hi it's Geoff Chalmers here from discoverdoublebass.com which is the home of
online courses lessons and interviews to learn to play the double bass and i am joined today
uh by a wonderful uh musician a jazz bass player who's renowned for his virtuosic technique and
tasteful lines and he's somebody who if you don't know his music i would absolutely encourage you
to go and check it out it's the wonderful Yuri Goloubev welcome Yuri it's lovely to have you here
today thank you very much Geoff well you've been here joining us in Leeds performing we've been
filming you uh play some beautiful music and also we've been chatting a little bit about double bass
techniques but we were taken by your instrument and the fact that you've only had this double bass
for a couple of days so maybe we could have a discussion about instrument set up and what
you look for in a bass and let's start off by hearing about the story behind this beautiful double bass
okay so this lovely instrument was made was just made by Budapest luthier Tibor Tabanyi
and this is the fourth instrument i've been importing from him and three of them including
this one are for students of mine in order to provide them with a quality instrument at an
affordable price that is easy to play which is very important and that's how we come up
to the setup question well my normal setup it's not exactly this on this particular
instrument but quite close my normal setup is quite extreme and to be perfectly honest
i insist on this setup and it's really hard to convince any bass maker to do it this way so
what i prefer to do is what i call the negative slope okay so when the fingerboard vertically
is completely straight and even goes down rather than like this so if you want to have a low action
in my opinion in my experience you should have no slope under g and under d only under e
so describe to me the slope again so the slope you know usually uh the fingerboard is shaped a little
bit like so it goes higher as you reach into thumb position yeah so let's say let's say it's you know
uh yeah it goes um a little bit like this here so the shape would be would be like this because
the idea is uh that you know you play and there should be enough space for the string
to vibrate yes but uh because the because the string is vibrating in the middle of the string length
but to me this is a dogma because if we put finger finger here the middle will be here if we put it
here the middle will be there and then it'll buzz okay so if you want no buzzes it has to be
straighter and even maybe a little bit going in this direction sure yeah obviously round
like this so it's not it's not flatter than a normal fingerboard um yeah it's well it is
pretty flat let's let's say so it's not flat like this it's curvy uh in this direction and it's flat
i understood yes but you've got the the regular profile i see yeah yeah and uh i personally do not
see any advantages uh in high action because even you know some people say that you'd lose
out on this sound like on the volume you you will not significantly so let's say this this bass is
i don't hear any problems with the volume you know and it's very well set up
beautiful so but this one is for a classical student of mine so it's not set up exactly
as i say it's more you know for classical playing so there is a little bit of a slope
so do you have a little bit more clearance on the e what's what yeah yeah the e uh it does
have to go like this so there's a slight it's not like a romberg bevel where it's quite sharp
it's just a subtle carving away of yeah there's a little bit more space underneath vibrate i mean
we do not really use very much uh this string like here yes not use it at all here so uh we
and you know since it's a really thick string it does take quite a lot of space to vibrate
so we need to try and provide the space by actually doing this
yeah yeah yeah which is in my opinion useless under g it just creates buzzes so it's kind of
you know a little a little bit of a diversity in the approach between different strings interesting
so you're and in terms of the nut i take it you're going as low as you can at the nut uh as well um
yeah and then at the and then the the bridge what kind of string height do you have a target in mind
it's a hard question because you know it also depends on the instrument
absolutely on the tension of the instrument so i string set as well yeah yes i'm not so sure yeah
also the strings they can be very different i'm not so sure what it is now here i would
imagine it's probably like two and a half maybe millimeters it's pretty low yeah yeah
maybe three at the most and here so that's on the g and it's maybe so it's maybe around three on the
g from the underside of this three four five six or maybe two three four five or something
something like this i never know i never care to properly measure it it's just you know
the question of feeling how you feel well that bass is very comfortable to play
it's beautiful thank you yeah but uh you know i always think that the double bass is already a
challenging physically challenging instrument and there is not much point in making making it even
more challenging physically and i i can tell you know when i used to work in the orchestra for many
years i didn't have my strings much higher yes i did have them a little bit higher maybe like
five or six mil but yeah not really more that was sufficient if you do not have uh this massive
slope yeah so essentially the classical setup tends to be slightly higher yeah just slightly
lower and i think yeah obviously in classical you know when you bow uh you make the string
vibrate a wide slate yeah so you do need some space especially when you need to like not press
but you know apply some weight and play some you know Shostakovich symphonies or like sure
yeah yeah okay so what about string length let's quickly run through some of the dimensions ah
i think this one is like 104 probably or 103.5 never measured but it's pretty standard yeah so
kind of around the 41 and a half sort of standard benchmark maybe slightly fractionally smaller but
you're not yeah the body of this bass is pretty small but it's it's i'd say it seems like a fairly
regular three-quarters though it's not uh for people watching at home it's not a reduced-sized
instrument is it it's just no it's not overly big but it seems pretty standard it's beautifully made
um okay so let's talk about strings then so you've got quite an unusual setup so this
again the strings on this instrument aren't those that i would normally use in jazz because it's for
my classical students so originally i had put on this one all for a pirastro flat chrome steel
okay and then i realized that a and e weren't working at all on this specific bass so i put
