The Art of Twirling

Twirling you ask? Wasn’t this a blog about music and double bass?? Moe nie worrie nie, I’m not about to start a blog about Majorette Twirling or any other kind of twirling … I am writing this week about a specific skill in a bass players’ life: the Bass Twirl.

Not to be underestimated, the power of the bass twirl is real. And with such power comes responsibility and one can just not overuse this exceptional tool! 🧐

Done too much and it loses its power, timed wrongly and it loses its effect, poorly executed and it ruins the music. Done with precision and skill at the right moment it will mesmerise an entire audience and will have them talking about this moment for years to come.

Amongst the different techniques that need to be mastered are the standing and the seated twirl and the speed of the twirl. Standing is for obvious reasons slightly easier than seated. For different speeds one needs to take in account the distance to the stand (so you don’t bang into it..), is your bow in a bow quiver (more space needed and affects the speed), do you have a pick up on and are you plugged in (can you rotate without jamming the wire or unplugging). Once you have determined you can safely rotate your bass the timing of when and how fast comes into play. This is all decided by the music you are playing and how many bars/counts rest you have … which last week was not much!

The West Side Story Overture was on our stands last week with the famous ‘MAMBO’ moment which is just screaming for a bass twirl! But … we have like 1sec to execute 😅 (not one for the beginner twirler!). Now you have to understand amongst bass players we have the keen-to twirl players and the no-I-can’t-be-bothered players. We have respectively 2 and 1 in the CPO bass section so we did divisi: 2 twirl and 1 shout MAMBO! 😉 Luckily we had some rehearsals to perfect our fast twirls without missing a note and the effect was perfectly successful!

I’ve done many twirls in my years and mostly successfully effective (we all have our missed moments), but the one that I will never forget is the one that was one of my most successful moments in my career … quantity wise that is 😉 In South Africa we celebrate women’s day on the 9th of August and a few years back some organisers thought it a great idea to have a concert with a fully female orchestra and band (… which basically gave all the man a few days off while we ladies had to do all the work, somehow that just goes beyond my logic, but that’s just me). Anyway, the concert was at the Grand West arena and was sold out (about 5000 seats)! On the program was the famous ‘All about the Bass’ and it was decided I would play that song as part of the rhythm section as I’m on ‘upright’ bass as there was only a bass guitar in the rhythm section.

So there I was, in front on stage, doing my thing and there it was … that moment … that perfect moment for a twirl … shall I? Shall I not? Am I getting stuck in my pick-up wire? Who cares? Just do it! No … Yes … No … and at the moment supreme I just twirled my bass and it was perfection! 😁 The crowd went wild! 5000 women screaming! It was the biggest applause I have ever experienced just for me! 🤩 There I was, 10 years of studying, made it to principal player in a philharmonic orchestra, played solo concerts and all I needed to do was twirl my bass to get about 5000 people to cheer me on 🤣

But to be honest, I do prefer applause from people who know who I am and like what and how I play even if it’s only 5 people instead of 5000 (who have no clue). 🙂

On to The Nutcracker next week…. 💂🏽‍♀️ 🎄

To be continued 🙂