I Bought a Double Bass. This Was Probably a Mistake

I Bought a Double Bass. This Was Probably a Mistake.

I’m not entirely sure when “it would be nice to play double bass again” became “I should buy a double bass.”

But apparently it did.

I found one for sale and, rather than doing the sensible thing and thinking about it for a few days, I went to see it.

That was probably my first mistake.

Because once I’d played it, I was obviously going to buy it.

Which led to a problem I had somehow failed to consider until that exact moment:

How do you get a double bass home?

They are enormous.

I’d been so focused on whether I liked the sound of it that I hadn’t really thought through the practicalities of transporting a six-foot musical instrument across London.

So, after a few messages and phone calls, I found Mike and his van.

Which is how I ended up standing on the street next to a double bass, waiting for a man I’d never met called Mike to come and rescue me from my own questionable decision-making.

Needless to say, when he pulled up and saw me standing there with it, he found the whole thing very funny.

I think his first reaction was something along the lines of, “You bought THAT without working out how you were getting it home?”

Yes, Mike.

Yes I did.

Thankfully, both me and my enormous new purchase eventually made it back to East London in one piece.

Getting it inside was the next challenge.

And once it was finally standing in my flat, looking considerably larger than it had when I went to see it, I had a brief moment of wondering what on earth I’d done.

Then I played it.

I’d played double bass before, but it had been a while, and that was really what started all of this. I just wanted to get my hands on one again.

There’s something lovely about going back to an instrument you used to know. Your hands seem to remember little things before your brain does.

The first few minutes were slightly questionable.

Then something clicked.

Not perfectly. Definitely not elegantly. But enough that I remembered why I loved it.

There’s something about the sound of a double bass that you just don’t get from anything else. You don’t only hear it — you feel it. It fills the room without needing to shout.

Do I need a double bass in a small London flat?

Almost certainly not.

Do I love having one?

Absolutely.

And am I already wondering whether I can sneak it into one of my songs?

Obviously.

So perhaps it wasn’t such a ridiculous purchase after all.

Although next time I decide I “might quite like to play an instrument again,” I’m choosing something that fits on the Tube.

Darla x