Just following up.

This Cello Suite prelude video is the first I've recorded which documents this new approach.

There are several passages of rapid ascending and descending diatonic scales which use the new fingering:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbWkDlPM8oI[/youtube]

...

Thought that looked familiar....
One of the starting things on the double bass is that we don't use the 4th finger, or better, we use the 3rd and 4th always together as one, as the 4th finger is usually too weak to handle most of the things...
The result id that we always use combinations like 1-2; 1-4; 4-2; 2-1 and the arm does all the work... when I have to play the electric or regular acoustic bass, i end up using the same tecnique... too many years on the double bass I guess
I can try and look for Streicher's left hand exercises for the double bass... If anyone's interested.
Cheers

Hi Greg.

This makes a lot of sense, thanks for the inspiration. I'll have to try it this morning. As an aside, how often would you consider retaining the 4-3-2-1? To my ears I find it's more of a way to get lines sounding like double bass, having a softer edge because of the relative instability of the shared tendon. This 4th is more for reach and a different tone in my mind....

Each to there own of course, I'm just curious of what choices you make around the 4th string these days.

What Brett said.

K

Rad!

I rarely use finger 4 for lines these days, and reserve it pretty much for certain chords. I find I just don't need it, and furthermore, it slows me down...

You can control your tone through other means very easily if hand movement is the foundation of your technique. Thanks for checking out the concept...

...everyone is interested... ...

ok, so I went in search for those old exercises. - Haven´t looked at them in 20 years
Turns out they are really, really simple, just cromatic passages.
The thing with the double bass is - you only use 3 fingers (same thing Greg was saying, bur we use 1,2,4 or, in Italy, 1,3,4) but, since the instrument is huge, you only get one finger per fret.
THe result is that you only have from the 1st to the 4th finger a major second interval (one tone) meaning the hand has to always be moving up and down but there are no variations other than: 1,2 - 1,4 - 2,4 and backwards.
Acording to this, because it's so simple a concept to grasp, all exercises I've found, are more concerned with string crossing (but, helas, the bass is tuned in 4ths so they don't easily aply to the stick), and ways to strenghthen the hand while streching the fingers from one string to the other, or, better yet, to have your fingers placed already in position before sounding the note. (This last case, although a bit different 'cause in the stick pressing the string equals sounding the note, is always a good principle to have: economy of movement and moving the hand ahead of the music will make anything easyer and more musical.)

Here's an attached example, not from Streicher but from Billé (He uses 1,3,4 - meaning the 2nd and 3rd finger moove as one)

Anyway, the point is that the stress on the hand comes from having to strech too much the 2nd and the 3rd apart. Double bass players have the perfect excuse not to do it: the notes are too far apart on the fingerboard anyway, so it doesn't matter

PS
In my opinion Greg is an incredible musician and an incredible teacher. If I'm even adressing this matter is just because I wanted to recognize that he's the man and he knows what he's talking about
Cheers
Rodrigo

Really interesting. Thanks for posting it.

The unique problem for the Stick is that we must generate the note while we select, each with just one digit. So any system that develops consistency in technique will help us avoid having to "think through" fingerings all the time.

Cheers!

...Thank you, Rodrigo...