Double Bass stiff left hand when not moving / Zimmermann

[jj.833]

I started to practise Zimmermann a few weeks ago, thanks to a tip from @salcott in another thread. It's a stream of rhythmic variations played on A on D string and E on G string. I'm not used to play for a longer time without any left hand movement, and my left hand goes stiff very quickly. Normally I can set my posture right and know how to use big muscles to ease the left hand fingers. Here, after a few minutes, my hand gets tired and I feel I'm reverting to the basic mistakes and my thumb and pinky start to hurt. I solve this by playing different notes, or harmonics, to ease the left hand while I focus on the right. I practise Zimmermann daily for say 15 minutes.

My question: is there a way to learn to stop the notes for a long time without any pain? I feel I'm getting slowly better in this, but I'm afraid I might develop some left hand health issues (not for the first time).

 

[User4843936]

I think the more you do something which you’re looking to improve, the better it’ll get. Sounds like it could just be a strength issue as much as anything else. Go a bit further each session than you’ve gone the previous time and take a day off every once in a while.

 

[afroblue]

I have the same problem. I feel like I do the right things, use the bigger muscles, don't grip with the hand/thumb etc.... I do a lot of playing so generally stamina isn't an issue for me but holding down these 2 notes for this exercise just kills me almost straight away. So I tend to do it on the open D and G strings.

 

[AGCurry]

Yeah. Keeping a double stop planted two or three times through one of those exercises is not natural and gives me pain. Good for the bowing arm though!

 

[jallenbass]

Make sure that you use just enough energy to get the strings to the fingerboard and not through the fingerboard.

 

[Dogfightgiggle]

I just do them on open strings.

 

[David Potts]

Three suggestions immediately come to mind -
(1) Put quality before quantity. Do shorter bursts in sections, as though you are in a gym doing reps, but do what you have chosen very correctly. You can intersperse them with other tasks, or even on alternate days. Correct shapes, alignment and use of your LH in lower positions is still a form of strength and endurance building.
(2) If you think that your LH needs strengthening go about it carefully. I prefer to use a soft foam 'stress ball", wrapping all my fingers around it including my thumb then squeezing everything towards the centre while keeping the wrist in line with the forearm (not pronating that tires and reduces strength). I keep the ball under my pillow and do reps before"switching off"at night, gradually increasing the number to build strength and endurance. Among the alternatives are exercise putty, rubber bands and springs but, for me, the way our LH works best is closest to ball squeezing because the hand is rather open with palm cupped and fingers arched.
(3) Check out how high your action (string heights) is at the base of the neck and compare this with heights at the bottom of the fingerboard near the bridge. If the strings are too high and rather stiff this will tire your hand very quickly. Your bass neck may be "doing a banana" (bending forward). You can check this out easily by standing behind the bass and leaning it backwards as you step back until you can see from the scroll down the length of the join between the fingerboard and the paler neck. This line should be straight.

I don't know why the notes E and A were chosen except that you should be most comfortable while concentrating on the strings, bow and RH (keep looking down !). The span of your fingers, one to four, should be easier than in lower positions. I think that the exercises are not intended to be approached right through like a marathon, with both notes held down for long periods (15 minutes??). A tired LH will divert your attention away from the real progress of your RH, so slow down. A colleague of mine said that his Curtis class took two years to work through the book. It took me ages just to do the first twenty or so pages with so many repeats of patterns until satisfied. In orchestra the longest I ever had to hold one note down was 137 slow bars at the beginning of one of Wagner's works (Tristan?) and that nearly killed me!

 

[turf3]

Gee, for 137 bars I think I'd modify a capo and put it on.

 

[neilG]

The problem is holding the same double stops for the whole exercise. Play something else, likes scales in double stop thirds or fifths. You'll find that not only easier than holding a death grip on two notes, but it makes the exercises more interesting and useful. And as Dogfightgiggle said, there's always open strings when your hand gets tired.

 

[SAlcott]

The problem is holding the same double stops for the whole exercise. Play something else, likes scales in double stop thirds or fifths. You'll find that not only easier than holding a death grip on two notes, but it makes the exercises more interesting and useful. And as Dogfightgiggle said, there's always open strings when your hand gets tired.

This misses the whole concept of the book. The idea is that your left hand is static, leaving you free to concentrate on the bow.

 

[ILIA]

I had the same problem, when I first started working out of this book.

First off, put the bow down, and hold the A-E double stop on the D & G strings, for a long time. Do you still have the same tension, strain, & pain?

If you don't, the tension is coming from your right hand, when you do the right hand string crossing/bow placement exercises. For most people that ask your type of question, when they become tense in the right hand, they become tense in the left hand. I suggest getting really familiar with the exercise patterns and concepts, using only open strings, then add the double stops. It could be that your unfamiliarity with the exercises and concepts is introducing the tension. Or, there may be some kind of fundamental problem with your bow hold, in which case, consult with an expert teacher.

If you do have tension, strain, & pain in your LH even without the RH doing anything, you have to figure out your LH technique before you even pick up the bow. That's a whole separate discussion, too.

 

[neilG]

This misses the whole concept of the book. The idea is that your left hand is static, leaving you free to concentrate on the bow.

