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Double Bass Left hand strengthening

#2
Here are a few things I learned:

1. I've found that playing Simandl exercises the way it's written and also transposing and playing an octave up helps with the strength of your hand.
2. The Vomit exercise is good too.
3. Chris Berg taught me another exercise: play a scale using long tones, and as you sit on a note, gradually take your thumb off the neck while still playing. This helps your hand relax, and makes it stronger.
As far as vibrato is concerned, I have done an exercise where you shape the note up and down with half notes, quarter notes, 8th notes, Triplets, and 16th notes. That will help keep a good, controlled vibrato in every position.
I hope this helps.

Jon
 
#4
I learned a great exercise from Max Dimoff called "Max's Magic." It's just a 1-2-3-2-1-3-2-3 pattern played in one position, then shifted up a half step, et cetera. I found that doing this while trying to keep good curvature in my fingers (especially my third!) every day helped me a ton in building finger strength. It helps with speed as well if you slowly speed the pattern up. Works great in the lower positions too, which is where I learned it to begin with.
 
#7
I got a good left hand strengthening exercise from Orin O'Brien. Use sports putty. You can find it on Amazon.com. I think it's also called power putty. It's sold with cases that look like a fist. She recommends using the medium putty which is green.

What you do is push each finger individually into the putty and keep a good curve in your fingers. She recommended doing the 3rd and 4th fingers together. Doing this for a few minutes every day will strengthen your fingers.
 
#8
Cory Palmer said:
I got a good left hand strengthening exercise from Orin O'Brien. Use sports putty. You can find it on Amazon.com. I think it's also called power putty. It's sold with cases that look like a fist. She recommends using the medium putty which is green.

What you do is push each finger individually into the putty and keep a good curve in your fingers. She recommended doing the 3rd and 4th fingers together. Doing this for a few minutes every day will strengthen your fingers.
Click to expand...

Green Power Putty.
 
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#9
I dont know if anyone feels this but my strength for pushing the strings down especially in thumb position all comes from my shoulder and surrounding muscles. This way my hand keeps the same shape always.
 
#11
Rob, I hope if you played in Wheaton Symphony this year it was not too painful. I couldn't commit to such a program full of pops pops and more pops. Call me crazy. Are you studying with Mike still?

Anyways back on topic...
I find that vibrato is my weakest area of playing, if I do not constantly refine and refocus it. I like to think of the actually physical motion of coming from the elbow, not the wrist/hand movement. That is what was key for me, so if your having trouble that may help.

With a met, play w/ 1st finger to a whole note. (Four beats to make it easy) Tempo should be comfortable to your current vibrato. Increase and decrease by one click until the speed is either to slow or fast. Now you can experiment with the speed of the vibrato (slower or faster vibrations per click).
Make sure to relax and not do the exercise to fast, because it's easy to lose the motion your trying to get and just flap around.
Also remember to do this with the 2nd and 3rd/4th fingers.

Good luck
 

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