A Bass Player's Dictionary I came across the wonderful word "Ellemmenno" in Daniel Levithin's superbly inspiring book "This Is Your Brain on Music", where he talks about the children's "ABC-Song" on the melody of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" : "A, B, C, D, E, F, G / H, I, J, K, Ellemmenno, P..." Many children…
IN THE BEGINNING Over the years that i've been busy with Viennese Tuning, there have been many basses. In the beginning i just used my spare modern bass. Strings were no big problem: the low A and D came from the normal Orchestra Tuning set, the high A from Solo Tuning. For the F# i…
The search for Bottesini's silk strings... Holy Grail or Urban Legend? Where did this story come from, in the first place? Is there any historical, written source that mentions Bottesini using such strings? Is this (another) question of believers and non-believers? We're not the first bass players looking for answers, or trying to go beyond…
Sperger Trio New CD Our good friend Frank Wittich sent us the new CD of his "Sperger Trio". We met Frank at the 2012 Kopenhagen BassEurope Convention and we hit it off right away. Frank is one of those crazy bass players who plays in Viennese Tuning, on a real old Viennese Bass, and of…
"Artistic Research in Times of Ecocide" (or Artistic Research = Human Research). Lecture on Artistic Research, Brussels Conservatory/School of Arts 23rd April 2014, Royal Academy for Arts and Sciences. Dear colleagues, friends, students, usually when i give a lecture, i prepare a text in advance (a "lecture" is a "reading" after all), but i hardly…
2014 FUKUSHIMA BUIDING BRIDGES TOUR PREPARATION PART ONE: FUKUSHIMA MON AMOUR Our 2nd Japan Tour will take us to Saitama, Minamisōma, Iwaki, Kōriyama, Kakogawa, Nagoya, and Tokyo. Minamisōma, Iwaki and Kōriyama are three places in the Fukushima prefecture, at distances as close as 25 km from the nuclear disaster plant. During and after our…
INTRODUCTION Here is our 2014 Japan "Building Bridges" Tour Blog. This year we decided to take things a little easier during the first few days. There is some organizing and preparing to be done for the second week of our tour: the trip to Fukushima and the subsequent concerts in Kakogawa and Nagoya will be…
FUKUSHIMA DIARY 22nd March MINAMISOMA Up at 3.30 in the morning. Taxi is due for 4.30. Haruko's parents get up as well, to make coffee and to wish us "ganbatte" on our trip. We take all our stuff outside (we've left most of the luggage and the bass at Dolce yesterday) and we…
KAKOGAWA INTERLUDE 25th March URAWA Today i'm in Urawa, in a department store named Parco. Haruko has stayed home with her parents for the morning. I find a nice coffee shop on the 3rd floor, where i'm greeted with a series of those inimitable and interminable irasshaimasèèèèèèèèèèè's. I get a drink at the counter and…
NAGOYA The next morning we have breakfast with the students and Mr. and Mrs. Hasegawa and Gen-kun, their youngest son. Gen means "string". He's a wonderful little boy, always happy and smiling as if he were a little Buddha himself. After breakfast we're taken to the train station where we board the train…
Viennese Tuning 