In my second bass lesson I learned about the double bass and bowing techniques. The most important idea seemed to be that your body was comfortable and that you didn’t need to hunch over or reach too high up to get any of the notes. Most people say to put the bottom of the tuning pegs by your eye brows, but this teacher out a lot of emphasis on the fact that you plucking hand should be able to reach any string easily without you needing to bend over or sacrifice your posture.
When holding the bass you should be standing next to it, not behind it. The corner of the bass should lean on your belly between your belly button (yellow circle) and your left side. You can see this in the diagram below where the orange line in where the bass should rest. Other than that and your left hand no other part (knee, leg, arm, etc…) should be resting on the bass.
Next, when your right hand is plucking, it should be coming from your entire arm. If you just use your fingers to pluck they will get tired very quickly. It shouldn’t be an extreme motion, just use gravity to let your whole arm pull on a string.
Your thumb should rest on the right side of the finger board (yellow triangle). You should be plucking just at the bottom of the finger board, just before the sound hole (orange line). Have a look at this diagram.
When bowing, you should try to keep your bow perpendicular to the bridge of the instrument. The bowing should happen in between the end of the finger board and the bridge (example below). Bowing on the double bass requires quite a bit of pressure since the strings are so thick. If you don’t dig in to the string hard enough then higher partials will sound.
The last thing I learned is about the two different ways to hold a bass bow. There is a french bow hold and a german bow hold. The french version is basically a giant version of how you would hold a violin/viola bow. The german version looks like the images below. Your thumb and pointer finger can gently touch on top of the bow, and your pinky should curve underneath. Beginners can leave their pinky finger flat while gaining strength as this position can be quite strenuous.
This bass lesson was very informative and I feel confident I could teach my students about these techniques. In my last lesson I will need to ask more questions about how the left hand should work on the double bass.
