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Smart Fingering Choices For The Left hand

Technique Intermediate 1 min read

Updated

Fingering should end up being a series of natural, unconscious choices — you shouldn't be thinking about it any more than you think about how your mouth moves when you talk. Getting there means practicing the way you plan to play. Keep your fingering, posture, and approach consistent between practice and performance so the muscle memory locks in faster.

Originally published July 19, 2014, lightly edited for clarity.

Fingering should wind up being a series of natural unconscious choices that you don’t think about anymore than you think about the way your mouth moves when you talk. To get your fingering to this point, it is necessary to work on it in a natural “makes sense” kind of way. Another way to say this is to practice the way you are going to play. The consistency of how you do everything from the way you hold the bass when you practice down to complex fingering choices made for a line should be the same from practice to performance so that the muscle memory will develop more quickly. The following video discusses these topics and their importance. Fingering technique is one of the fundamentals I teach. If you want personalized feedback on your left-hand fingering, online bass lessons via Zoom are available.

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