Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Prowse
I'm not talking about substance abuse here. I was watching a video where a guy said that, when standing, the 'nut' (where the strings meet wood at the scroll end) on your bass should be roughly the same height as the space between your eyebrow and hair line. I play with my bass higher than this and have been experimenting with it lower. When a bit lower, the bass balances more easily, but I keep going back to having it higher. Does anyone have one of those golden rules regarding bass height? Gary Karr's bass always seems very high.
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Well, when playing solo like Karr and with a sloped shouldered bass, you can get away with high because you are bringing the solo range closer to the players hands. In Orchestra, the main meat of the playing is under the octave, just the opposite of the solo rep.
Depending on the neck length and broadness of the shoulders (and I play some biggies) I like my first finger, (F on the e-string in half position) to be even with my eye or around there somewheres.. I am most comfortable with that. I do not like raising my hand above my eyes at all. I do that only on the C-extension. Mostly though in Orchestras these days the players sit on a stool and the Bass is at a steeper angle than when standing. Even with sitting thiught the relation from hand to eye stays about there same player to player.
I've played next to one guy for about 3 years that only stood up while playing and he has played in a local orchestra here for 45 years. He can reach across or slightly down and comb his own hair. Talk about having the bass high!
When ever we would have parts that went into the upper positions he would have trouble getting over the shoulders of his Bass and they were slightly sloped. A Czech factory bass made fairly recently (10-20 years old). I told him a few times politely "if you lower your bass to about your eye level, it will be easier to get over the shoulders".
About a few months or so later (maybe less) he sets up next to me on the right (I'm Principal for that Orchestra
) and tells me he lowered his bass and getting used to it, he finds it's so much easier to play now. It took him 45 years to find this out!!