I know you guys have to answer, which is why I dig this site....

[Possum Willy]

Are there exercises/devices/techniques out there that will help me quit trying to bury the strings into my fretboard? I KNOW if I get a lighter left hand approach developed, my speed will go up exponentially. Any ideas?

 

[Tanner5382]

Turn the volume up on your amp incredibly loud. Play in the middle of the night, especially if you live in an apartment complex. You will develop a light touch in no time.

 

[wvbass]

If you practice with headphones, or with a lot of treble/presence, it will drive you crazy if you have a lot of extra noises going on. Playing lighter is part of cleaning up the garbage that you don't necessarily hear all the time.

Or get an Alembic. Something about my old Alembic's tone would just highlight every imperfection in my playing. Great bass, and it made be play better, but it also drove me crazy.

 

[twc1313]

Agree with the above posters. Headphones with an active bass, treble cranked. Once you like how you sound doing that, switch to live gig with a passive bass with tone @ 70%. You’ll feel like you can do anything and it will be clean.

 

[Inara]

As a drill, practice playing without touching the back of the neck with your thumb. Just let it hang there in space. It will quickly show you how little pressure you actually need to apply to the strings. Also, you might get more replies in the technique forum, rather than the basses forum. Good luck!

 

[Marko 1]

Do you play hard with your right hand? Sometimes one hand will just match the other. Just a thought.

 

[Artman]

A good place to begin. A solid foundation to build upon. Years later, you'll be grateful for this guy's advice.


Then this one. The finger pressure bit begins at about 7:42 I still do the light touch exercise a couple of times a week, and I probably will for the rest of my life.

 

[chadds]

Glad you’re working on this. Playing lightly you can gig all night.
Some hard hitting drummers don’t realize there are different tones from the center to the rim of each drum.
For us intensity is expressed through the intention for each note. Music is fast, slow, loud soft and all the places in between. You have lots of musical meaning, inflection possible in each note.
Marsalis says to listen to all kinds of music. Even stuff you don’t favor instantly. You can listen for the bass and what it does to make the piece.
Relax your shoulders and breathe.
Billy Sheehan recommends cranking you amp and play gently.

 

[fretno]

listen to your recorded tracks solo'd , that usually helps me lol

 

[brianrost]

As far as how to get a lighter touch...just try it. Experiment with various amounts of pressure with the left hand. Use the weight of your left arm to do most of the work, you really don't have to squeeze much at all.

In fact, it is possible to play with just fingertips, leaving the thumb dangling in mid air! Not something you would use on a regular basis but it will help you understand how to apply more force with the downward pull of your arm. The more vertical you position the neck (go look at Bill Wyman with the Stones) the more downward force from the arm weight and the less you need to squeeze.

Here Bill has the bass up on his chest and the neck way up almost like an upright bass.

Here it's slung much lower, but still at about a 45 degree angle.

You can feel the arm weight without holding the bass, just by holding your arm in a "V" shape with the elbow down and forearm up. The higher up the forearm gets, you will feel the arm get heavier.

Or get an Alembic. Something about my old Alembic's tone would just highlight every imperfection in my playing.

This is true of a lot of "modern" sounding basses. My Steinbergers expose every single bit of sloppy technique.

 

[rashrader]

I don’t think that anyone has mentioned this, but what is your setup like? String height, relief, etc…. I find that the lower the action, the greater the economy of motion. Also, and more importantly, if you set it just right, it kinda forces you to play lightly.

 

[wazzel]

First, make sure you got a good set up and the strings are not to high. A couple of things that helped me lighten my fretting hand. Getting my thumb behind the neck instead of my palm reduced the amount of force my finger needed to put out and increased dexterity. Keeping you fret hand fingers close to the strings instead of flapping in the breeze helped me. Getting more relaxed in general helped. Running my normal exercises, but focusing on a lighter fret hand touch.

 

[Pings Bass]

1. A good setup is critical.
2. Warm up with slides up and down every string with each finger. Note that you can't squeeze and slide; if you find yourself gripping while practicing, go back to slides to remind your muscles how to do it right.
3. Use a strap and your right arm to counter the pressure applied to the strings by pulling back with your left arm (not hand). Let your thumb relax.

You should be able to slip a business card between your left thumb and the back of the neck.

 

[JW56789]

I don't know if this applies to you, but it applied to me and might work for you.

I used play really, really hard. Broke strings. I could play a set with my fret hand only, that's how hard I was squashing the strings into the fretboard.

In those days, I didn't know beans about how a bass ought to be setup, and mine looked like those 'before' images on most guitar tech web vids. LOTS of daylight under the strings. This contributed to how I was playing, as I had to WORK to fret notes, without really knowing why. I was as green as my front yard.

