Ii almost fell out of my chair with the Dragonetti comment. Great ideas my good man! Bravo to you!

"... but I couldn't find it, so that quote is mine now." XD going to start using that

really solid dude right here.

Not only is Cole Davis an excellent bass player, he is an even more extraordinary teacher providing high quality online lessons for FREE of cost to anyone other than your time and he makes that worth while. I really appreciate all the lessons and the words of wisdom he fits into every meaningful video.

Cole Davis, I can't argue about anything he is teaching . I love the sence of Homour. Cole is just Funny as all !

Obrigado Cole Davis.

Well done! Thank you! Simple is always best!

Brilliant Lesson! thank so much man

I totally agree. That’s something I notice with excellent jazz players, both in walking lines and solos, it’s that creative use of open strings. Salsa players use them too, especially the open strings in conjunction with the octave harmonica, to give their lines a really hip bounciness.

As a brand new Double Bass player it's so refreshing to hear some alternatives to rules that seem to be antiquated and awkward for the sake of maintaining the status Quo.... great lesson Sir.

Love you man you are amazing Didn’t with what I could start my bass sessions, now, I know Thank you from Paris

Inspiring as usual. Thank you sir!

Man I'm getting started on bass for fun and all this information on your channel is amazing! Thank you so much for sharing!

These videos are gold for bassists.

Great stuff. The concepts you address in this video are discussed in depth and great details in Hein van de Geyn's book. I use them all the time and this helps me a lot.

Great video, I’ve just discovered your channel and I love your approach, so clever, yet very funny and amazing playing! I hope your going to continue with the channel, cheers from Belgium !

Subscribing just for the posture of this man! I wish I have a half of this straightness...

I really appreciate your sense of humor 😂 but mostly this incredible method of achieving excellent technique on this physical instrument that I love ❤ “The Upright Bass”…

I actually saw the Dragonetti’s head and teeth when you mentioned it 😂 fantastic. Thank you.

Great content! I totally agree. Specially the part about the Ab7 scale. Though there is a reason to go down the G string instead of using the rest of the strings in the middle register and for not using much of the E string apart from the "cash register" position and that has to do with the sound and string hight. On one side the G string as well as the "cash register" position tend to have a more penetrating sound whereas the rest of the strings and areas on the fingerboard tend to have more of a mellow sound. And the E string due to its thickness and hight tend to have more of a muffled sound being it hard to produce a clean pitch therefore hard to play in tune. Meaning you have to have a quality instrument and luthier to find that "bliss point". Also the reason why you only need two shifts for the Ab7 scale is because you are using extensions once you get to the mid range which can be a bit of a discomfort if you have small hands and high and thick strings. Hope you found my comment interesting and i'd love to hear/see/read your thoughts on the matter, maybe even a video about it. Great work and it's a pleasure following you. Take care.

love your vids

u got a point

You are fantastic and very humorous. Thank you from sparing me physical and emotional trauma.

Great vid-makes so much sense. I kind of think of the whole L shaped "tetris" approach to shifting on the G string as the first step. Learning to shift on the thinnest, easiest to control string as a way to get the concept/distances of shifting. Then one should take that concept and start applying it to the D, A and E strings, like training wheels I guess. Hey, btw, also loved your vid on melodic/interesting bass lines. I watched it a few times and had a better gig that same night-thanks! Hoping not to be too presumptuous, but I would love to see a vid from you with that same concept but over songs with two beat changes (My Romance, I Could Write A Book, etc). Only having two beats per chord always makes me feel like I need to ignore certain changes or just box lines in more. Love your stuff and thanks again!

thanks bro really good shit

After working this a bit... I have found that these fingerings work really well if you are comfortable with a string-skip in the right hand. "Getting from one place to another" also needs to account for right hand efficiency. I personally can play a smoother scale adjusting these fingerings to avoid any unnecessary string skipping (moving from A string to G string, D to E). Other than this observation for my own playing ability... these are invaluable.

Cello player here. You're tone is amusing in a down to earth kinda way, it makes a lot of 'experts rhetoric' sound like hot air. I thought that maybe the sound in the negative tetris space was less attractive or something...sometimes the higher 'registers' on the strings sound a little...whispy to me

Economy of motion is awesome and important to practice. Open strings are a great place to start. But leaps are important things to practice too, and there can be economy of motion in how we leap, too.

Larry Grenadier said that for improvising musicians you really need to be able to play scales/arpeggios/broken scales etc... up and down the neck using multiple paths of navigating the fretboard so no matter where your hands are on the fretboard you can find good starting notes and the appropriate path to create a line. Pretty tall order but it gives us a lifetime of practice.

I feel liberated from my L shaped upright bass cage!! Great lesson! And to be honest, as a player coming from electric, this is probably more of a transferable method for me. On electric bass you certainly don’t pretend the low e doesn’t exist and you have no qualms about walking up a scale from the middle of that string!

I believe many of us feel the tone of the notes on the E (and A to be honest) string higher up the neck are not as clear and present, so we tend to shun that area. I know that is how I view it. I will work on this - and order your pdf. Thank you for this insight.

Simandl technique was made for bowing. Bowing needs much more precise intonation, because more of the harmonics are heard when playing with the bow, the tone is much brighter etc. Stretching as much as you suggest will either make all the notes too close to each other, or, if you stretch precisely in tune, will hurt your hand and give you carpal tunnel/RSI. Another thing - when you are bowing, one finger always has to keep contact with the string, so it does not break your legato notes - and there are a LOT of them. When playing pizzicato, there is sound decay, so the notes will disappear by themselves. And that is also another reason to not stretch so much - your hand is given much less rests.

technique to me is the means to play what you hear, but it's not playing music, that's what technique and ear training allows

Yes! open string scale playing is where it's at... But if playing arco, notes do sound better employing the Simandl method because of the placement of one's fingers in the various positions that will ensure the resonance of vibrating tones. i was always curious why Paul chambers played the line to So What from the lower position to the higher position when he could have essentially played the line across the neck with less hand position shifts.

Ordered! And so close to being #1500! You addressed a bunch of my learning challenges in this video. Endurance (I am almost always in 1/2 position) and learning the neck. Would you say going through this book would help me learn the notes/positions on the neck? Based what you shared the answer is a resounding yes. Finally - bass geek question. Your sound is exquisite. I know I've said this before in other videos. Can you describe your instrument and setup? Yes, I know tone is in the ears and hands of the player but I'm curious. Thank you so much Cole!

Dude, funny I always perform with these kind of fingerings or use them when I'm working out a solo, head, or bassline but scale practice I always avoided open string/across fingerings. This morning I warmed up with these kind of fingerings and it felt like I was using a cheat code on my bass lol. I'm really curious if you've had experience with teaching this concept with more beginner students. Seems like it might be tough to get down if you haven't clearly mapped out the fingerboard yet. Do you kinda ease them into it after more Trad fingerings at first?

When I bought the Simandl Method I just couldn't handle it. It was difficult for me, your positions and concept makes a big difference. Your book is only an ebook or can I get a print version?

Hey davis. I love your videos thanks for sharing that infos with us. But for this concept, i cant get the goal. (Im a classical educated double bass player from conservatuary). I have technic but not like scales from different unusual positions. If u hear and play what u hear why is it important to play from e string or g string? I feel like its kind of waste of time to practice all that scales from that positions. If i stuck in some transcriptions i use that unusual positions but its very rare. Im comfortible with my g and d string scales and arpeggios

Can we get a video on rh technique 🙂

Franz 😂

Mistaken,not mistaked

Take a look at 1:30.. Am I the only one who find strange the bridge position on this video?