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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