String Bass Story #2

This is a scary topic for any orchestra, private lessons teacher, and student. When a string bass falls the world goes silent. In all the years that I've played the bass one has fallen three times. 

The first time a bass has fallen was when I was in seventh or sixth grade. I had just taken one of my middle school's basses home for Winter Break. Whenever I wasn't playing it, I had to put it up on my parents couch. That way the cats wouldn't be able to get at it. Well one day, I had just put it up and walked away from it and it rolled off the couch. I took it out of its case to find that in the bottom bout there was an inch long dent that had cracked its way through. When my parents got it back to school I had to tell my teacher the story of how the bass got damaged. She told me not to worry about it and that it would cost more to fix the bass then it is worth. 

My 2004 Strunal Romanian String Bass at the 2008 Winter Bassfest at UW-Whitewater

My second falling bass story happened when I was in eight grade. There were four bass players in orchestra and only two uprights. To fix the problem the teacher let us switch from playing upright to electric bass every other day. One day when I was on electric bass, us bassists were fooling around while she was working with a different section of the orchestra. At one point I felt that I needed to push one of my fellow bassist, to bad he was playing upright at the time. He went down with the bass. We both got in BIG TROUBLE. We both lost 20 points for the quarter. Good thing extra credit was easy to get. I ended up going to two concerts that quarter and made up for the damage that I created. 

My third story occurred my sophomore year in college. I was leaving the bass storage room in the basement of the Center of the Arts building to go up to my end of the semester jury. I had my bass, stool, music, and bow in hand, all out of their cases. I made it a few yards away from the bass storage room, and I put my foot down a little unbalanced. I fell with everything!  I know there were people practicing in the practice rooms that I fell in front of, but no one came to see what the large noise was that had just occurred in the hallway. I was pinned under my bass with music thrown around the hall. My bow was by my side and stool was up against the wall. It must have been some great sight to see. Eventually I was able to get up off the floor and collect my things. I then continued my journey up to the main floor of the arts building to perform my jury with only a few bruises and no damage to my bass. 

I hope that in my upcoming years of bass playing that there are very few stories to add to this collection of mine. 

Happy Playing.