Double Bass Fingerings

[Tom Gale]

Originally Posted by Tom Gale
(Quote) The passage that really bugs me is about 7 lines down - that ascending
A B C# D D#F# E. The printed 14/124/41 under a slur is weird and bad music - that awful slur 4/4 on the D# to F#.
It should be 14/ 12/1*4*2* - * being open hand or 4 finger tech.(Quote)

If you don't want to use the open hand tech, you can - starting on the /1 D# - Pivot up a 1/2 step and finish 4,1. That avoids two shifts in a row. At this tempo 2 shifts in a row is a killer.
Also, even with the slurs, I feel the note groupings to be 2, 2, 3. So, I try to group the fingerings the same.
Tom Gale

 

[bejoyous]

Robobass's suggestion would be the easiest and most straightforward especially for a someone at the student level.

But there is always this solution!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYPlY7Tdu4M

 

[bejoyous]

Tom Monohan's (former principal bass of Toronto Symphony and teacher of many of Canada's presently employed bassists) would always reply with this when ever a student came with some difficult solution for a simple problem, "Yes, but how does it sound?"

 

[Fatty Boom Boom]

Instead of climbing up the G string with bunch of shifts, I like to play the open G and then get my G# on the D string. I prefer playing G# through C on the D string and then C# through E on the G string. The same goes for descending. That way, I only have one shift from the low E through open G to the G# through the high E. In each position, low and mid, I don't know that I pivot in a strict sense because my thumb moves a little to accommodate notes that my fingers are trying to reach - but the thumb stays in a neighborhood. In this case one neighborhood for the low section, and another for the mid section. I do this because to my ear, good string crossing sounds better than good shifting.