Double Bass

A family tree that will not sit still

Ask where the double bass comes from and instrument historians disagree. The traditional account places it in the viol family, the fretted, six-string bowed instruments of Renaissance Europe. A competing view holds that it began as the true bass of the Violin family, scaled up from the Cello. Evidence is incomplete, because early large basses were often called by overlapping names such as violone, and few instruments from before the eighteenth century survive in unaltered form. Many were rebuilt later, so a surviving shape may not reflect the original.

What can be said is that basses of many sizes, with three, four or five strings, were in use by the seventeenth century, and that by the eighteenth they held a fixed place at the bottom of the orchestra. A bass in the Victoria and Albert Museum, made in Italy around 1680 and once owned by the Venetian virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti, is nearly three metres tall in total. One made in Nuremberg in 1753 and now in Edinburgh is considerably smaller than a modern instrument. Standard sizes settled only gradually.

Sloping shoulders, carved belly

The body mixes both traditions. From the viols it often keeps sloping shoulders and a flat or gently angled back; from the violin it takes the f-shaped sound holes, the scroll and a carved, arched front. Fine instruments are made with a spruce top and maple back, sides and neck, with an ebony fingerboard. Less costly basses are built with laminated plywood, which resists humidity and knocks. A full-size orchestral bass has a vibrating string length of roughly a metre, a body of about 1.1 metres and a total height near 1.8 metres.

Because tuning pegs of violin type cannot hold such heavy strings, most basses use metal machine heads, geared tuners set in the scroll. Strings may be gut, synthetic or steel, and a few are wound with metal to keep a low note from sounding slack. Two bow types exist: the French bow is held overhand like a cello’s, and the German bow is held underhand with the palm facing upward. A bass is supported by an adjustable endpin, and modern players often add a rubber or cloth stopper.

Feeling the note before hearing it

At the bottom of the range, the ear needs help. The lowest string of a standard bass vibrates at about 41 hertz, near the low edge where pitch becomes harder to judge. Orchestral composers therefore often double the bass line with the cellos, whose notes give it definition, while the basses supply weight. Much of the pitch we perceive in a low bass note comes from its overtones, not its fundamental.

Bowed, the tone is broad and dark, with a slow-speaking attack; plucked, it becomes a short, round thump with a quickly fading ring. Players shape the sound with the pressure and contact point of the bow, and with the position of the plucking hand. In jazz and some other styles, amplification or a microphone clipped to the instrument captures the decay and the finger noise, which listeners in these traditions often treat as part of the sound.

Fourths, transposition and the extra low string

Orchestral basses are tuned in fourths: E1, A1, D2 and G2, lowest to highest. The fourths are a practical choice, because the fingerboard is so long that fifths would demand stretches most hands cannot manage. Notes are written an octave above where they sound, which keeps the part on a readable staff. The practical range runs from E1 to about G4 in orchestral parts, and soloists reach far above that with harmonics, tones produced by lightly touching the string.

Some basses add a fifth string, most often a low B, or fit an extension, a mechanical lengthening of the fingerboard that lets the lowest string be tuned or fingered down to C1. Either device lets a player reach the low C that some scores require. Soloists sometimes tune each string a tone higher, which brightens the sound and gives a more singing quality, though the orchestral tuning is the usual reference.

Standing or perched, reaching far

Classical players typically sit on a tall stool, resting the instrument against the body and tipping the neck slightly toward them. Jazz and bluegrass players often stand. The left hand stops the strings along a fingerboard far longer than a cello’s, so position shifts are frequent and large, and fingering patterns use the first, second and fourth fingers in the lower positions. The right hand bows with a steady, unhurried arm, since the thick strings take time to start vibrating.

Plucked techniques are central outside the orchestra. In jazz the bass often plays a walking line, one note per beat, that outlines the chords and keeps the pulse steady. In bluegrass and early country styles, players pull the string hard enough that it slaps against the fingerboard, creating a percussive click. Orchestral players add techniques such as tremolo, a rapid back-and-forth bow motion, and col legno, in which the wood of the bow strikes the string.

