Double Bass and Beyond - Gary Upton of Upton Bass
Double Bass and Beyond - Gary Upton of Upton Bass
The Rosin Revelation - Crafting the Perfect Grip with Gary Upton and Blake Hinson
Have you ever found yourself awash in a sea of bass rosin choices, feeling more like a hapless fly than a master of your craft? Blake Hinson joins me, Gary Upton, in a gripping discussion that might just stick with you. Together, we explore the world of bass rosin, sharing tales from the quest for that elusive perfect grip. Pops may be the household name for its steadfast reliability, but our chat reveals the artistry in selecting the right rosin for the right moment. From the smooth draw of a Weedoft to the graininess-reducing power of Carlson, we expose the intricate dance of tone and texture that shapes our sound.
It's not all about the stickiness, though. In this episode, you'll hear about that time at Tanglewood Institute when the pressure was on, and the right rosin made all the difference during a nerve-wracking master class with Ed Barker. We also discuss the symphonic percussion of bow noise and how it enriches an orchestral performance. And if you've ever wondered about hypoallergenic rosins, we cover that too, sparing none of our candid opinions. Join us for a conversation that dissects the countless considerations of bass rosin, delivering wisdom that resonates with bassists and strings enthusiasts alike.
I'm here today with Blake Hinson, and if you don't know who he is, look him up. I'm Gary Upton. If you don't know who I am, you look me up too. We are chatting about bass rosin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, love bass rosin. Well, love some bass rosins at least. Yeah, I think we were basically kind of trying to talk about what we expect from rosin, what we, uh, what we hope to get um out of, out of potential future rosins, um, and and just kind of where the state of things are. So I mean, like, personally, I'm a pops kind of guy right now. Um, pops is, pops is my lifeblood, uh, as of where we stand, um, the reason I like pops is because pops is pretty consistent. That's. That's one of the best things about it is that I can, I can usually count on it being, uh, what what I need it to be, it it it's very sticky, it's a very sticky rosin and it gets a lot of it gets. Honestly, I can tell you the truth that that when I first started playing bass, somebody had handed me a cake of pops and I and I thought, oh, I don't really want this, you know, like it didn't really.
Speaker 1:It didn't really because it was like maple syrup or something well, it just didn't strike my fancy.
Speaker 2:To me, it you have, you have to. The rosin reflects the play, um, and and I think that I, I think anybody who tells you that one cake of rosin will do everything for you is somebody who doesn't do everything. You know, um, because the truth is, is is that when I'm playing an orchestra, I use a lot of different types of rosin. You know like I, pops is has been the common, common stance or the commonplace rosin for me. But I've also tried Weedoft a bunch. I've done Colstein a fair bit. There's an Australian Bespoke rosin that I've tried.
Speaker 1:You said you started on.
Speaker 2:Carlson. I started on, well, I, so I started on pops actually, and then I drifted towards carlson, because for me carlson exhibited something that I couldn't get on pops, and that was the draw of the tone, um, and so like one of one of the things that I let that for me sometimes suffers on pops, and then you get a little bit more, um, uh, I guess, a grainier tone in terms of I would call it.
Speaker 1:It's a little scratchy. A little scratchy maybe powdery.
Speaker 2:Powdery is a good another way to think of it. Like it basically what it is, is.
Speaker 1:It's just that when you, when it push comes to shove, you always have, you end up having a grain to your tone and I found that the Carlson's Rossin actually was really good at mitigating that grain that sizzly that like right, if you, if you, if you could ignore the acoustics of the bass and you, so you removed all the you know, had a filter to take out all the subs and all the mids and all that and you could just hear the hair meeting the bow. To me, I think what you're saying to me is like I can, I can hear that, yeah, on literally where the string. And again, we should account for, just for listeners, without going too far. I mean, every bass is different, every setup, every bridge, every adjuster, then string choices, string lengths and then physically the bows and the bow hair. So we're trying, like we talked about our scientific experiments. We're talking about one variable, we're talking about about that rosin, but you're saying that the pops. Are you saying that the pops has that what?
