The amount of helpful online content for bassists today is truly staggering. As an “old” guy, it’s hard to conceive of how many more resources young bassists have these days at their disposal.

There’s so much, in fact, that knowing where to even begin can be baffling.

This post is an attempt to help wth that.

Before we get into the list itself, I’d like to recommend checking out my weekly double bass podcast Contrabass Conversations, which features in-depth interviews with major principal bassists like Alex Hanna (Chicago Symphony), Ed Barker (Boston Symphony), Max Dimoff (Cleveland Orchestra), and Owen Lee (Cincinnati Symphony), important pedagogues like Lawrence Hurst and Kurt Muroki (Indiana University), DaXun Zhang (UT Austin), Jeff Bradetich (UNT), Jack Budrow (Michigan State), and countless other bassists from around the globe. You’ll end up learning a lot from these longer form conversations with these significant figures in the world of the bass.

Bass Excerpt Videos

This list will undoubtedly grow over time. Some of these links come from the excellent site MUSAIC, which is created and curated by the New World Symphony. We have a lot of YouTube links but more specifically pull several excerpts from Hal Robinson’s two-hour video of excerpts from many years ago, Mark Morton‘s videos for Texas All-State, and Barry Lieberman‘s recent in-depth video survey of major excerpts on his beautiful Maggini bass. I’d also highly recommend checking out the excellent website doublebassexcerpts.com. This is a fantastic resource and is full of helpful materials for auditioning bassists.

I’m listing the excerpts in alphabetical order by composer, with the person doing the teaching/playing following the piece. I’ll keep adding to this list as I find more videos.

If anybody has additional suggestions for this list, leave a comment on this post. Thanks!