The Modern Method For Upright Bass
By Cole Davis
Normally $97 — yours today for $47
Send Me The New Simandl — $47Instant download · Lifetime access · Backing tracks included · 30-day guarantee
Every upright bassist on Earth learns from a method written in 1881 — for orchestral players who never had to swing. After 15 years of teaching, I rewrote it. 5,000 bassists later, here it is.
Most upright bass players sound like they're reading a book.
There's a reason for that.
The method book you and every other bassist on Earth learned from — Franz Simandl's New Method for the Double Bass — was written in 1881. For orchestral musicians. Who never had to walk a line, take a solo, or follow a chord change in real time.
For a 19th-century bassist sitting in section nine of a Vienna opera pit, it was perfect.
For anyone trying to play jazz on the upright bass, it's a cage.
It teaches you to live in half position. To pick your hand up off the fingerboard every time you change positions. To treat the bass like a series of locked rooms instead of one continuous landscape.
It teaches you to play Tetris with your left hand.
That's why your hand cramps. That's why your lines sound stiff. That's why you can play all the right notes and still sound like you're reading instead of playing.
The New Simandl is my rewrite.
One idea. Fifteen exercises. A bass that finally moves.
I took the original Simandl etudes — the same ones every classically-trained bassist has worked through for over a century — and re-fingered them around one principle:
Open strings are not training wheels. They're free space.
When you play an open string, your left hand is free. Free to move. Free to relocate. Free to land anywhere on the fingerboard with zero penalty.
Most bassists treat the open strings as endpoints. I use them as launchpads — gates between every position on the bass.
The result is a method that:
- ✓Cuts shifting in half by using open strings as transition points
- ✓Eliminates the wrist pain that comes from living in half position
- ✓Unlocks the upper register of the E and A strings — the part of the bass most players never use
- ✓Sounds like jazz because it's built around motion, not lockdown
Same etudes Simandl wrote. Same notes. Different hand.
I put both versions side-by-side in the book, so you can feel the difference under your hand the first time you play it.
Endorsed by the people who wrote the books before this one.
I'm proud to have been an influence on Cole's technical approach to left hand technique. Cole is a beautiful player who has created a new method, combining both my original method and the old Simandl method. Bravo!
It is clear that Cole Davis has figured out how to communicate his ideas and concepts in an innovative way, creating a new technique for generations of bass players.
When the two living legends of bass pedagogy bless your "heretical" rewrite, it stops being heresy.
What you get when you open the New Simandl.
15 complete exercises drawn from the original Simandl method, refingered using open strings as free space:
Every exercise is shown twice. I've also written commentary between exercises — explaining the why behind each refingering, what to listen for, and how to apply the principle when you're improvising on a real tune.
Every exercise comes with a backing track produced by Itamar Gov-Ari — lo-fi jazz and hip-hop grooves designed to be practiced with, not played in dead silence the way the original Simandl was meant to be. The tracks are streaming on Spotify, so you can practice anywhere.
Built for the bassist who's tired of the box.
✓This is for you if…
- You play upright bass and your left hand cramps after 20–30 minutes
- You can read music and play in time, but your walking lines sound stiff
- You've worked through the original Simandl and feel like something is missing
- You watch players like Ron Carter or Christian McBride and can't figure out how their hands move so freely
- You're a jazz player who learned classically and feel locked into the orchestral way of fingering things
- You're an electric player coming to upright and don't want to relearn the bass from scratch
- You're brand new to upright and would rather skip the cage than escape it later
×This is NOT for…
- Electric-only bassists with no plans to ever play upright
- Complete beginners who haven't yet learned to read music
- Anyone looking for a video course (this is a PDF method book — by design)
- Players who want to be told what to play instead of taught how to think
- Anyone unwilling to spend at least 20 minutes a day on the etudes for two weeks
If any of those describe you, save your $47. If they don't — the book is waiting.
The fastest way to get your hand off the page and into the music.
The New Simandl is normally $97. Today — with the bonuses included — you can grab it for $47.
That's roughly the cost of one private lesson with a working bassist who teaches this method (if you can find one — most can't). For the price of one lesson, you get the full book, the backing tracks, and two bonuses that walk you through how to actually use it.
Instant download · Backing tracks included · Lifetime access · 30-day guarantee
Order now and get $46 in bonuses — free.
Two short companion guides that get you using the method from day one — included free with your copy.
Join 5,000+ players who've already escaped the box.
What players are saying.
If you feel 'boxed in' by traditional positions, this is the remedy. It's the first time I've seen a method bridge the gap between the rigid old-school Simandl and the modern, open-string pivots used by guys like Ron Carter.
Davis isn't just teaching you where to put your fingers; he's teaching you how to move across the bass without the 'clunkiness' that usually comes with shifting in high-speed jazz lines.
The New Simandl finally explains the 'why' behind the fingerings we hear on our favorite jazz records but never see in the standard method books.
One thing I REALLY like about The New Simandl are the backing lo-fi jazz/hip-hop accompaniment tracks that he released… I thoroughly enjoy playing through the book with them.
A little bit about me.
I'm a working jazz bassist and educator based in New York City.
I won the Ron Carter Bass Competition at age 20. The next year I was named a Future Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. I earned my bachelor's from Manhattan School of Music and was admitted concurrently to Juilliard's Master's and Artist Diploma programs — one of the youngest musicians ever to receive that honor.
I've performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Jazz Standard, and the Appel Room. I'm currently the bassist for the indie band Lambchop, and I've recorded with Bon Iver, Julian Lage, Macy Gray, and Adrian Younge's Jazz Is Dead ensemble. I'm also a Yamaha Performing Artist.
But the reason I wrote this book has nothing to do with any of that. I wrote it because after years of teaching the original Simandl method to hundreds of students, I kept watching the same problem play out: technically proficient bassists who couldn't translate to the bandstand.
The New Simandl is the method I wished existed when I was learning. It's the foundation of every student I teach today, and the reason 5,000+ upright players around the world have finally stopped sounding like they're reading a book.
Questions before you buy.
You've been playing all the right notes.
It's time to start playing music.
The book that 5,000+ upright bassists used to escape the box.
$97 $47
The book, the backing tracks & the bonuses
Here's everything you get.
Instant PDF download · Backing tracks included · Lifetime access · 30-day guarantee
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New Simandl
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