Planting Fingers - Double Bass Shifting Technique + Drill

Hey, guys, it's Lauren with Discover Double Bass. Today, I want us to talk about shifting. Shifting is a tricky technique, and there's a whole lot that can go wrong when you're doing it. But because of such an integral part of playing bass, we have to be able to do it efficiently and cleanly. So in this lesson, I'm gonna show you the key to nailing that shift every time. One of the most important aspects of playing bass is keeping in contact with the bass or particularly with the fingerboard. But so often, we lose that when we're making a shift. It's really common to see when you're making a shift, that finger or hand lifting off of the board. So it might look something like this. If you can see my finger kind of lifted slightly off of the board rather than keeping it planted. If I were to keep it planted, this is what it would look like. Really, really down on the board, and I'm gliding on my finger. Now, the reason that lifting your finger isn't so great for a shift is, first of all, you lose that muscle memory, and we'll talk about this a little bit later. But when you're lifting your finger off of the board and it sort of up in the air, it's really difficult to measure that distance and maintain the muscle memory that we've been trying so hard to develop. But also, it creates a space in between the two notes. And when you lift your finger off, more than just creating a space, you really risk just a big fat squeak. So, when you're playing, something like this might happen. Some kind of icky sounds like that. And when you keep your finger planted on the board, there's no space in between the two notes because your finger never loses contact with the board, it's always playing a note. Whereas when you lift a finger off, there's a moment where you're not actually playing anything but your bow is still playing and that combination is what causes that squeak. Now, in terms of the space when you have the finger down, like I said, the same thing with the squeak. When the finger is always in contact with the board, your finger's always playing something. So, there's less risk of a space, and the only time you're gonna get that is if you've got a stop or a space in the bow. Now also, keeping in contact with the fingerboard just helps build that muscle memory. You do so much better building muscle memory when you have something concrete to kind of hold on to, like a fingerboard. But when your finger is up in the air, it's sort of difficult for your hand to measure distance. So when you're up in the air or even just halfway there, it's difficult to kind of measure exactly where your hand wants to go.