Stuart's bass blog

Welcome to my bass blog.

I am an English classical double bass player who returned to the UK in June 2010, after 15 years in Australia.

Much of my time is currently spent practicing for auditions to get myself re-established in the UK classical music scene. Like countless other bass players around the world, I am crashing thro my concerto and "usual suspect" orchestral excerpts that we face on the stand in auditions. I am reinventing the wheel, just like all other poor bassists doing the same thing. So the reasons for this blog are:-

1 to share ideas of how I play the music and prepare for auditions. Many students ask for the same content - I could regurgitate the same material and charge them all for lessons, but that seems a bit old fashioned and ridiculous. So I will publish it here

2 it would be great to get feedback from other bass players, of all standards, as to the content in this blog. There are many ways to skin a cat, and the debate about pros and cons of different fingerings, bowings, phrasing, another variables would be of value to me, and I guess many others

3 to help people prepare for auditions and the like, by sharing what was set, my prep, how it went on the day and the outcome

I hope you enjoy this blog, get something from it and more importantly join as a follower and contribute to it.

Stuart Riley