Speaker 2:I'm that scratchy that it has bow noises I think another way we call it and and so so, like bow noise is one of those things that it's a double edged sword. I mean a lot of the time as a bass player in the orchestral setting we're kind of ebbing and flowing between being string players versus string rhythmic players. You know, we do have a certain rhythmic element and I'm not making a case for slapping the bass or anything like that on the stage, but more so I'm making a case that there is something to be said for finding that homogeny between your rhythm and your pitch and sometimes, when you're being a bit more of a beef type of player, you might actually be more prone to getting, if everything's fortissimo around you and it's a cacophony and you need to be heard, in terms of a rhythmic sense, that bow noise is actually going to be very, very helpful. So it's not, it's not the end of the world to have that makes me think of a bad analogy.
Speaker 1:But an analogy a drumstick versus brushes on a snare. Sure, yes, exactly. Is it that?
Speaker 2:difference. Brands of impact. Yeah, it's different brands of impact. And and and you know you, you can, you know you might see a we've all seen at some point in time like a guy with a really reduced set bass, drum, snare, drum, hi-hat that's all he has, or all they have, I should say and and if you're a creative enough person, you can actually make that really work for you in a lot of different fields. But also, truth be told, is that it is limiting, you know. Um, so the thing that I was going to say, also about carlson's, that actually drove me away from carlson's rosin, was the fact that you let that, you let that rosin sit on your bow for, maybe say, five minutes without playing, so like if you're in rehearsal and and and the violin section is being rehearsed for, you know, just five minutes, you come back to your bow and you try, and you try and get an articulation going. Inevitably you're going to have to warm up that, that hair.
Speaker 1:You're going to have to warm up that it's like the engine got turned off in the winter, the car got cold and you had to start it again before you got in it, because it literally kind of glosses over right the carlson exactly, exactly, and so same thing I could say is true for nymans.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, like they're, they're very, they're very similar in a lot of respects. I'd say I'm told that they're the. I can't they're very similar, if they're not the same. There's this old Polish guy that knew.
Speaker 1:I forget what it was. It was a name like Engelbert Humpledinker. It wasn't really that. The guy at Niman, I forget his name or or the other, or he knew him and he had said I was asking the question what's the difference? You know, cause both packages come from the same place, what's the difference? And he was like it's the same thing in two different cans what's the difference?
Speaker 2:and he was like it's the same thing in two different cans. Well, and, if that's the case, then that's the case. Uh, and, and honestly, that's kind of what I found is that they're very similar if they're.
Speaker 2:If they're not the same, they're very similar. Um, and you know, I I don't it's not like. I think we also have to take into consideration as, as per rosins are concerned, the player is going to uh, dictate the need of the rosin because, um, for me, I, uh, I, you know, I play in the new york philharmonic and so we pretend we're a pretty big playing orchestra. Uh, we, stylistically speaking, we kind of land somewhere between the philly on the string and boston off the string style of playing, so we're kind of on off-ish in our mentality. So I know I need my rosin to be quite tacky because I need that spring factor. You know, I know I'm going to need a little bit of air into the sound, just because I mean, frankly, it's the hall that dictates what the instrument has to sound like, and so, if we're stepping far enough back, I'm basically thinking, okay, this hall super resonant, okay, this bass super resonant. So what I need is I need a string that's going to cut through that resonance and then I need a rosin that's going to allow me to access that tension instantly, because if you have a really lax rosin, basically what it ends up doing is if you end up sinking into every articulation you do because you can't get that tack on the start of the note. Well, effectively, you've basically dismantled the use of the string.
Speaker 2:I've heard a lot of people lately and I'm actually I'm making I like to check my proclivities so, flexicore Deluxe Strings. They've not always been my favorite choice of string, um, mostly because I found the lyrical side of them to be lacking, um, but at the same time somebody could be playing on an instrument saying I need that hitting power, I need flex deluxe, because flex I mean, I was actually I, I don't even. This is a while back now, maybe even a year back now. I was there's a, there's a sam finlay yep, in the city. He and I were talking about, uh, flexicore deluxe strings and he was telling me that, yes, well, the string is designed exactly for what I thought it was and it's designed to interrupt the helmholtz so that's the thing that you were kind of complaining about.
