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…