Quality materials covering thumb position?
Double bassist Erwin has emailed before with questions about double bass techniques–here’s another one that I thought I would toss up on the blog for some reader comments:
Hi Jason,
To my surprise i found my question about holding the bass in thumb position on the site. Cool man!
Here’s something new. Fingering in thumb position. I can’t find a good book dealing with that.
For example a major scale on 3 strings, do you play that with 1,3, thumb, 1,3, thumb, 2, 3? Seems logical to me..Keep up the good work and i must subscribe soon, it’s a great site indeed!
Greets,
Erwin
Check out some older blog threads about this topic if you like.
09 November 2010, 7:49 am
Simplified Higher Technique for Double Bass by Francesco Petracchi
Also try the “Clark Thumb Drill” fingering patterns in Jeff Bradetich’s Technique packet.
here’s a link on Jason’s site:
http://doublebassblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/jeff-bradetich-technique-packet.pdf
These will give you something to practice to develop strength and accuracy… If you want to know HOW, study players who have great thumb position technique and try to get yourself to do what they do. Asking a good teacher couldn’t hurt.
Good luck.
09 November 2010, 8:56 am
The petracchi technique books have a good solution for thumb position fingering. But I’m not sure whether you are lookin for fingering types and techniques or just fingerings. But here is the book: http://www.lemurmusic.com/Petracchi-Simplified-Higher-Technique-for-Double-Bass/productinfo/YOR80064/
09 November 2010, 8:57 am
‘Melodic Playing in Thumb Position,’ by Michael Moore http://amzn.to/9qOVcM for jazz thumb position playing is fantastic, or (of course), my book, ‘The Jazz Bass Book’ has a nice chapter on thumb position playing for jazz improvisers as well
http://amzn.to/9wby2c
I learned so much about playing melodically from Michael Moore. In his book, he has a well-conceived system for organizing scales and arpeggios up there.
09 November 2010, 10:12 am
It’s best to be ready to play a major scale across 3 strings from any finger – there are three “basic” patterns:
A) 13T13T23
B) T13T13T1
C) 2T12T123
There are variations, but this way, you won’t be locked into just one fingering when another one would be perfect.