I've committed myself to putting this down in text, and so I begin. I'll be paraphrasing my teaching method, which I call 'The Exorcises', and bringing forth only the fingerings from this approach.
The fingerings, actually a fingering concept, that I've developed were mainly the result of two conditions that I met as a beginning student. First was that I was taught applied theory from the standpoint of music, with no consideration given as to what I was attempting to this stuff play on, and second is that I've always held in absolute contempt 'Bass Solos', or, in other words, those chopped up bass lines that some try to pass off as melody. Don't take me as completely lacking compassion on this one; Bass can be a daunting thing to play, physically, and bassists spend so much time pounding out the roots to chord changes at a semi-audible level that to reach out and fly with the Melody-Boys does require some over-achieving. Enough on this. Dismissing for now talk on melodic concepts, I want to approach only the breaching of technical limitations that The Bass presents us. Once you have the bass more 'out of your way', then melodic playing is much more easily achieved.
Western music, as we know it, is key-based music. The skip to the end of this argument, music, as we play it, is based on the major scale. To expand on this just enough, then from the major scale we derive modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, etc.) and the corresponding chords and chord scales (again, modes). If you're one of the unlucky souls that was taught your modes as stand-alone entities and not degrees of the major scale, then I would recommend some back-tracking before any of this would seem relevant (as well as music seeming tractable).
All of the method books that that I struggled through as a student (Simandl, Rabbath, a few classical lessons with a local symphonite, etc.) gave me approaches to the bass that weren't very practical. I will admit that Rabbath was the most interesting, but I lacked the hands to play this way even on a 41 1/2" string length. ("If it hurts, stop.") But, being of the mind that the hundreds of years spent on this intrument before me had figured out the right way to play the instrument, I followed what was taught.
For a while, anyhow. This all changed with the advent of some tapes that I made to focus my intonation and open up unexplored (for me) regions of the bass. These tapes took all of the major scales from the lowest note on the bass to the highest, and in the interest of playing the scales wherever they existed on my instrument, discovered what I call 'crossings'. These are the places on the neck where the scale lays sensibly from one side of the neck to the other in a four-fingered pattern. This is a little easier to see on The Slab, but not unknown to anyone, I would guess. Common sense dictates that you want to be in these 'sweet spots' as much as possible, but music dictates that you don't want to limit yourself to the range of an octave and a half, so, then, I had to sew these regions together.
Another couple of personal ingredients that went into my approach that I need to add are that 1) I was blessed with strength instead of speed, and 2) I wasn't given above average muscle memory, but was given a better than average ear for pitch. This left me with a bad case of not being able to play in tune enough to keep my own skin from crawling, and the need to reduce shifting as much as I could as any shift would always require major adjustment once I got there to have my hand in the right spot.
With all the above out of the way, here are some qualities that a good concept of fingering should possess:
The fingerings, actually a fingering concept, that I've developed were mainly the result of two conditions that I met as a beginning student. First was that I was taught applied theory from the standpoint of music, with no consideration given as to what I was attempting to this stuff play on, and second is that I've always held in absolute contempt 'Bass Solos', or, in other words, those chopped up bass lines that some try to pass off as melody. Don't take me as completely lacking compassion on this one; Bass can be a daunting thing to play, physically, and bassists spend so much time pounding out the roots to chord changes at a semi-audible level that to reach out and fly with the Melody-Boys does require some over-achieving. Enough on this. Dismissing for now talk on melodic concepts, I want to approach only the breaching of technical limitations that The Bass presents us. Once you have the bass more 'out of your way', then melodic playing is much more easily achieved.
Western music, as we know it, is key-based music. The skip to the end of this argument, music, as we play it, is based on the major scale. To expand on this just enough, then from the major scale we derive modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, etc.) and the corresponding chords and chord scales (again, modes). If you're one of the unlucky souls that was taught your modes as stand-alone entities and not degrees of the major scale, then I would recommend some back-tracking before any of this would seem relevant (as well as music seeming tractable).
All of the method books that that I struggled through as a student (Simandl, Rabbath, a few classical lessons with a local symphonite, etc.) gave me approaches to the bass that weren't very practical. I will admit that Rabbath was the most interesting, but I lacked the hands to play this way even on a 41 1/2" string length. ("If it hurts, stop.") But, being of the mind that the hundreds of years spent on this intrument before me had figured out the right way to play the instrument, I followed what was taught.
For a while, anyhow. This all changed with the advent of some tapes that I made to focus my intonation and open up unexplored (for me) regions of the bass. These tapes took all of the major scales from the lowest note on the bass to the highest, and in the interest of playing the scales wherever they existed on my instrument, discovered what I call 'crossings'. These are the places on the neck where the scale lays sensibly from one side of the neck to the other in a four-fingered pattern. This is a little easier to see on The Slab, but not unknown to anyone, I would guess. Common sense dictates that you want to be in these 'sweet spots' as much as possible, but music dictates that you don't want to limit yourself to the range of an octave and a half, so, then, I had to sew these regions together.
Another couple of personal ingredients that went into my approach that I need to add are that 1) I was blessed with strength instead of speed, and 2) I wasn't given above average muscle memory, but was given a better than average ear for pitch. This left me with a bad case of not being able to play in tune enough to keep my own skin from crawling, and the need to reduce shifting as much as I could as any shift would always require major adjustment once I got there to have my hand in the right spot.
With all the above out of the way, here are some qualities that a good concept of fingering should possess:
- All scales finger the same, or at least similarly (transitions into TP and 3-finger to 4 finger being the altering factors). This would be analogous to learning theory by the numbers rather than purely by rote, as the permutations of music are infinite, thus you're really lost without the math.
- Scales are achieved with as few shifts as possible -- shifting is laborious and prone to intonation problems and speed limitations.
- The number of different shapes that your hand must take should be minimal. This goes back to my muscle-memory weakness. Learn as little as possible to get the job done. The less you know, the better you will know what it is that you know.
- A fingering system allows you the freedom to ascend or descend instantly without awkward movement.
- A fingering system that should leave you in such a position that you have access to all elements of harmony being convenient -- arpeggios, neighboring tones, chord-scales, etc.
- A fingering system that allows you to easily choose where on the bass you want to play what you are playing, for example balancing speed v. tone as far as string length is concerned, etc.
- A fingering system wherein you find yourself wedged against the long side of the fingerboard as little as possible, allowing shifting 'by choice' rather than by necessity.
- A fingering system that is based on music rather than what is based on what seems to be 'elegant' on the bass (i.e., Simandl)
- A fingering system that won't injure you. (i.e, Rabbath)
