Shifting notation question, in Serious Electric Bass

[TheDude]

RE: Serious Electric Bass by Joel Di Bartolo, on Chapter 4, page 53, he starts talking about shifting. He starts using a notation I'm unfamiliar with - can anyone help me?

Here's what he has:

Exercise 1: One Note On the D String (Keep your hand open!)
1st finger: 1-2 / 1-3 / 1-4
2nd finger: 2-1 / 2-3 / 2-4
3rd finger: 3-1 / 3-2 / 3-4
4th finger: 4-1 / 4-2 / 4-3

And then a staff with 4/4 time sig, 4 bars, each with 4 quarter notes, all on the A note (top staff line).

I assume that he wants me to be shifting, since this is what the chapter is about... (see, I'm sharp as a rubber tack) But it's all the same note, so what am I shifting? and what does 1-2, 1-3, etc. mean? because he uses it throughout this chapter for all the shifting exercises.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Pacman]

1 - index finger
2 - middle finger
3 - ring finger
4 - pinky

You're playing the same note, but shifting the fretting finger. Make sense?

 

[TheDude]

Okay, the words "First finger" threw me off. So he meant "starting with the first finger." Gotcha.

Thanks Pacman!

 

[Garry Goodman]

I took a bass course from Jamie Faunt (Faunt school of music) called the "basic players course.

The idea was to develope smooth one string playing . The concept was to take finger #1 and shift up in half steps with no break in sound, You would first shift up a fret and then back until it sounded the same as going from finger #1 to #2 and back, You would do this with each finger ( 1-1,2 -2,3-3.4-4). When playing a scale, say a chromatic , you would play 1,2,3,4 and then practice a 4-1 shift and resume 2,3,4, then a 4 to 1 shift. The end result was to achieve a "seamless" ,even scale without any noticable interuption of sustained notes.

As you press down the finger tip of finger #1 you would keep the pressure on it as you added #2 to play the next fret above and keeping both #1 and #2 down add #3 ,keeping all three down add #4 and shift the entire hand,keeping pressure on the string up to the fifth note of the scale ,using #1 again.

You need to work on the shift so it sounds the same as going from #1-#2. Continuing the scale up the string requires several shifts ,and decending back down makes you do a #1 to #4 shift.

This makes one string playing smooth and even in tone/volume. You can then do it on each string and repeat the process for other scale types.

This may be similar to the thinking in your book.