François Rabbath
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François Rabbath (b. 1931 in Aleppo, Syria) is a contemporary French double-bass player, soloist, and composer. He was born into a family of musicians but his only instruction came from a book written by a Parisian bassist Edouard Nanny. In 1955 he went to Paris, hoping to meet Nanny, who had died before he arrived, but he continued to study, and in 1964 recorded for the first time.
Rabbath's greatest influence was in the field of bass pedagogy. His Nouvelle technique de la contrebasse is a new approach to double-bass playing.
The main difference in his approach from that of Franz Simandl is his use of the left hand. In Simandl's system, first position (below thumb position) encompasses only a whole step. In Rabbath's method, the entire fingerboard is divided into only six positions, defined by the location of natural harmonics on the strings. This is done by using extension pivot fingerings, in which the thumb remains in one place but the hand shifts pivots up and down, and by playing across the strings. Though Rabbath's method is progressive, some argue that the Simandl method should be the first taught to beginning students because the position system gives them an improved sense of where they are on the fingerboard.