Speaker 1:It's like, well, that was their intention that's the idea.
Speaker 2:The idea is that they want this string to so. The helmholtz motion is the role of the string and it's basically interrupted more effectively on that string. So you have less of the natural lyricism, but you have the hitting power, the articulation power, which for all intents and purposes is a lot of so, rather than the string and I'm making a figure eight right, rather than the string being, like you're saying, their design was to well, yeah to kind of get back on center get back on exactly, and so so you, what you end up getting is you end up getting that quick attack.
Speaker 2:So, basically, like I would say that you know if you have, if you have your, your, your strings kind of really articulating fast and you have a super like. Let's just say, for me I think the tackiest rosin that is out there right now is probably the Kolstein Soft, in the sense that that's the stuff that you put it on your bow, it feels like glue. So you're really you're really getting an instant attack on that. So the point that I guess would make is that there's room for a lot of different types of rosins in there, but I think that it's less common for them to do everything that you want them to do.
Speaker 2:So for me, like in my summer play, one of the things that I use in New York, you know we sometimes get a little bit more humid.
Speaker 2:I mean, everywhere gets humid in the summer I guess Not everywhere, but a lot of places do, so this would pertain to all of them is I actually take a cake of Bernadette rosin, which is a cello rosin, and I actually crush that with a, just just in a little plastic bag, I throw it against the wall and make sure it's powdered, and then I, I, I, um, I either fold it into a cake of pops, rosin or something like that, because what that does for me is that gives me the the less grainy sustain, um, which you know you can get with pops, and so it's.
Speaker 2:And also I. The thing I really love about it is the fact that it just I like it because it powders super fast for the summer. You know, in the summer I don't want to have my ros, I mean my I. We all have had at some point another during our, our summer seasons, probably this thing called uni hair, where all your hairs kind of just seem to glob together because of all that sticky sappy rosin. Um, that's a nightmare scenario because, effectively, you, just you stop grabbing the string, um, and so the, the bernadella, is my means to mitigate that.
Speaker 1:So I see, yeah, so it you almost use it. As you're using it as a powder on top of the pot, I actually mix it in with the raw and on the outside, congeals into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so there's, there's a few different ways.
Speaker 1:That's dark, that's darker. That looks that. Bernadette looks more like the carlson or nyman, but it's drier, it's it's, it's darkish I I also would say it.
Speaker 2:it always matches the amber hue of the pops quite accurately. Okay, um, I'd say that what the the my favorite time and this, so so, um, I brought this in and I remember Tim really our principal based Tim Cobb, he really liked this one. It was this Pops Rossen where I rolled it out really thin and then I sprinkled the Bernadette and then I rolled it up and so it kind of looked like it was like a confectioner's Pops rosin and so, as you would rosin through, if you'd make it through a layer, suddenly you'd get to a more powdery layer. It was more a fun exercise.
Speaker 1:Wasn't there, didn't Perastro or someone put Goldflex in a rosin like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, somebody did that flex in a rosin like that, yeah, yeah, hey, could I mean, and I think that they they made a case that it would be more, uh, I don't know, sounded richer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go, yeah, yeah yeah, even if it didn't sound richer, it definitely sounded. It was a richer rosin, that's for sure. Yeah so.
Speaker 2:So I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of rosins out there. I mean I'm trying to think of other ones that we haven't touched on. Um, uh, oh, there's some hypoallergenic rosins that came out once upon a time, and my personal stance is that they were not at all what I needed. Um, remember pets? That was really dry pets. I, I honestly don't. I, I I think I used pets once upon a time when I was, uh, there was there, was that green one.
Speaker 1:Someone must have, must have put jade rosin coloring in it yeah, the jade rosin.
Speaker 2:I remember I have a very specific uh memory, uh, of a master class for ed barker at tanglewood institute where there was a great player she was. She was rosin, her bow, and it was super, super summery and she had unihair and she kept globbing on and she couldn't grab the stair, she couldn't grab the string and and, and we were all in high school so we were extra nervous and I remember she just kept putting more jade rosin, more jade rosin, more jade rosin, as if it would be the and it was just watching somebody spiral down a toilet. It was just the worst. It was the worst thing Get a different bow.
