It's incredible to me that bassists can do so much with a span of only a major second between first and fourth finger. As someone who isn't a bassist, but writes for bass often, seeing how much shifting a simple-looking part can require inclines me to be conservative with what I write, and yet, bassists somehow manage to play Bottesini.

Great. And I can adapt much of this to my beloved 5ths tuning. Thank you!

Always good to go back to the basics. I still refer to my old Rubanks Elementary String Bass Method book from the 1930s, to tighten up fundamentals, and play the training etudes. Point is, you never get beyond learning and it's always good to build upon what you've already learned.

Fantastic and really helpful , thank you!

I prioritize opportunities to shift into third scale degree, ie E in the key of C major. Thirds are perhaps most forgiving to slides/bends, whereas fifths ie G are perhaps least forgiving and shifts to fifths are thus more risky. Doesn’t always work but it’s another good heuristic for clever shifting. Other scale degrees forgive shifts on a spectrum, depending on the notes preceding and following. For fast excerpts technical fingering is required, but for slower parts we can finesse the finger pattern to flow with the harmony

Thanks Jason, always helpful to watch a pro's fingering of a passage. There are good reasons for their choices distilled over a long amount of actual performance.

Great ideas that I need to adapt this to 5ths tuning.

Great insights. Thanks Jason. 1

Thanks Jason. Playing with 2 community orchestras is giving me lots of opportunities to learn about fingering. And find what works best for me right now. This helps!

Very good video for beginners!🔥🔥🔥👏👍

As I got back to performing The Messiah at my alma mater every December, I'm always finding ways to make better transitions especially when some parts call for lower notes under E standard; sometimes there's parts that work better on a 5 string and sometimes for an Extension (which I yet to try)

We just finished doing Beethoven's 9th in the community orchestra I play in--with a great choir and vocal soloists. We had 5 bassists--not full strength but more than we usually have. I was an amazing but challenging experience (there are some awfully fast parts). This year, we have been doing a lot of Beethoven--a 'dream' season. My 'D' and 'B flat' scales have improved dramatically--LOL. First was a reading only of Beethoven's 8th, then a performance of BH's 1st and now the 9th (we also did Brahm's 1st Symphony). About this fingering for the recitative and 'Ode', I like how you gave different scenarios. I also like how you start on '1' here. Wish I had tried that. However, as you said, there are no hard and fast rules. The advantage of starting on the 4th finger and then shifting to the 1st finger on the 'D' is that my short term memory seems to know where exactly where that 1st position is so soon after having just been there, so it is fairly easy to shift back to that position, if that makes sense. Is that your experience? I think as a section, we decided to start on the 4th finger in the 1st position, but . . . who knows what really happened when it came down to it.

Hi. Where can I buy sheet music or books specialising in double bass? Pop , jazz, classical etc