The orchestra’s giant is tuned in fourths, not fifths
The double bass—also upright, contrabass, or bull fiddle—is the modern symphony’s largest, lowest regular string instrument. Alone among today’s bowed orchestral strings it is usually tuned in fourths (E1–A1–D2–G2), a hybrid of viol and violin ancestry scholars still debate.
A typical instrument stands near 180 cm from scroll to endpin; the common 3/4 size averages about 182 cm, the less-used full 4/4 about 190 cm—names that do not mean literal fractions of length. Maple backs, spruce tops, and ebony fingerboards are standard. Construction mixes violin-family internals with sloping gamba-like shoulders that let players reach high on the neck while standing or perched on a high stool with the body tilted inward. Paul Brun argues it is truly the bass of the violin family despite the viol-like outline; Larry Hurst calls it belonging fully to neither clan, noting early bodies converted from six-string contrabass violoni such as Gasparo da Salò’s.
Music is notated an octave higher than it sounds to spare ledger lines. Players bow (arco) or pluck (pizzicato); slap appears in some rockabilly, and amplification is common in funk, blues, and reggae. Orchestras and tango use both bow and pizz; jazz walking lines demand sustained pizzicato virtuosity far beyond typical orchestral plucking. Low fortissimo can menace; the same register pianissimo can cushion a section. Classical training covers the articulations violinists know—spiccato, sul ponticello, tremolo—and varies vibrato by register and dynamics.
Before the twentieth century many basses carried only three strings. Shape variants include violin form, viola da gamba form, rarer busetto and guitar/pear outlines, with carved round or flat angled backs. From Mozart’s pit to bluegrass “doghouse” swing, the same oversized chordophone still supplies the floor the rest of the harmony stands on.
Source: Double bass