Speaker 1:Get a different bow, yeah, get a different bow.
Speaker 2:Get a different bow. Get it, yeah, yeah, get a different bow. Get less rosin. That's the game. It's interesting.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, a lot, of, a lot of different facets of rosin that we can talk about yeah, well, and then you know, another time we'll try to break down maybe what we think is in them, yeah, and what contributes to their, their. You know, you can obviously look at different cakes of rosin and you can see certain stuff you know, this is my technical side I see, uh, very, very clear, almost like maple syrup different, obviously. We've got the colorations of the, you know, the dark gray and the amber and all that stuff. And then you see some of the rosin that's murky, um, and I have, I have my opinions on what that is and why they're doing that, and also then with like the carlson and the niman, why it goes on the bow, um, and why, after it cooling off, that cooling off period, it glosses over. I'm pretty certain about something on that one. We'll talk about that later.
Speaker 2:So my question is are you hungry for rosin? Like, is that, like, is that? Is that a thing that you're tempted by at all?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's. I think it's's something that, um, I enjoy always finding why things do what they do. Um, it's certainly the tool that players are using, um, and I'd like to get under the hood and figure out and ask questions and, you know, dig around in finding. You know, when I started doing bases and asking questions, you know, 10, 15 plus years ago, a lot of the answers that I heard disappointed me. That were because, well, why? Oh, because that's just the way that Hans did it before we did it. And I'm like, well, why did Hans do it that way? Oh, well, he heard from a farmer in the village over in you know, ty, that they should do this, xyz because. And I'm like, well, why did he establish that data point? Well, we don't know. Okay, well, I'm going to take that data point and throw it out the window and figure out why I think it should do what it does and that.
Speaker 1:So that's that's my interest. Even on something like this, like rosin, I'd like to apply that the thinking and let's come up with a little matrix as to this causes this and this causes this. This ingredient does this when we put more of this in, it does this, and I I want to break that down. That's so.
Speaker 2:That's my answer too I'm, I'm thrilled to hear about it, as as you, as you get any deeper into it, because, honestly, I I'm I'm based nerd numero uno. I love, I, I love talking about just like it's just, it's just fun to talk about all the things. I mean, I know so many colleagues over the years who have done a similar path to what I've done, in the sense of they've tried a lot of Rawlins and then, and so you know, we it's. It's hard to get on the same page sometimes, and I think oftentimes the science is the best way to do it. And so I'm thrilled that you're, you're interested in not just looking at making you know like, like, like, making an approach at rosin and and and seeing like, uh, what do you do? What do you do, but also just looking at the actual principles behind it, right, so we can really determine what it is about, what one specific rosin that attracts us to it, right? Um, not just some ethereal, it feels good yeah, it brings to mind.
Speaker 1:For me, it's like I've I've heard, uh, when I hear a statement, you know like, I've heard someone say like, oh, I checked out upton basses and I don't like them, right, uh, and I don't mean that to go down a negative path, but it's like. Well, my answer to that is which one? Yeah, because I do so many different things where you know, if I'm making you an instrument that's of the Mittenwald school versus the Breschen school or something that's like your Italian base, the ingredients and the combination of the ingredients and then what I do with them is so different that if you're to tell me you don't like them in general, I'm kind of going. General, I'm kind of going.
Speaker 1:It's like you can say you don't like pasta, but I'm gonna have a hard time if you tell me you don't like food because I see you breathing and living in front of me. So I want to apply that same mentality to rosin, where, if you know not to say I want to make, if I'm going to go down this path, 27 different rosins to satisfy everyone. But I'd like to know what makes x result for the player on x string. Input that back into the system and see if we can arrive at somewhere that you know has a pleasing effect and and obviously, at the end of the day, is an improvement upon something we're already using totally, totally.
Speaker 2:Well, hey, man, I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:Cool, yeah, man that's rosin talk, and uh, let us know if you have any questions and we'll take it from there. All right, peace, everyone, see you.