Quote:
Originally Posted by Kit30  Hi, I love the bass but have never been very good at it. The problem I have is that I am quite a short bloke with a small hand and when I am playing I find my little finger attaches itself to my ring finger as it doesnt have the strength to hold down the string. I know that a short scale bass will help and playing it held high up but I am basically playing with 3 fingers. Do I have to use my little finger to play or can I get round it?? |
As stated you can easily get around the fretboard with three fingers whether you use Simandl technique or not. The issue with your ring finger is a body mechanics based one. The fingers on your hands have two sides, a dexterous side and a power side. The power side is the little finger and ring finger, so they always want to work together raher than independently, that way they can support each other. But is you are a piano player, flute, sax etc then you need a certain amount of finger dexterity and independence, much the same as a secretary or a computer inputer needs when typing.
There are many exercises that will help in this, many of them do not need a bass, as finger independence has nothing to do with bass, bass is the application it is used for.
Here is two of the best ones, they work for all fingers on both hands by the way.
1/ Place your hands flat on a table (any good flat surface will do ). Spread out your fingers flat on the table, do not push down or add any pressure to this, just have your hands and forearms if you can, flat on the table.
Lift each finger up on at a time from the table and hold it there for about 10 secs. Start from the little finger lift it up hold, put it down, then lift the ringfinger, hold, then put it down, etc etc.
There are many variation of this exercise, what it does is it tone and stretches the muscle in the forearms that the fingers use in playing bass, but it tones the action of lifting the fingers off the neck not putting them on...which is the more important action to learn and promote as far as body mechanics is concerned.
2/ Again with the hands flat on the table but this time fingers together. Spread the little finger away as far as you can without the ring finger reacting. Then move the ringfinger towards it and have them both together. then bring the middle finger to joint them, then the forefinger. Then with the thumb spread it as far as you can in the opposite direction away from the other four. You can hold each position of finger movement if you want for 10 secs but it is not neccesary for this exercise.
Now you have to reverse the action to the thumb, the thumb must stay in its position from the previous stretch. Move the finger back towards the thumb one at a time till the fingers are all back at the starting position of close together then move the thumb in and then you are ready to repeat again as many times as you see fit.
In this exercise you tone and stretch the muscles that spead the finger and give them left and right movement when open. There are not many tasks that occur natural to us that use this movement so it is usually an under-used and under developed one. The thumb in this exercise depending on its range of motion will always be moved seperately in relation to the others. The idea is to use the thumbs vastly superior use of movement independently of the fingers but allow the muscles in the hand that stretch sideways that it does not get in every day use, again another under developed use.
In all the hands do not get tasks that naturaly ask them to spread the fingers lift or the fingers at the same time. The bobt likes things to be close to each other for protection. Thats why if you hurt you hand you close it up, you bring in all the fingers for protection ( even if you fall or are in danger of impact the bodies natural reaction is to curl up, bring in the limbs so to protect them and use them also to protect the main body) this is a natural reaction of protection.
As i said there are lots of exercises for this sort of thing but those two target bass playing perfectely as the tone and address the movement of the fingers being open (spread and stretched) with the action of lifting. Putting the fingers on the neck is not an issue, that is something we do naturally, we grip and hold. But lifting of amd fully opening we do not. If you consider how hard you grip or hold anything, when you release it you never fully open you hands to their maximum to release, you just open them enough to allow it to be free. That means you always use the full gripping action, therefore the full use of the muscle groups involved, and always under use the opening action, and therefore under use their muscle groups involved. Each action of movement has its own mucle groups so it is common for the one group to be use more than another so reduce mobility and movement in one plain. In bass playing this is usually shown in players that trip over their fingers when playing. They assume they are not getting their fingers on the frets fast enough, when the problem is they are not lifting the previous finger out of the way fast enough...this shows when fingering is behind the fingers rather in front, because on a single string you can play B then a C without lifting the B finger off, but you cannot play the B if the C finger is in the way.
