If you are like most bassists, you’ve struggled with getting that perfect sound—that big, full, resonant sound that penetrates to the back of the room. I know I’ve had my struggles over the years, and one thing that has helped me that I just keep forgetting about is getting the bow closer to the bridge.
We had a wonderful guest here in San Francisco recently, Nina Bernat, and that was one of the running themes in her masterclass. It got me thinking: I’ve never done a video about why you should play closer to the bridge or how to play closer to the bridge. And so that’s what today’s post is all about.
A Common Challenge for Bass Players
People have been telling me to play closer to the bridge since practically day one on the double bass, and it’s one of those things that I kind of fall out of the habit of. It’s so easy to fall out of the habit because it’s a little trickier to play closer to the bridge. My default is to kind of get away and play over the fingerboard. Even if you don’t have an extended fingerboard like mine, playing too far over the fingerboard isn’t ideal for most musical situations.
My first big bass influencer, Jeff Bradetich, told me, “You gotta play closer to the bridge.” As he explained to me (and so many others have explained since), there’s just so much more capacity in the sound. It is more challenging when you get closer to the bridge, but the rewards are great.
Adjusting Your Technique
When you move closer to the bridge, you’ll find that you have to adjust your bow speed and quite possibly your bow weight as well. We’ve got these three factors that dominate all of our bow playing (and a few other factors), but the big ones are:
- Speed
- Weight
- Placement
Today, we’re talking about placement and placing our bow a little closer to the bridge.
The sound might be bright when practicing in a smaller room, but that sound will project out into the hall. You’ll be amazed at how much of those overtones and high frequencies don’t penetrate out into the hall. What does penetrate is clarity.
Exercises to Develop Playing Closer to the Bridge
One of my favorite exercises for working on developing the capacity to play closer to the bridge is to play open strings and challenge myself. I like to have a “slow bow contest” – I’ll put the metronome on at maybe 60 (that’s always a good tempo) and see how many clicks I can sustain a note close to the bridge.
My first bass teacher, Chuck Kreitzer (an amazing bass teacher), would have me do this and be ready with my left hand. If the bow ever gets stuck up on the string where it’s not moving, just give it a little pizzicato, and you’ll get it going again a little bit closer to the bridge.
It’s magic, right? Once you go a little closer to the bridge, the sound is smoother, and your bow actually gets longer.
Learning from the Masters
Another fantastic bass event I was at recently was the Pittsburgh Double Bass Symposium. I’ve got a synopsis of that event up on our YouTube channel, as well as Nina Bernat’s and Mikyung Sung’s recital. There are many great examples on our YouTube channel of people playing close to the bridge.
Ju-Fang Liu, principal bass of the Indianapolis Symphony, was just amazing to watch as she demonstrated for students. You could see their eyes pop open when they witnessed her capacity to play close to the bridge. It seemed like whatever they played, Ju-Fang could pick up her bass and demonstrate at least 30% more volume.
Another one of my heroes—all of our heroes—the great Gary Karr, father of the International Society of Bassists and so many other things, plays amazingly close to the bridge. In an interview I did with Gary Carr a few years ago at his place in Las Vegas, he said he’s never played closer to the bridge than he was doing at that time.
Developing Versatility in Your Sound
Obviously, we don’t always want this bright, bridge-close sound, but I think of developing the ability to play close to the bridge as kind of like having a block of marble that you can pull back from and chip away to get whatever sound you want.
If your default sound is playing over the fingerboard, you can crush the sound by adding more weight or speed. If your default is a little closer to the bridge, then anything else is just kind of relaxing into the sound. So if I can play close to the bridge and want to play with more air in the sound, I have that option.
Creating Density and Clarity
I was at the American String Teachers Association Conference and got to sit in on some super groovy masterclasses with Joe Conyers, principal bassist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. As I took notes, he was talking about getting a dense sound by the bridge.
That’s something we’re doing this week in the New Century Chamber Orchestra. I’m playing Strauss’s “Metamorphosen”—a very cool piece with three bass players and three individual bass parts. The second bass player and I were matching sound by playing just a little closer to the bridge and working with a little slower bow speed.
The word that Bill (the second bass player) was using was “density.” I think that’s a helpful concept. If you play with a little more bow, you get a little more of an airy sound, which could be cool depending on the situation. But oftentimes, if we play with a little more density in the sound, that will result in clarity.
Clarity is a beautiful thing for us bass players and for other musicians. They really like to hear the clarity of pitch, the clarity of the foundation. We may like a kind of fuzzy sound, but getting a little more density in the sound can actually be very helpful musically, especially when you have a lot of notes to fit in on one bow.
The Bass Player’s Lifelong Quest
When you’re talking about bowing the bass, this is the instrument that is not going to reliably speak the same way as a cello or violin. If you set somebody up on cello or certainly violin and get the bow in the right direction, they will get the fundamental tone. That’s not necessarily the case with bass.
Trying to get any note—but especially if we take that E string—trying to get that to activate is like a lifelong quest for the bass player. So really working on getting the fundamental to pop and release (like the wonderful Joe McFadden said, which we covered on a YouTube video recently) is just such an important concept, and Joe Conyers really drove that home.
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