I later learned about setup, developed my own preferences, and suddenly that ferociously hard technique resulted in lots and lots of noise, rattles, etc., on my newly lowered and properly setup bass.

So over time, to get quiet again, I learned to moderate that touch (and using 'big enough' amps was another help) and play quietly with a lot lighter touch. I don't know I gained a lot of speed (I was never one of those guys) but I certainly know that my scales, arpeggios, intervals, everything became far easier and I did gain more accuracy due to it being far easier to play.

Don't know if any of this applies to you, but I've been there.

 

[BarfanyShart]

As far as how to get a lighter touch...just try it. Experiment with various amounts of pressure with the left hand. Use the weight of your left arm to do most of the work, you really don't have to squeeze much at all.

In fact, it is possible to play with just fingertips, leaving the thumb dangling in mid air! Not something you would use on a regular basis but it will help you understand how to apply more force with the downward pull of your arm. The more vertical you position the neck (go look at Bill Wyman with the Stones) the more downward force from the arm weight and the less you need to squeeze.

Here Bill has the bass up on his chest and the neck way up almost like an upright bass.

View attachment 4444513

Here it's slung much lower, but still at about a 45 degree angle.

View attachment 4444514

You can feel the arm weight without holding the bass, just by holding your arm in a "V" shape with the elbow down and forearm up. The higher up the forearm gets, you will feel the arm get heavier.



This is true of a lot of "modern" sounding basses. My Steinbergers expose every single bit of sloppy technique.

I have also noticed since I got back into BG (after years of mainly doing DB) that if my left hand starts to feel overworked, moving the neck into a more upright position instantly relieves the tension.

 

[dbsfgyd1]

Are there exercises/devices/techniques out there that will help me quit trying to bury the strings into my fretboard? I KNOW if I get a lighter left hand approach developed, my speed will go up exponentially. Any ideas?

Habits are hard to break. Not shortage of media, lessons, ideas here. They can show you all sorts of things.

The deal here is you need to go back to the basics. Note 1. Start with the C on the A string 3rd fret. Slowly depress your index finger down on the string until the note is clear. Do not press beyond that point. Note 2. With your ring finger, slowly depress the string on the 5th fret until the string rings clear. Do not press further. Go back to note 1 and repeat this sequence over and over until it’s second nature. Then add C# with the middle ring finger.

Sounds stupid, but you can watch all the videos you want, but in the end, you’re really going to have to go back to the beginning “note one” and relearn it. Wish I could offer a better more expedient solution.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

Start with a good setup and make sure you're not fighting the strings.

 

[Koshchei]

Are there exercises/devices/techniques out there that will help me quit trying to bury the strings into my fretboard? I KNOW if I get a lighter left hand approach developed, my speed will go up exponentially. Any ideas?

There are tons of exercises to help with that. I should note that speed shouldn't be a goal by itself, but rather a complete technique, which includes speed.

I'd seek out some lessons to help with this, as 1:1 feedback will help you to change/develop various aspects of your playing as you progress.

 

[JazznFunk]

Esteban nailed it. Coming from the upright side of things, the force you generate to pull the string down to the fingerboard/fretboard should be generated with your left arm and shoulder.... NOT from the force of the hand alone. This can be aided by having a setup with action that is as low as comfortably possible. When I taught years ago, I told students they should be able to come up and pull my left thumb off the neck of the bass easily, if it was even resting on the neck in the first place. Economy of motion.... if you're flailing around to catch notes or gripping the neck too tightly, you lose stamina and tone quickly. Turning your amp up higher - a.k.a. as loudly as you anticipate needing to be at your LOUDEST moments, and then playing lightly during lower volume/dynamic areas of the songs will give you room to work with against the rest of the band. Good luck!

1. A good setup is critical.
2. Warm up with slides up and down every string with each finger. Note that you can't squeeze and slide; if you find yourself gripping while practicing, go back to slides to remind your muscles how to do it right.
3. Use a strap and your right arm to counter the pressure applied to the strings by pulling back with your left arm (not hand). Let your thumb relax.

You should be able to slip a business card between your left thumb and the back of the neck.

 

[tpaul]

One thing I've noticed is that I develop a lighter touch with my fretting hand when I play a bass that has modern (big) fret wire. I'm talking about "medium-jumbo" or bigger.

I prefer the older smaller frets but for whatever reason I feel like there's less of an urge to press the strings to the fretboard with the larger frets - probably because if the bass is set up properly you can't easily do it. You really only need to make the string contact the top of the fret wire, and that becomes clear when the fret wire is taller. Pressing it down to the wood is hard on your hand and also makes the notes sharp.

Anyway that's just one factor but it might be a useful exercise to practice with jumbo frets if you have access to a bass that has them.