Jaco's finger stretching

[Fleckbass211]

I recently purchased Jaco's Solo book from Amazon. As I was playing P of T I came across


* Fret the 2nd fret while playing the 6th fret harmonic at the same time


Is there an alternative? I was able to do this but it takes time. My ears are not special and I decided that I could use the 5th fret harmonic on the D to solve this. Is this a good plan?

[Wrong Robot]

There are quite a few ways to hit that harmonic.

2nd fret-6th fret stretch is the way I do it.

but you can also stretch from the 6th fret to the 11th fret, it's the same distance, so that might not be much help

there is another way that may be easier for you. Do you know about thumbing false harmonics?

Fret the 12th fret of G, then take your thumb and rest it at the end of your fretboard(if you have a 24 fret neck, if 22, then rest it a little bit past the 22nd) then take your index finger and pluck the string from behind your thumb, if you don't get a harmonic then just move your thumb around a little till you do.

basically you are thumbing the distance 12 frets away from where you are fretting, so you get a harmonic.

Now take this in context of the song.

hit the 6th fret of the A string then do the place your thumb, roughly around where your first pickup is, again experiment to find the harmonic node, but it is somewhere around there, if I knew what type of bass you had and it's measurements I could tell you exactly where, but I don't so just bear with me.

if you are confused, I'm sorry, it's kind of difficult to describe this technique without showing you a picture...I'll try and find a picture, but until then, try and make some sense out of my post and you'll have it.

[Fleckbass211]

I perfectly understand this, off to the harmonic hunting I go!


I have a 22 fret ( 34 scale if I am correct) bass.


I shall keep working on getting the stretch in that fast but if all else fails I have another technique.

[Wrong Robot]

and remember, the 5th fret harmonic on D isn't the same note. there are no open harmonics that equal that note, unless you change your tuning.

[fourstringdrums]

I have pretty small hands and I just recently am able to reach it. I can't reach it while playing yet, but if I just try to hit that one note I can..its alittle tough if I'm not warmed up but its there.

Something I did to help my stretch was, while sitting at your computer, take your pinky on your left hand and keep it on the A key. Now try and stretch over to the ; key I work with computers all day and I started doing this and I honestly think it really really helped. I used to have even a bitch of a time stretch from the 1 to 4th fret.. I know THATS no big deal but for me it was.

[Fleckbass211]

I have no problem now. The feat was a lot bigger than I expected.