Big Projects

It’s been quiet around here lately!

Very quiet.

In fact, it’s been a month since I was last here. But I have a good reason!

I’ve been working on a very Big Project (yes, the capitals are necessary) which is taking a very long time and all of my compositional energy to do. I’ve been writing a pedagogical resource for instruction in the operation of the Contrebasse for those inexperienced in the matter; in simpler terms: A Bass Book for Beginners! (Yes, the complicated synonyms were also necessary.)

I’ve discovered recently, in my adventures as a teacher, that there’s a distinct lack of Double Bass repertoire, and as I’ve mentioned in recent posts, I aim to try and fix it. One of the things I’ve found is that there’s not a lot of material aimed at young students, and even though there’s a lot of good material out there for learning the bass (Simandl & Rabbath are popular), lots of it isn’t particularly interesting to the student, or to me, for that matter. I don’t know about you but I dislike using boring resources to teach such an interesting subject as music!

So that’s what I’ve been writing, a book that teaches you how to play double bass (based on the Simandl method) but which is still interesting to students. I’ve been trying it out (successfully!) on a few of my own students, but now the book is almost done, I’m after some more Guinea Pigs! I expect that I will finish the raw material of the book in a week or so, and from there there will be formatting and editing to do but the raw material of the book will be complete. If you would like to try a copy, please contact me through this, my blog, or through my Facebook page. I’m looking forward to work shopping it a little and hearing some feedback!