Strengthening exercises any good?

[JPS]

Has anyone ever used any of the various bass exercise/fitness books (by Josquin Des Pres, Max Palermo etc) that are on the market? The kind that give you different combinations of left hand fingerings across different strings e.g. 1234 across adjacent strings.

If so do you think they are any good, or simply a waste of time as they are not particularly musical i.e. based on scales, etudes, arpeggios or whatever? Just curious.

Cheers

JPS

[alexclaber]

Probably easier to raise your action for a while and then enjoy how easy everything feels when you put it back down to normal.

Alex

[Beedster]

[quote name='alexclaber' post='573289' date='Aug 18 2009, 06:15 PM']Probably easier to raise your action for a while and then enjoy how easy everything feels when you put it back down to normal.

Alex[/quote]

+1

Strengthening exercises are to bassists what strength training is to athletes, that is, only of any real use if highly specific to the movement patterns required. Given that most of us don't have much time to rehearse and learn our parts, it makes more sense to use those parts as the strength exercise. I find that playing my usual parts on a high action and wide fretted neck (e.g., a C-width Precision) with heavy flats (La Bellas) does wonders when I move back to my A-width fretless Jazz strung with light rounds

Chris

[velvetkevorkian]

The Bass Fitness book does help but all it is is different permutations of 1234 across all strings- very unmusical.

[JPS]

Kind of what I feel really. Seems a lot of effort for something that isn't that applicable to the "real world". There must be better things to practice.

Cheers

JPS.

[Bilbo]

Your fingers were strong enough to play the bass when you were three. It is not about strength but the efficient use of existing muscles (I like to think of it not as strength but 'grace', like a dancer rather than a weightlifter). The 1234, 3142 exercises provide you with some elements of digital independence but, as you have obviously spotted, the best way to develop this is by playing musical things you haven't played before.

But there's the rub. You have to work on things that require you to move your fingers in ways that are not necessarily 'pattern' oriented. If you lock yourself into patterns, you will default to them all of the time and hamper your potential for expression. Saxophonist Iain Ballamy told me to learn to read music because 'it makes you play things you wouldn't otherwise think of'. He is one of the UK's best improvisers so I consider his perspective to be worthy of consideration.

[JPS]

That's an excellent point bilbo. I've got a fairly good grasp of scales, chords, patterns etc, but after 25 years of playing I tend to fall back on the same shapes, patterns and ideas. It's hard to find ways of breaking out of that rut.

[Bilbo]

A good way of approaching that issue is to try playing solos off another instrument. Jazz-wise, bass players coudl try stuff by baritone saxophonists or trombone players as the range is simialr and the techniques results in very different sets of cliches which results in the use of different default patterns. Anything that makes you break out of the straightjackets we build around ourselves.

Thiis is one transcription I did a while back....

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