Shapes, sizes and strings

Two body patterns dominate: the violin shape, with rounded shoulders, and the gamba shape, with sloping shoulders, plus a busy middle ground of hybrids. The orchestra uses four- and five-string versions, in full size or slightly smaller bodies. Jazz players commonly choose a plywood-laminated body for touring. Electric upright basses keep the string length but replace the body with a slim frame and pickups.

Older forms continue in early-music groups. The violone, a large bass often with frets, and related gamba-family basses are used to perform Renaissance and Baroque music on instruments of the period. The bass guitar and electric bass, while related by function, are a separate family of instruments.

The floor beneath the ensemble

In a symphony orchestra, eight or so basses sit at the back of the string section and double the cellos an octave lower, though composers sometimes give them independent lines. The trio section of the scherzo in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is a well-known passage that puts the cellos and basses in the foreground. Chamber groups include quintets that add a bass to a string quartet, and small orchestras that use it to provide the harmonic root with very few players.

Jazz brought the bass forward as a rhythm-section voice, and later players explored it as a solo instrument with melodic improvisation. Bluegrass and old-time bands rely on its steady low pulse, and folk and popular traditions from tango to rockabilly have all used an upright bass. The same acoustic instrument can thus sit in a concert hall, a small club or an outdoor stage, bowed in one, plucked in another.

Looking after a very large box

Size is the bass’s main vulnerability. Moving it risks knocks to its scroll and corners, so most players use a padded cover or hard case and keep the instrument upright. Like other wooden string instruments, it reacts to changes in humidity and temperature; seams can open, and the top may crack. Keeping the room stable, using a humidifier in dry seasons, and avoiding direct sun or heating are standard precautions.

Rosin is applied regularly to the bow, and the strings and fingerboard are wiped clean after playing. The bridge, which is held by the strings’ tension alone, can tilt toward the fingerboard as the strings are tuned, so players check its position regularly. A luthier, a maker and repairer of string instruments, should handle bridge and soundpost adjustments, and periodic work on the fingerboard, which wears into grooves under heavy strings.

Odd facts and curiosities

• Dragonetti’s bass in the Victoria and Albert Museum measures 288 centimetres in total, and its tailpiece was later altered for three strings; it was presented to the Duke of Leinster around 1830.
• Into the nineteenth century many double basses had only three strings, fewer than the four of the violin family or the five or six of most viols.
• The 1753 Nuremberg bass in Edinburgh bears a label recording a repair in Frankfurt in 1803, half a century after it was made.
• A bass viol made in Hamburg around 1700, now in London, has six strings, frets and a carved female head, and was by then played as a solo instrument as well as in ensembles.

Terms used in this entry

col legno

An instruction to strike or draw the wood of the bow across the strings instead of the hair.

endpin

An adjustable metal spike at the bottom of the instrument that rests on the floor.

extension

A mechanical device on the scroll that lengthens the lowest string so it can reach down to C1.

harmonics

Bright, high tones made by touching a string lightly at a fraction of its length instead of pressing it down.

machine head

A geared tuning peg that lets a player adjust the tension of a heavy string with small turns.

viol

A family of fretted, bowed string instruments of Renaissance and Baroque Europe, usually with six strings and sloping shoulders.

violone

An early name for large bass string instruments, used for several different instruments in Italy and elsewhere.

walking bass

A jazz bass line that moves in steady quarter notes, usually one note per beat, outlining the chords.

Browse the full glossary

References

1. Philharmonia Orchestra. Double bass | Philharmonia. philharmonia.co.uk/resources/instruments/double-bass
2. Victoria and Albert Museum. Double Bass | Unknown | V&A Explore The Collections. collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O58642/double-bass-unknown
3. University of Edinburgh (St Cecilia’s Hall collections). Double bass | Leopold Widhalm | 1753. collections.ed.ac.uk/stcecilias/record/95824
4. Victoria and Albert Museum. Bass Viol | Thielke, Joachim - Explore the Collections - V&A. collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O58911/bass-viol-thielke-joachim

Sources were consulted for facts and context; the text is original. See Sources and Methodology.