Week 24 of year 2007 on the double bass

10 Jun 2007, Sun: The earlier part of my practice session was spent practising a study from Bottesion's 24 Exercises for Double Bass (edited by H Samuel Sterling). Afterwhich, I took a break for dinner. After dinner, I practised the Rondo movement of Keyper's Romance and Rondo at a tempo of 50 beats per minute.

11 Jun 2007, Mon: I started practising from 10.55 p.m. to 11.20 p.m. to practise one of the pentagonic scales from Charles Hoag's The New Scale Book: Foundation Studies in 20th century music for double bass. It was a good work-out. Thanks to the hot and humid weather, and the fact that there is no single fan near where I had practised, I was sweating all over after the practice session. Yet, it felt great playing the double bass.

12 Jun 2007, Wed: Prior to double bass sectional, I practised a set of pentagonic scale. Then I went through Danse infernale du roi Katschei from Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird. However, my tummy was giving me the runs, and I decided to take a break.

Double bass sectional was enriching and insightful. Mr GM is a brilliant player and tutor. He demonstrated new ways to play Danse infernale du roi Katschei effectively. I was impressed by how he outlined the story behind the work. I was also impressed by the effectiveness of the fingerings that he had suggested. The fingerings were very sound. It took some unlearning and relearning for me when I had to practise using the fingerings that he had suggested, but the fingerings do make playing this work so much easier.

After that, Mr GM discussed and gave demonstrations on the various ways to interpret and play the double bass solo from the third movement of Mahler's First Symphony. It was an eye-opener for me. He also gave an account of what the music is about. By the way, Jason Heath has put up a post on the double bass solo from this very symphony. You can read his post here. And if you read Jason's post, you should strongly consider reading Robert Oppelt's online article titled My Approach to the Bass Solo in Mahler's First Symphony.

Also see my post titled The double bass solo in Mahler's First Symphony

15 Jun 2007, Fri: I had planned to practise on the double bass. However, I was feeling too exhausted when I reached home at night, and I did not practise in the end.

16 Jun 2007, Sat: This evening, I spent about 20 minutes playing more pentagonic scales from Charles Hoag's The New Scale Book: Foundation Studies in 20th century music for double bass.

In the later part of the evening, I spent some time practising excerpts from Keypers's Romance and Rondo and the first and second movements of Marcello's Sonata in G major. My vibrato technique has improved slightly. Cheers.

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I have reached my minimal target of practising at least 15 minutes per day on at least four of the days of the week. However, I think I could have been more productive and effective if not for a spell of fatigue that has struck me since the middle of the week.