JoeEvans

Exactly - now both your immediate conscious minds are focusing on keeping your playing connected, and your unconscious minds can get on with the actual playing.

Out of rhythm is much, much worse than wrong note. So I think the main thing in terms of approach to playing is to get in the groove, dance around a bit so that you're engaging with the rhythm with your whole body, and concentrate more on what the drummer's playing than on what you're playing. Then let your fingers take care of themselves.

The pronunciation is just as you'd expect for a French regular verb.

They're all so busy doing scales and practicing solos in front of the mirror that they've got no time to chat.

I keep thinking about some kind of valve preamp, the kind that doesn't really do much except make things sound nicer in a way that's hard to define.

I've got an ART Tube MP - the one without the VU meter rather than the V3, but I think they're pretty much the same thing. Bass amps often don't provide a good response across the full frequency range - for obvious reasons they focus on the bass end... But double basses produce a lot of subtle harmonics higher up, and I've found that an active PA speaker can make the final sound more like a double bass and less like a bass guitar.

I would really recommend using an active PA speaker instead of a bass amp, with a double bass. I use a Turbosound ip300 which is about £330; there are lots of options available, although I do very much like the tone of Turbosound speakers myself. I go into this via an ART Tube MP preamp, which has no EQ but definitely improves the tone. But that's all coming from a mic (Prodipe Lanen) and you might need something different with a pickup. In all honesty the whole 'amplifying your double bass' thing is a deep rabbit hole. I was lucky enough to find a set-up that gets me exactly the sound I want without too much trouble, but it can take a lot of experiments, so buying secondhand kit you can sell on might be a good idea.

I think the invention of the internet created this new possibility whereby we can all share our opinions with each other, and we're all still reeling at the discovery that other people are genuinely not the same as us, like totally different things, do things completely differently, have utterly different politics, and yet are still somehow able to function in the world. So at the moment, a large amount of online activity is just people saying WTF to one another's opinions. I'm hoping that in due course everyone will get over it and we can move on to the next phase of whatever this process is.

Three-string double basses used to be common. You still see the odd old instrument with visible signs of having been converted to four from three. And there are a few ACG two-string basses out there, which must be excellent because they're ACGs.

When I switched my first double bass to a wooden pin and it improved the sound a lot. But the bass was quite small in the body so needed a long pin, and it only had an 8mm pin fitting so the end result was pretty wobbly. My current bass was definitely improved in sound by a wooden pin, but not by as much.

Yes, of course. I'm only making a light-hearted point - stretching across to the B-string on a 5 is just like stretching across to the E-string on a 6; you mentioned that you didn't like that stretch on a 6, so no doubt you can fully empathise with people who don't like it on a 5.

So you're saying you don't like stretching across an extra string...? 🤔

If you play a 5-string but not a 6-string, you already know the reason why some people play 4-string basses not 5s...

I would really recommend the Double Bass Room. I've bought two basses there, both times the owner (whose name I forget) was very friendly and helpful and basically left me in a room for a couple of hours with twenty-plus basses to find the right instrument. I don't think there's anywhere else in the UK where you can try that many basses for under £5k, and it was worth the trip for that experience alone. Realistically with any new bass you're going to end up getting some work done and maybe changing the strings, just to get it the way you want. So I don't think the set-up is super-important myself, as long as it's playable.

Counterpoint is a whole huge thing in classical music and I wouldn't really know where to start with that... I think I'd suggest finding beautiful melodies in any type of music and learning to play them on the bass, as the best place to start. Nobody but you can find out how to create music that you find beautiful. It might not be your cup of tea at all but have a listen to a band called The Gloaming. The fiddle player is a guy called Martin Hayes who is a genuine genius at finding extraordinary beauty in simple melodies. His album The Lonesome Touch (not with The Gloaming, just him and a guitarist called Dennis Cahill) is up there with Kind of Blue to my mind.