Practice Drones

Practicing with a drone is a great way to improve your intonation on double bass and other fretless instruments. You can use them to practice scales and arpeggios, or simply improvise within the drone's key centre.

Each zip archive contains MP3 drone tracks in all twelve keys. The drone is bowed double bass with a continuous legato sound for 64 bars, accompanied by a light quarter note pulse from a symbol. Set your MP3 player to loop each track for a longer session within a key centre.

There are three tempos, 80, 120 and 160 BPM. For a greater range of tempos at which to practice, subdivide the quarter note pulse (e.g. play half notes, crotchet triplets, etc).