Quote:
Originally Posted by stan haskins
I did Simandl book one a couple of times with different teachers. Dave Cobb moved me through the whole book, beginning to end, about 9-10 years ago, and through the 30 etudes and book 2 (I think I need to revisit that one soon, or try some other higher position method)
Currently, I just started working with the Sevcik Bogenstudien, the Zimmerman bowing book, and the Storch-Hrabe etudes. Then, in addition to solo rep, I'm using the revised Suzuki bass repertoire to try to fill in some holes in tone production and musicianship. Has anyone else checked this out? Gary Karr plays the CD examples, it's pretty interesting . . .
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I would like to make a suggestion here about the higher positions. First off, there is way less books/methods written for the second octave of the Fb than the first octave, by far. What I found useful was taking something like Simandl I and playing it an octave higher on the same strings. For Jazz players, they improv all the time and do not play just on the G string up there. Playing Book I will help drill those string crossings and intervals you would not otherwise find in the average book written for TP.
Also, I have the Zimmerman Duet books for 2 Basses and have taken these up an octave where and when I was willing just to challenge myself. The other day while breaking in a relatively new Bass, I took as much as possible an octave down to work the lower strings.
Music is music but practice is practice. Sometimes we only get higher notes once in awhile above the G in Orchestral writing. The conductor in the main Orchestra I play in always tries to tell me how hard something is in our Principal meetings but when I get the music, I show him that if one plays the second half of the Bass, it's really not all the hard at all.
Play the book music in different octaves and see what I am talking about. Do it seriously and you will see you have much more TP music in your collection that you thought you had.