Which position?

[cnestg8r]

I know this is a rookie question, but how does one decide which postion to play from. I understand Key has a significant influence, but I hear some players say you should never play an open string. Assume a G key, should one play from 1st postion? third? fourth?

Any references on the subject?

[Eli_Upright12]

what ever makes the passage easiest. Most good players will be able to play the same passage in 2 or 3 different positions, its good to know more than one way of doing the same thing. Key really shouldn't make much of a difference for position, other than the fact that to play in certain keys like Bb or F requires half position, and others will require you to go higher on the neck like Eb.

[cnestg8r]

I do understand that there are several choices and a GOOD player would be able to play several of them. For example, a 98 Hz G2 can be found on all four strings. I know you must look in the context of the neighboring notes too. My question is do you look at a piece and decide that in general, I will play from position h->5? Or do you just roll with the sequence of notes and where they may take you? I have begun to read the Simandl-Plus strategy and the is helpful. Anything else I should study?

[jsbarber]

I think the answer to the question depends on who you are and the context of your playing, to some extent. My teacher tells me to find the fingering that provides the simplest position shifts when I'm learning a piece. We often explore options for alternative fingerings. When shifts are necessary, I usually look at the sequence of notes to determine when and how to make the shift. Open notes provide a nice place to make a shift, or doing a 1-1 position shift. I was told by my teacher that, ultimately, you will figure out which string/note/fingering sounds best and can be phrased the way you want, and then work on being able to play that one, even if it is not the simplest to execute. But even at the highest levels of play I expect that for complex passages there are tradeoffs between the sound of the note/phrasability and the efficiency of playability.

When playing in an orchestra you may be told what the bowings will be, in order to maintain consistency throughout the section. Your choice of fingering/shifts might also be told to you, or at the least impacted by the bowings. (I have never played in an orchestra, so I am not speaking from personal experience, but this is how I understand that it works.)

If your question is "where do I anchor my hand and play the music?", that is not generally how it works.

Hope this helps,

Jim

ps - as far as open notes are concerned, here is what I have been told. Open notes sound different than fingered notes. If the open note would lie in the middle of a phrase it will have a slightly different character than the other notes. Some players prefer to avoid that, and that is what I believe you are refering to. (If you are a beginnger, I wouldn't worry about this unless your teacher explicitly tells you to.) However, when emphasizing a single note, (as a the end of a section/phrase/piece), sometimes an open note sounds great and the difference can be a big plus.

[Eli_Upright12]

Another thing that I just thought of, is that you may use different fingerings and positions for different songs, For example when I play the Koussevitzky Concerto I play it almost all going up and down the G string and using my second finger almost exclusively. I do this because it keeps a consistent, expressive tone, and I can get better vibrato. But for more difficult technical pieces, like the Cello Suites or other Baroque pieces I will use more string crossings and such.

[Andrew McGregor]

Fingering choice comes from the shape of the line, both just as a sequence of pitches and timings, and musically. Obviously, you have to have time to get to where you have to go, so the timings matter (and this is how bowing can matter). But also, just like a singer has to decide where to breathe, the position shifts have to be put in places that make musical sense, especially in solo playing. At least, until it gets so fast that you literally have no choice and have to go with whatever is safest.

The only way the key of the music affects any of this is that the positions where you can start using open-hand, extensions, and where you have to do the neck transition relate differently to the notes in different keys. But that doesn't translate into using particular positions for particular keys; you just tend to find yourself further up the fingerboard in keys with lots of flats.