That doesn't mean you can't introduce some left hand before the excerpts. If the OP's choice is pain or something else, you need to choose something else. The idea is to mix it up to provide SOME left hand movement during the exercises, to relieve pain and/or cramping. What you do with your left hand needn't be complicated, just moving a bit.

 

[jj.833]

Put quality before quantity. Do shorter bursts in sections, as though you are in a gym doing reps, but do what you have chosen very correctly.

Thank you @David Potts. I think I needed to hear just that.

Just to clarify, I have no trouble with left hand when playing anything else. I spent most of the last year consciously focusing on ways to play without any strain. Generally I'd say I follow Gary Peacock's advices, Rabbath's universal scalar ideas and @Chris Fitzgerald's analytic approach. I came to understand just now that this all is not enough, as the liberty of easy touch is paid for by the need of constant moving. I play jazz mostly so the constant moving is welcome. I guess that for Zimmermann, I just need more stamina and it must be developed slowly.

I think the A and E was chosen because it's easily played in tune and gets a lot of sympathetic vibrations from low strings, so it's easy to hear when the sound 'shines'. Of course, any other combination of notes works just as well. Playing any double stop for a long time results in getting them really in tune. Open string though seem a bit harder for their tendency to squeek, perhaps because I play Spirocores; no big issue.

Again, thanks everyone for your input.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

the liberty of easy touch is paid for by the need of constant moving. I play jazz mostly so the constant moving is welcome. I guess that for Zimmermann, I just need more stamina and it must be developed slowly.

I don’t know the Zimmerman exercise you are speaking of, so it’s hard to say how I would approach it. I also don’t want to be confused for some sort of “relaxed hand evangelist”, so I’ve tried to stay quiet in this thread. I will say that I use the same technique in Bach as I do in Jazz and acoustic improvised music with tight arranged sections mixed with improv. Many of these provide little puzzles that I used to find annoying, but which I now find fun to try to crack.

In my case, this technical code breaking habit came honestly because of the decades apprenticing with teachers in various physical fields who approached things in this way. But everybody has to find their own path, which is kind of the point.

Holding a 5th or an octave, especially in the lower positions, is a challenge. I’ve developed a way of using the left thumb as a fixed fulcrum and dropping the elbow to clamp this and other kinds of double stops down. But if the passage goes on long enough, the tension can still build up!

 

[jj.833]

I will say that I use the same technique in Bach as I do in Jazz and acoustic improvised music

Yes. Though [standing] I find that when plucking and bowing, left hand differs slightly because of different need to prevent the bass from turning on its endpin. But the general ideas work the same both ways.

Except for Zimmermann, where you would like to hold the double stop for hours and forget about it, so you could entirely focus on the right hand cross-strings bowing. The book is page upon page of this:

 

[turf3]

My teacher had me working out of the Zimmermann book almost from the beginning. The idea is to separate left hand and right hand actions. Deeper in the book you'll find places where he takes an excerpt and turns it into a series of open string notes, so all you're practicing is the bow motions of the passage, then you add in left hand fingering (which I found almost invariably made it impossible to do the bowing correctly even though I could totally nail the bowing on the open strings just seconds before!)

My teacher had me doing the exercises on open strings, not with the notes fingered; it's been some years since I opened the book, so maybe he was simplifying the instruction a bit for beginner me.

 

[Dogfightgiggle]

Thank you

I think the A and E was chosen because it's easily played in tune and gets a lot of sympathetic vibrations from low strings, so it's easy to hear when the sound 'shines'. Of course, any other combination of notes works just as well. Playing any double stop for a long time results in getting them really in tune. Open string though seem a bit harder for their tendency to squeek, perhaps because I play Spirocores; no big issue.

The E and A that are used speak very easily and I think that’s the main reason they were chosen. I use open string combinations right now because it’s harder and I need more work there.

Ultimately I think the best use of the book is twofold:

1 – Play the patterns with different bow placements (there seem to be three or four really nice placements for a given note and these often correspond to the harmonics that lie beyond the fingerboard).

2 – Apply various note combinations in order to get a better feel for the nuances inherent in bowing in different positions. Scales or other asc./desc. phrases could probably included at some point too as you would be required to vary your bow placement throughout.

And I have no idea why that posted as a link, haha. Don’t know if a moderator can fix that.

 

[eerbrev]

I definitely think that doing these exercises in short bursts is one of the more effective ways to do it (from both a left and right-hand perspective, and a learning perspective), but it's also important to learn how to relax into a hand position so that you're allowing the larger muscles and gravity to do the majority of the work holding the strings down. holding the position down outside of the exercise, not doing anything else, and observing how your arm wants to relax away from your initial posture is really instructive for this.

good luck!!!

 

[SAlcott]

I've been on page 11 for about a year, having started at 66 BPM (two beats per measure), increasing the speed little by little. On my teacher's advice, I play the exercises exactly as written once through, relax, shake it out, and repeat for a total of 10 minutes. At the end of my practice day, I play page 12 once at the page 11 tempo, but at four beats per measure.

 

[Les Fret]

I think the purpose of the book is not the left hand but the bowing hand. So it is no use holding that fifth for so long. Just use open strings or 12th fret harmonics instead. I think everyone will get fatigued when holding that fifth so long. So what you are experiencing is normal.