Re: Musically Interesting Practice Materials


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Posted by Urbie Watrous on February 15, 2000 at 11:23:44:

In Reply to: Musically Interesting Practice Materials posted by Larry Zaidan on February 11, 2000 at 17:10:42:

This might sound a little bit off-the-wall, but my favorite musically-interesting practice routine is to play bass parts from symphonic music, along with a recording of the music (on headphones -- or, if you can make a lot of noise, on speakers).

Frangipani Press puts out books of complete orchestral parts -- I have their bass-part books to the symphonies of Mozart, Haydn (the books are just selected symphonies by these two -- half a dozen or so each), Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Dvorak. I also picked up an individual bass part from Bruckner 5 awhile back -- that one rocks the house, especially the finale! Some of the books also have other pieces besides the symphonies -- the Brahms Academic Festival Overture is a hoot, so to speak, on tuba.

The thing about the bass parts is that they're idiomatic to string bass -- so sometimes you have to do some editing/omitting of stuff that's difficult/impossible to play on tuba. I just gloss over whatever I can't play and don't worry about it too much. Obviously, you play an octave down from what's written, since that's what string basses do!

Urb


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