IMHO a player should distinguish between vibrato and non-vibrato technique. If you are playing vibrato then only one finger is stopped.
True.
If you are not using vibrato the previous fingers apply pressure to help each success finger. When you use just the pinkie, the muscles associated with the pinkie have to do all of the work. When you use all of your fingers to help, the pinkie does not have to work so hard.
The other option, which is admittedly a more advanced technique (though I can't help but wonder if it
should be thought of this way), is to utilize a technique where every note is stopped as though the note
might use vibrato. This keeps the hand relaxed and puts the onus for placing the finger in the correct place on the arm/shoulder/core rather than the very limited lateral movement of the fingers.
There are advantages to this approach. The lateral motion of the fingers is a function of the extensor tendons rather than the flexor; to check this, relax your hand with the palm up and fingers naturally curled facing your face - notice that in this position it is nearly impossible to move the fingers laterally without them also trying to extend (information on hand biomechanics can be found
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Since the lateral motions that we can perform (excluding the thumb, of course) are tied to the extensor mechanism, spreading the hand while simultaneously pressing down on the string (flexor function) puts that mechanism of the hand in some degree of conflict or tension with itself.
So in short, without meaning to impugn traditional pedagogy, I'm not sure that trying to keep the 1st finger exactly in place while reaching for a whole step with the 4th finger is the best practice for hand and forearm health; this is especially noticeable in the lowest positions, and even more so on the lower strings.
IMHO, Rather than letting fingers rest alternately, the key is to play with the absolute minimum pressure necessary to stop the string.
Agree, with the caveat that it's better to have slightly too much pressure on the stop than slightly too little, so in general I try to err on that side because doing so doesn't change the sound. I've also been to enough Hal Robinson workshops to know that he routinely catches students using too little pressure. He has a demonstration he does where a student bows a note and fingers it, then he fingers the same note while the student bows it. The look on everyone's face when they hear the difference is a beautiful thing to watch every single time!
The challenging part is to separate the amount of pressure you use for stopping the note from the amount of pressure you use to play dynamics with your right hand. The natural tendency for most people is to clench harder with the left hand if more strength is used with the right hand. You must specifically practice to apply this strength independently until you can do it without thinking.
Completely agree with this. A full stop is a good stop, and a weak/incomplete stop is a bad stop. Unless the player is going for some special effect involving a cracked stop sound, the left hand should be making full stops regardless of what the right hand is doing!
. Music is generally not structured in regular patterns where one could/would stop notes a certain fixed rhythmic interval before the notes are played. Perhaps the intent is to practice a structured exercise that forces one to focus more on the independent finger movement in the left hand, and one would not actually apply this technique to musical performance. In other words it's intended to teach the necessary left hand motor skills, and independence between the left and right hand.
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