This is from a presentation I did at Kalamazoo in 05 at the ISB convention. It clears up alot of misconceptions about written fingerings.
In discussing bass fingerings and examining printed material, we must first differentiate between the old bass setup and the modern bass setup.
In the old setup that was used until the mid nineteen fifties to the early sixties, G and D strings were heavy gut. The A and E were also heavy gut wound with silver or aluminum. To accommodate the wider string oscillations and avoid the dreaded buzz on the fingerboard, the nut and bridge were cut much higher than today. This lead to the use of certain left hand techniques.
Because of the height and thickness of the strings, a note fingered with all four fingers in a block fingering style was easier on the left hand than just using two fingers. Two were easier than one and an open string was the easiest of all. Another characteristic of the era was keeping your shifting distances to the minimum. The shorter and more efficient, the better.
If you had a choice of playing the passage in the lower positions or the upper positions, the lower was preferable due to the fact that the gut strings had more resistance to the left hand and the bow in the upper positions than the lower ones.
Then came the modern setup. The strings - thin and very responsive in any register - and low action opened the door to so many more options than we had before. Could you just use the same methods and same fingerings on the new setup as you had been using on the old one? Sure - and it was even easier and we did. The same nasty passages were still nasty but suddenly the modern setup offered new solutions to old problems. Namely, the addition of the open hand (or 4 finger) technique and using the thumb below the octave as well as above.
So, many of those old exerpt book fingerings are no longer written in granite although they still work but maybe not the best choice for many players.
Tom Gale
ASODB.com
In discussing bass fingerings and examining printed material, we must first differentiate between the old bass setup and the modern bass setup.
In the old setup that was used until the mid nineteen fifties to the early sixties, G and D strings were heavy gut. The A and E were also heavy gut wound with silver or aluminum. To accommodate the wider string oscillations and avoid the dreaded buzz on the fingerboard, the nut and bridge were cut much higher than today. This lead to the use of certain left hand techniques.
Because of the height and thickness of the strings, a note fingered with all four fingers in a block fingering style was easier on the left hand than just using two fingers. Two were easier than one and an open string was the easiest of all. Another characteristic of the era was keeping your shifting distances to the minimum. The shorter and more efficient, the better.
If you had a choice of playing the passage in the lower positions or the upper positions, the lower was preferable due to the fact that the gut strings had more resistance to the left hand and the bow in the upper positions than the lower ones.
Then came the modern setup. The strings - thin and very responsive in any register - and low action opened the door to so many more options than we had before. Could you just use the same methods and same fingerings on the new setup as you had been using on the old one? Sure - and it was even easier and we did. The same nasty passages were still nasty but suddenly the modern setup offered new solutions to old problems. Namely, the addition of the open hand (or 4 finger) technique and using the thumb below the octave as well as above.
So, many of those old exerpt book fingerings are no longer written in granite although they still work but maybe not the best choice for many players.
Tom Gale
ASODB.com
