hi it's Geoff Chalmers here from discoverdoublebass.com if you haven't
been to visit our website please go and check it out where you can learn all about the double
bass we have courses lessons interviews just like this one with the great John Goldsby who's
joining me here today so John thank you for joining us yeah thanks for inviting me well
it's been a really cool week hanging out this is literally the last thing that we're filming before
wrapping up we had a few minutes and we asked for questions from the audience and of course you can
imagine the topics that came in one of the most popular was a variation of how do you play fast
so we thought we'd just riff on that topic for a little bit come up with a few ideas
that might help the students so John what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you
have a student who said they want to play fast well playing fast is almost a subjective uh of
topic a friend of mine the great drummer Adam Nussbaum says he doesn't get hired to play fast
he gets hired to hear fast so if you can hear fast then you can keep up with any tempo
so uh when i play a slow tempo one two three four i might subdivide in
triplets when i play a fast tempo one two one two three four bump duh duh duh i'm really thinking a
big macro subdivision so i'm not thinking one two three four one two three four one two i'm thinking
so if i play a tune like uh Cherokee which people like to play oh yeah fast um
so when i'm playing that i'm thinking uh like i said i'm not thinking
one two three four one two three four i'm thinking
down
so i'm really just thinking b flat f minor b flat e flat major a flat seven
b flat it's very relaxed you know i don't want to tense up when i'm playing fast because usually
in these fast tempos uh there's a piano player a saxophone player who's going to play
yeah eight or ten choruses of that tempo and i just have to stay relaxed and make it feel like
oh this is just floating along and that's that's a mental process not necessarily i
mean there are some physical aspects coming from inside right it's it's hearing fast
not necessarily moving my whole body fast in a panicked uh motion and then you're keeping
really relaxed and you're able to keep relaxing the left and right hand and i guess that's just to
there's nothing special that you're doing i guess is it just practice
uh it's practicing first of all the coordination between left and right hand first of all
practicing slow scales and then the faster you play you might have to play a little bit lighter
you can't play a very fast bass line and completely dig in and pull a big sound out of
the bass it has to you have to you're moving more side on i'm moving off into two fingers i might
have one finger and then switch to two
so those little techniques are things yeah eventually you would practice if you want to play
fast but that's in coordination with hearing the tune fast and not panicking and just figuring out
where the harmony's moving and what the the yeah the big picture is and i think in terms
of understanding the standard if you can uh understand a tune like Cherokee and you you've
memorized it so you know you know the bridge and you know what chords are coming next the
better you know something the more space the more mental space so you're not thinking what
note is in c sharp minor what you know right it's all about kind of buying yourself more time by
having that information internalized in both your understanding of the standard and i guess also
your navigation of the bass with your left hand as well because you can move so fluidly you're not
playing yourself into a corner and getting stuck there it feels like you move all over the bass
you know right so i guess that's just practicing scales arpeggios all the stuff we should normally
right that bass line i just played was almost all in half in first position i didn't move up
and down the bass so that's another important thing that people should practice i i think
players have a tendency to want to to move up the neck when they're playing
walking lines but if you yeah see somebody like Ron Carter playing he'll spend a lot of time
in this lower position you know what i call the money notes you know those
are the notes that the horn players want to hear they don't want to hear
the bass player walking well maybe they do a little bit but
for a change of pace but uh yeah really those are the money notes down in the low part of the bass
well john thank you so much for everything that you've done this week it's been really
wonderful hanging out with you recording all of these lessons and courses which will be
available if they're not already out now they will be out soon on
discoverdoublebass.com.