Upright (s)kills

I played pretty okay last night. And that's a good thing. Sometimes I don't know why I play this big bass.

The Double Bass is the proper name. It's also referred to as the Upright Bass, the Dog House, the String Bass, the Standup Bass, The Bass Fiddle, the list goes on.

But no matter what you call it, it is by far the sexiest instrument ever invented. It has that great sound when plucked (called pizzicato) and that silky sound when bowed (called arco). No other instrument sounds that good in the low frequencies. And it's got those great curves!

It's very cumbersome due to it's large size. It's taller than I am! That makes it difficult to carry around, put in my car, set up in small areas, etc.

It's also extremely difficult to play. I can play some cool and fast chops on my electric bass, which is around 20 times easier to play, but not on the Upright Bass. It's as if I had to learn how to play an entirely new instrument. It's an uphill battle for me. Having received my Bass and started playing it this last summer, I haven't had enough time spent on it to even get comfortable yet. Which is frustrating, because I want to play all this stuff I know from the electric bass, but I can't do it!

So with all these factors against me, I sometimes wonder why I bother. It's a total labor of love. It's not practical, it is occasionally physically painful to play, it is extremely difficult, the pickup technology hasn't developed very well yet so it's hard to get a good sound out of an amplifier.

I guess it's all worth it when I play jazz on a bandstand. It really sounds better than the electric bass at jazz gigs. It sure looks better. And every now and then, after struggling and hacking my way through a jazz set, some one will walk up and say, 'Oh, I just Loooove the big bass!'. It's like they didn't hear me sucking, they were just enamored with the struggle of getting sound out of it in the first place.

And I think it's times like that where I remember why I play the damn thing. Because it IS a great instrument. And because I felt the same way about it as that person did for so long.

And because it looks cool.