ve come musically since learning those earlier pieces.

Challenges

1 – Position Numbering

While I really enjoy thinking of the fingerboard in six major positions as outlined by Francois Rabbath and George Vance, this position numbering system has caused mass confusion in countless bass players and orchestra teachers.

Interestingly, I’ve found that students don’t seem that bothered by there being two different position systems. It’s the teachers that seem to wring their hands about it the most.

While there are numerous benefits to thinking about the bass in terms of these six Vance-Rabbath positions, the vast majority of published music uses traditional “Simandl” positioning.

2 – Incorporating this Method into Beginning Orchestra

In my ideal world, all beginning school music bass parts would be written starting up at the neck block and using the notes that Progressive Repertoire starts off with.

This is not the world that we live in, though, and students are faced with notes in half-position, notes on the A and E strings, and parts that have the student shifting up and down the G string between positions right away.

As a result, I find myself teaching many skills (especially half-position) much earlier than they’re introduced in Progressive Repertoire.

One trick that both orchestra teachers and private bass teachers can do is to change the position markings and string markings to keep students in that neck block position.

This works if the music is covering those notes, or course, which is not always the case.

3 – Pivots

I’m convinced that I am bad at teaching pivoting. Every time I try to teach it to a younger student, I end up with a student that plays pretty out of tune.

Pivoting is introduced at the beginning of volume 2.

It’s an important concept for sure, and I think that it’s a good place to incorporate it in the sequence. I think I’m just bad at teaching it.

In the past, I’ve had students do small shifts instead of pivoting, which works but is obviously not what George Vance intended. These days, I’m teaching the pivots and just working to be better at explaining and demonstrating the concept.

The other thing that’s confusing about the pivots is that they’re marked with a dash. this is the symbol often used to indicate shifts in other materials, which muddies the concept further for many folks.

I don’t know that there’s a better way to indicate pivots, and this is consistent within materials that teach pivoting. I guess it’s just evidence that we could use more musical symbols, as anyone who has debated the meaning of dots and dashes knows all too well.

4 – Few Scales in the Books

I always thought it was odd that no scales appear until book 2 with the D major scale. George has a separate book of scales called Vade Mecum, and there are plenty of other supplementary resources for scales on the bass.

Still, I find it challenging to know when to introduce scales to students and at what time when focusing on Progressive Repertoire as the primary text for students.

Even though I know that I’m teaching way better than I used to by focusing on Progressive Repertoire, I feel like I’m covering scales much less that I used to. Still, my students are having more fun and sounding better than back when I did a ton of scales, so something must be working right.

In terms of scales, I’ve started getting students at a younger age into Hal Robinson’s wonderful scale compendium Boardwalkin’ (order it online here from Robertson and Sons). This book lines up beautifully with Progressive Repertoire, and I find that it gives students a more “three dimensional” understanding of scales.

5 – No Tenor Clef

Between you and me, I wish we could just get rid of tenor clef for bass players altogether.

George Vance certainly thought so as well, since there’s not one instance of tenor clef in any of the Progressive Repertoire volumes.

Going straight from bass clef to treble clef works great. This is whatI do in my own arrangements, and I’m seeing this more and more from contemporary bass composers.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of music out there with tenor clef in it for bass, so reaching it is a necessary skill for sure. You’ll have to come up with some other sources for teaching tenor clef.

6 – No Digital Edition

The music publishing industry continues to find its way in this new digital world, and I’m sure that we’ll have digital versions of Progressive Repertoire at some point.

I’m a devoted iPad Pro user for my music reading, though, and more and more of my students are coming into their lessons with iPads or Android tablets.

I would love to see a version of Progressive Repertoire in digital form. Even better, I’d love to see it with the demonstration MP3s embedded into a digital edition for iOS and Android.

7 – No Teacher Edition

Actually, with all that has been written and spoken about concerning Progressive Repertoire, the bass community is forging its own “teacher edition” of these pieces. If George had been with us longer (he passed away in 2009), undoubtedly we’d have gotten that.

It be so great to have a version of these materials that would educate the teacher on the concept being taught, ways to approach it, what to listen for, and other such concepts.

That might seem like an insane request, but as a former public school orchestra director, I know that this is exactly the sort of thing that’s provided for band and orchestra directors in their method books.

The beauty of the Internet age is that we have the tools to build these kinds of resources ourselves, and I’m seeing this happen with the body of work being generated about George Vance and the Progressive Repertoire series.

Still, I’d love to be able to purchase and recommend a special edition of Progressive Repertoire that would teach folks how to use it.

Final Thoughts

Despite the above challenges that I face using this system as my primary teaching tool, I love the series and have benefited so much, as both a teacher and a player, from using this approach.

When supplemented with the right materials, this series will take someone from their first exposure to the bass all the way to the Nanny/Dragonetti Concerto. At that point, they’re pretty much ready for any of the standard bass repertoire.

This is an exciting time to be a double bassist, and I’m convinced that the adoption of these books has been a major factor in the rapid pace of evolution we’ve seen in the bass world. `