 Hi, if you're watching this video, you're probably just getting started on upright bass or string bass for the NCSSM orchestra. And I want to just give you some good ideas on what I'm looking for early on. Initially, when you're starting the bass, probably you're somebody that has some music experience, you probably know how to read notes, and I'm not going to worry about that stuff so much. That's going to come. The first thing we want to deal with with bass is proper playing position and technique, which hopefully you've viewed some videos already on that. If you haven't, go to the lessonroom.com and check out the videos by Paul Sharp on upright bass, and you'll be set up perfectly. But really what I want to talk about today is tone production, because ultimately the thing that I find is lacking early on is just producing a good tone on the bass. So let's just review a few things that I bet you know already, and then I want to show you how we're going to do this with the bow. So we've got a good bow hold at this point, so you want to make sure you've got a good solid bow hold. You want to lay that bow down on the strings so that it's perpendicular to the strings. Now, before you ever look at music or try to read notes or anything, I want you to get comfortable just drawing good sound out of the bass. So how do we do that? Well, I would just hold the bass like this. I wouldn't worry about fingering at all. I would get the bow on to the G string and play good solid rhythmic quarter notes. Now, you're going to notice that I apply a fair amount of weight to the string. I keep my bow focused probably in the lower half of the bow. I don't go out to the tip very much. I'm going to stay in this area, and I'm really letting my arm swing almost like a pendulum. So we get that sort of pendulum feel. Don't be afraid of applying too much weight to the string. Then I go to the next string, D string, G string, or I said G, A string, and E string. Do that until you're really finding that you have a good feel for how much bow and how heavy of a bow to use to create a really good tone quality. And I would do this quite a bit. No music in front of you. Just do that. Now, again, you're probably getting started with a left-hand position and worrying about fingers and where your fingers go. Let me show you how we can take that open string exercise and a tone production exercise, and then incorporate our left-hand fingering into it. We're going to play the first three pitches of a major scale, or do, ray, and me. Do, ray, me. And we're going to, again, focus on accurate pitch and good tone production. No music in front of us. Do is the open string. Ray is first finger, and me is fourth finger. The things I want you to listen for are, is the sound beautiful that's coming out of the bass? We want to make a nice sound. And that's the first step, really. And then the second thing is that your fingers are in the right place. So really think of the syllables, do, ray, me, and make sure those fingers are just in the right place. And you can use that technique on all four strings, on the D string, and we'll do that same exercise, A string, do, ray, me. You'll find as you get to the lower strings, you need to apply a little more weight to the string, and we'll do the same thing on the E string. I would recommend doing that exercise every time you pick up the bass for the first several weeks. Once you've mastered that, there's two different directions you can go. You can do the same exercise only now with three strokes on every pitch. Do it on all four strings. Then with two strokes on every pitch, do that on all four strings, and then one stroke on every pitch. And you'll really be confident with your fingering at that point. Remember we're looking for tone quality, a good sound, and accurate pitches, fingers in the right place.