the D'Addario helicore hybrid light tension a and the and i kept the pirastro and then i'll
tell her if she wants to change also g and d to D'Addario maybe but i myself i would
use actually um either that's quite an unusual choice i'm afraid daddario pizzicato light gauge
or a thomastic spirocore light tension so those two just yeah either you know either
or also depending on the instrument like you know the instrument uh that is featured in
this two chevrons apart yes album which is another Hungarian unfortunately anonymous i have no idea
who made it it's also a nice small pear-shaped base and the strings were the Dadarrio pizzicato
and that's right okay did i and they were the light gauge uh Daddario yes carter it's yeah
they're a great set they are a great set they're really nice and and um i yeah i've really enjoyed
using those i i got a set recently uh Danny Ziemann one of the tutors at discover double bass
he uses those with an olive g so he kind of has a slightly different kind of uh setup but the uh but
i think it also depends on the instrument you know what fits and on the player what sort of sound you
hear in your mind what sort of feeling you want to have under your fingers so i may say okay yeah
i prefer it like this but it's not that i would make students you know put these specific strings
i have a student in uh at the Royal Welsh uh who uses what are the strings they're made in Wales
innovation yes correct on his instrument they sound great for sort of traditional jazz like
you know just like swing and so on but they sound amazing that's the thing is it's all
about the double bass and the setup and the the player it's also individual isn't it and
it does take time to experiment with this stuff yeah and then of course you have to experiment
a little bit with the position of the sound post position of the bridge and you know usually the
bridge in theory has to match these signs like they have to come to the middle of the leg but
often it sounds better when it's lower or maybe in some basses when it's higher so you have to
experiment a little bit and see what works better for the specific instrument i was i
was really impressed with how comfortable you felt playing a new instrument i mean is do you generally
go for a d-neck instrument or i mean do you care think that's that's a great question i absolutely don't
absolutely don't care and to me you know i've seen some technical riders of people like those
that do not travel with the basses like only a d whatever why does it matter it takes uh literally
a couple of minutes to get used to understand to sort of reset your mind to um you know wherever
everything is like that German bass i have at home i don't know if it's d or e flat but
this g is pretty much there it takes me a couple of minutes and then you sort of you put yourself
on a different you know uh different rail tracks and also that bass it's much like i'm not so
sure if it's like 106 or something like this so it's all a bit wider but it just yeah you just
switch it it's interesting because i think a lot of people um when you when they see a player with
as incredible as refined technique as yourself who can really play you know at a you know super fast
tempos and what have you they're thinking that you're playing some kind of miniature bass or
something you know and actually you're playing a larger than that picture and that's certainly an
average size that's this is yeah you know there's no kind of magic tricks or anything it's just it's
just all about great technique and practice I think it's it's setup yeah cool to make it quite you know
easy to uh to play physically i think that's the key thing when people are looking for an
instrument well set up a good set of strings they're the kind of key things really that
will help you on your journey and as you say it can really hold you back as a student if you're
playing on something that's uncomfortable to play yeah and also i think it's very important not to
fall into any kind of dogmas you know like oh it has to be this way there isn't such a thing as
hasty experiment right if you have some intuition some insight whatever try it maybe you're right
maybe you know 100 people wouldn't be doing like like this and they'd tell you off but actually
it works for you and luckily great just to finish off because it's a question in my mind you
mentioned the the pear-shaped base yeah you know is that an instrument you still have is that well
i just sold it i yeah i used to sounds amazing on that oh yeah i've done many recordings of that
base and i've had it for like maybe five years did you find any difference in terms of it in terms
of the different shape it's one of the bases that i've i haven't really played a power shaped place
i don't think uh in handling it yes that is maybe the main trick so how i was doing it yeah i was
taking it here but without applying the force in this direction because you're really at risk
so it's like just touching it gently here you know but not really not pulling it away from the top
yeah and of course at the beginning it feels like a little bit strange but you get used yeah a bass
is a bass and it's i think that's one of the great things about our instrument is that it
can help us on our journey to express ourselves all these wonderful options that are out there
and it's an exciting thing so Yuri thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all of this
wonderful knowledge and for some and for your wonderful playing as well i think we're going to
hear a clip of you play this bass now if you want to learn more about Yuri where can people find you
well people can they're very welcome to visit my website which is yurigoloubev.com
there is also wikipedia page and i do this
video tutorials on youtube with some explaining some basics as i saw that sometimes this
knowledge is a little bit missing in the uh community of young aspiring bass players so
i felt sort of on a mission you know filling this gap well as far as live performances now
it's really hard to say because in the current situation like our schedules have been wiped
out and i guess all this year all this concert season is a write-off and maybe even the next one
so we just should hope for the best absolutely it's a really difficult time in the moment
September 2020 that we're filming this in the UK and yeah it's uh it's a very challenging time for
artists so i very much appreciate you coming over uh and joining us today it's been a real
joy and I think what people want is they want to hear you play so thank you so much for watching
and enjoy this performance from the great Yuri Goloubev thank you very much Geoff and thanks for
watching