Fretting Hand Techniques

Mastering basic fretting hand technique allows the beginning bassist to build his bass playing proficiency by learning more complex and demanding songs - bad technique will make learning these songs more difficult and frustrating.

Left Hand Position

A good hand position is vital to developing good fretting hand technique

The thumb should be positioned on the apex of the curve of the back of the neck of your bass.

Fretting the note with the fingertips

When your fret a note the fingers of the fretting hand should be curled over slightly at the end so that you actually fret the note with the fingertip.

Using the One Finger Per Fret System

The beginning bassist should definitely work at the one-finger-per-fret system.

This simply means that whichever part of the fingerboard you are playing at, your fretting hand fingers should lay on the fingerboard so that each finger covers a fret.

Digital Independence

The aim of digital independence is to develop fretting hand facility so that notes produced by fretting with each of your fingers sound the same and there are no 'weak' fretting hand fingers.

If you spend 10-15 minutes per day on the digital independence exercise (included with the Fretting Hand Lesson PDF - see below) then you will rapidly develop fluency, accuracy and strength in your fretting hand technique.

A more detailed look at fretting hand technique is available as a lesson in PDF form.

Either left click to open the PDF in a new window or right click to download to your hard drive.

Included with the PDF are all the permutations of the digital independence exercise - with reverse variation - for you to print out to help you get started mastering your fretting hand technique!

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