Quote:
Originally Posted by JTE  Generally 1 2 4 means you use the pinky instead of the ring finger. Some people use the two fingers (3 and 4) together for more strength. My personal feeling is that it's not that important on electric bass where the notes are closer together (the primary reason 1 2 4 is taught for double bass is that the longer scale length puts the notes far enough apart that it can hurt your hand to play say Bb on the A string with your first finger, and then G# on the E string with your pinky all by itself.
jte |
true, though the original theory behind the three finger method taught in classical double bass was not to protect your little finger, but to protect your ring finger. The pinky is small but strong and has a huge slab of muscle underneath it to support any load you put on it. the ring finger is out on its own and can very easily be damaged with playing double bass hence it was phased out of common technique!
if you let the fingers on your hand curl a little then pull on each one away from your arm in a 'locking pinky's' fasion you will see that the index and pinky are instantly supported by the muscles down the edge of your hand, the middle finger is large and is also supported by a large muscle on the top of your hand (if you have been playing a lot or a very long time this muscle is easily noticeable when clenching a fist!). the ring finger in comparison has very little muscle supporting it, there is a muscle on the top of the hand but it's nomally smaller than the one supporting the index/middle and there isn't a lot of suport offered by the upper plam muscles. this combined with its position seeming ripe for tendon injury means it is often ignored in classical techniques.
regarding finger size, my hands are tiny, really tiny, I can't think of many people I have met with smaller hands that me including a lot of girls! I can happily stretch from 1 to 5, its about technique and hand conditioning. get a good teacher to show you how to work on those muscles that allow you to stretch!
edit - just read a similar thread on the db side and paul warburton posted this -
A little experiment.
Try this. (or not).
Make a fist with your left hand. Put the fisted hand on the table so that the first and second knuckles are flat on the table. Pull each finger out of the "fist" (leaving the ring finger for last, please) and wiggle it around...up, down and sideways while maintaining the "fist" on the table. No problem. (including the thumb). Now, all together boys, try it with the ring finger. Hmmmm......come to yer own conclusions.
followed by this -
It's weaker for a couple different reasons. The ligaments are different in that finger. Because of that, it becomes even weaker since you don't use it enough. This is one of the main reasons they came up with the three finger left hand technique in the first place..."the fourth finger supported by the third". The bass is a big instrument...really not comparable to the rest of the fiddle family or guitar family.
But hey, lookit The Rabbath players. Some of them play with everything but their ****'s. You CAN do what you WANT to do by just DOING it.
Anyway, that kind of answers the OP's question of "So what's wrong with the third finger?" No?....
then bobkonowsbass posted this -
coming from a piano background the ring finger has very specific physical shortcomings that need to be addressed through exercises such as the Hanon aerobics, e.t.c. For some reason humans evolved with tendons binding the ring finger to the pinky and middle fingers. So where the index, middle finger and pinky have independent mobility, the ring finger is a mooch that borrows power from the fingers adjacent to it. The early guys were probably aware of this so they made the standard method for DB 124. This was to prevent injury by not trying to make the hand do what it wasn't made to do naturally. (People back then were a lot smaller too!) But as everyone has been saying, do whatever makes you sound good!
_______________
I think this is less of a dnager with electric bass, btu it's relative youth as an instrumen has meant that a lot of the techniques we use are still heavily borrowed from DB. that said I play finger per fret all the time but for heavier groove stuff and anything where i use my main bass (action as high as a kite
) I find myself settling on 3 fingers most of the time.
