One Decade of DDB! 🎉

I can't believe that 10 years have passed since I started Discover Double Bass. It feels incredible to reflect on how far we have come, from the early days of filming my lessons and collaborating with Lauren Pierce, to producing courses and masterclasses with artists such as Avishai Cohen, Renaud Garcia-Fons, Joseph Conyers, Chris Wood, Katie Thiroux, John Goldsby, Marc Johnson, Slick Joe Fick, Barry Bales, Heather Miller-Lardin, and many more. It's fair to say that a lot has happened at DDB in the last decade!

Did you visit the original version of our website in 2013?

Over 350 YouTube Lessons and Interviews

You can still check out my first lesson, which is still our most viewed video. It's on the fundamentals of left-hand technique and features a very young looking me! In the last ten years, we've had over 5 million views, and our audience of subscribers is now over 50k. I remember being told by several people that double bass lessons were too niche for a YouTube channel, so it's a great feeling to see that's not the case!

In recent years, we introduced the interview series, which has gone from strength to strength, connecting the DDB audience with a diverse mix of legendary artists and rising stars, including Dave Holland, Nina Bernat, François Rabbath, Larry Grenadier, Florentin Ginot, Rufus Reid, Missy Raines and numerous others. The common thread is that they all have a unique approach to their double bass playing, which we explore to see what we can learn to help us on our own journeys.

None of this would be possible without the support of our community, so thank you for all your views, likes, comments (good and bad!), subscribes, follows, and course enrolments. It's a real privilege to run DDB, and I don't take it for granted.

Geoff Chalmers and Larry Grenadier in 2020, backstage at the Barbican Centre, London.

A Brief History of DDB 📕

As we are marking our first decade online, I thought it would be fun to share more about the origins of Discover Double Bass.

I started working on DDB in March 2013, after returning from a 2-month job working in a band on a cruise ship. Fun fact: Mark Smith from Talking Bass was also on board and we jammed a lot! However, neither of us mentioned that we were planning on starting our websites which seems crazy as that's all we talk about now. I remember loving Mark's Ibanez; it's so fast to play. We are both friends with Scott Devine from Scott's Bass Lessons, so it is a small world!

Mark Smith and Geoff in Noumea, New Caledonia in February 2013.

The same bass and more hair in early days of DDB :-)

The People Behind the Camera

When I started filming video lessons, one of the first things I realised was that filming yourself and playing the double bass at the same time is not an easy thing to do! I was incredibly fortunate that my Dad was able to help me film for the first couple of years. He filmed literally 100s of lessons for YouTube and the early courses, so I'm incredibly grateful for his patience and support; as you can imagine, we spent a lot of time on retakes! He passed away in 2022, so I cherish my memories of this time.

Over the years, the DDB production team has grown, and I've been extremely fortunate to work with the same video and audio crew for almost every course we've filmed so far. The talent and commitment of these people are unmatched and something that I don't take for granted! There's also a host of others, including designers, transcribers, photographers and editors, who are doing fantastic work behind the scenes.

In 2019, we hired our first full time member of staff to work behind the scenes as our Projects and Operations Manager. Rebekah is our secret weapon and the reason we are able to get so much done over the last 4 years!

Here's what 10 years of filming looks like.

From this...

To this...

For those who don't know, the Discover Double Bass office is situated in a converted mill in Leeds, Northern England. It's a beautiful building on the canal and a great space to create. Here's a recent photo I took on the way home from work.

The DDB office is in this historic building.

Looking Forward 🔮

So what does the next chapter have in store? We are excited to welcome an exceptional new tutor this summer, as well as release new content from our faculty. There are also some incredible interviews and reporting from our upcoming trip to the US, where we are exhibiting at the International Society of Bassists Convention.

As always, we would love to hear your views. If you have any ideas for lessons, courses, tutors, interview guests, or any way we can improve what we do at DDB, please reach out via our contact page. We always welcome and appreciate your input.

Thanks again for all your support and best wishes for the next 10 years!

Geoff Chalmers
(DDB Founder and double bass fanatic)