Walking Bassics. The Fundamentals of Jazz Bass Playing

Another thing I liked is that there are no wrong terms inside or in the title of the book, it is perfect (The Fundamentals of Jazz Bass Playing), simply because that's just it, bass, the most low pitch sound we have in music, the basis of music harmony, and that a lot of people love to use the wrong term 'Double Bass', which for those who like to read, just means other bass is being folded, duplicated, that is beeing doubled.

A thing, which does not happen in Jazz, it is rare to create a jazz theme with the piano bass folded with the acoustic bass, but the jazz musician will say that this is not jazz, but rather in classical music, especially in classical music of the 18th century.

It's so simple to write or say only 'contrabass', we don't even need to use the prefix 'contra', since bass means what is on the basis, be a cello or a contrabass.

In the beginning of the beginning was used to double the existing bass, which was done by the cello that comes before. As the composers did not know what to do with this fascinating Italian giant, it only doubled the bass in octaves, a concept that was taken from the pipe organ basic register, just as if they added a new 16'-foot 'organ STOP', something that did not spoil the sound or the harmony, however, intensifies the sound in an octave below, is it because the contrabass is an octave transpositor instrument.

'Double Bass' feature is only a resource, a procedure and not the name of a musical instrument, but such a name exists only in english language and old literature, the problem is that teachers at Harvard and Juilliard School have to warn their students that when they read about classicism or orchestration and arrangement, one should know that it is not the name of the instrument. Otherwise, the student reads the double words 'Double Bass' and already thinks about the figure of the big instrument, being that can be 'bassoon double bass', 'double bass viola', when it just double the violin in octaves.

Therefore contrabass is traditionally an octave transpositor instrument, because when it arises there would have to be a proper key for a very low pitch, whose bass clef would not serve, therefore, the notes would be much below the pentagram, so to simplify, they classified it as a transpositor octave instrument, so when you read the same notes in the same bass clef, you know that it sounds below the bass, that is, the cello. Note that the bass before the 19th century is the cello.

So, when contrabassist and cellists are playing, both read the same clef to all sounds in a pure octave, doing a combined bass-cello part, like all the symphonies of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven's first works and all classicism, with the basses doubling one octave below the cellos.

In the 19th century, the romantics felt this bass duplication of octaves very annoying, and in 1827-1828, will name it 'DOUBLE BASS' function. From there, there is no longer the double bass, now each one for itself. Although, they perceive that 'Beethoven' had already sought 'doulbe bass' independence in classicism, for these and another that 'Beethoven' is considered romantic, although it born during the classical period, that is, he is the transition of a period, since later to listen to him, nobody else wanted to hear Haydn, Mozart, Stamitz and others, the romantics wanted more and influenced by the philosopher 'Immanuel Kant', they understood that from that time from 1803, was to die for music, literature and other arts, that had to be done the impossible and unimaginable in musical composition.

'Brahms' in the middle of 19th century, will create a totally independent cello (bass) sound, and will use the hard work contrabass for another melody, without the 'doubling bass function', 'Mahler', will create exclusive solo for the contrabass.

When finally in the 18th century, around 1778, a German Berlin violin builder, 'Carl Ludwig Bachmann', was able to invent the screw mechanism, thumb screws with metal cogwheels, which adjust the tuning of the strings accurately, such a mechanism used until today, and which replaces the old wood pegs.

And thanks to the mixture of cultures, is born one of the most fascinating genres of music, Jazz, whose improvisation is not a new term, we already had in classical music and voluntaries to blow, like the famous 'Clark's Trumpet Voluntary'.
Jazz adopts the Belgian saxophone, the Italo-German piano, the Arabic-Spanish guitar until rebuilding it on the jazz guitar, the drums which is simply the junction of all the European-Asian orchestral percussion, all French seasoning by Debussy with African accent in the most French place in the USA, and finally, the great Italian instrument, the contrabass.

And without ceasing to speak, the greatest contribution, the authentic and native American voices, and of course, the way they invented and grouped all that jazz, within an absolute freedom that allowed, not only to create a totally new genre, but the dozens of styles redesigned from the same genre.