Many teachers advocate the perpendicular grip of the fingers with the thumb pad against the back of the neck. The thumb is mostly pointing up. Other positions, like pressing the thumb against the neck lengthwise or clamping it around the neck like electric guitar players do, will almost certainly limit speed as well as comfort.
With the perpendicular grip, the thumb is kept flat but loosely against the back of the neck. The fingers are slightly bent into a claw and the strings are pressed down with the fingertips, not the pads. Most teachers apply the one-finger-per-fret method. To find the proper position, the fingertips are to be put halfway the neck along one string at subsequent frets. The palm of the hand should stay free to move along the neck easily. Less and less teachers insist on keeping the thumb pointing up strictly opposite the middle finger. The drawbacks of that method are shown here. A more resistent advice by many teachers is to keep forearm, wrist and hand in a straight line. My objections against this advice are to be found on the next page under The Wrist.
The problem of the standard technique as described above is: how do we make it possible for the hand to move up and down the straight line of the fingerboard and at the same time to keep our fingers perpendicular with the neck? It should be fully understood that this linear movement of the hand is made possible by an axial rotation of the bones of the arm.
In the section below we'll consider the neutral position of the hand halfway the neck. Many teachers make their students start from there, as surely is the way to go. Both going up and going down on the fingerboard increases technical difficulties.
Bringing up the hand to halfway the fingerboard is not a single movement, but a combination of three:
This last movement explains the big difference between bass guitar and upright bass. Upright players turn the inside of the forearm DOWN when they play, rotating the arm clockwise, the so-called pronation of the lower arm. We bass guitar players have to bring the palm of the hand facing upward, which is called supination of the lower arm.
If we
many of us are unable to turn it any further.
Here we reach the limits of what wrist and elbow can do. We may be tempted to bend the wrist sideways, especially in the lower positions, to still be able to keep the fingers perpendicular with the fingerboard. Also see The Wrist on the next page.
The following may be complicated, but read carefully and perform the tests described. They are vital for healthy technique. Supination of the arm can be made easier by making the shoulder assist the elbow. The rotational pressure on the elbow should be passed on to the shoulder. This is only possible if the elbow moves free from the body and well under perpendicular with the neck of the bass.
Test 1: Pick up a soda or beer can and hold it like you hold the neck of your bass. It will be plain to see that the angle between the can and your forearm is somewhere around 45 degrees. Now imagine what will happen when you grab the fixed neck of your bass and change the angle by moving your arm: you will create strain somewhere. This means the angle of the can will have to resemble the angle of the bass' neck with your forearm. How elbow and shoulder should cooperate
This angle will be a little different for everyone. To change this angle, adjust the horizontal angle of the bass by pushing the neck further away from you or by drawing it towards you.
Test 2: Put your fingers at subsequent frets on one string with the index finger at fret 1. Now bring the elbow outward and inward to find the limits of rotation your shoulder can offer. Find yourself a realxed position somewhere in the middle. The elbow should be able to pass behind the side of the body easily if you slide your fingertips up the neck.
Keeping the elbow against the side of the body will make it impossible for the shoulder to assist the elbow in rotating the arm and reaching the upper frets without awkward movements. Lifting the elbow too much may cause fatigue in the shoulder and strain in the back side of the upper arm, just above the elbow. Because the little finger is about two thirds of the length of the other fingers, keeping the forarm perpendicular with the neck will cause the little finger to be drawn downward, making it impossible to keep the fingers on one string as required by test 2. Keeping the elbow close to (but not against) the side of the body will allow the other fingers to compensate for this difference in finger length by curving some more and widening the opening of the hand palm, which is in favor of giving space to the hand tendons. It will also help to prevent rotational pressure on the thumb base joint as well as reduce the risk of wrist tendonitis below the thumb.
With the elbow flexed, the upper arm may be wiggling too much for your taste. The more you extend the elbow, however, the less the upper arm will have to wiggle and the easier it will be for the shoulder to contribute to arm rotation. The elbow should never be moved inward to reach the lower positions. Room to move is best created by either steepening the neck angle and/or pushing the neck of the bass further away from you as is explained here.
But don't push it too far: the angle between upper arm and forearm should better not exceed 135 degrees. Extending it further, combined with frequent gripping, is at risk of tennis elbow. Frequent gripping and further extension of the elbow combined with turning the palm of the hand outward even more - often seen with players who keep the neck both low and horizontal - is at the risk of radial tunnel syndrome, also known as resistant tennis elbow. RTS is building up slowly, very painful and hard to diagnose. Moving the forearm from the elbow without allowing ithe shoulder to support the movement may also cause strain along the medial (pinky) side of the forearm. If you combine a flexed wrist, moving from the elbow, supporting a diving neck and strapping your bass very low, a golfer’s elbow could be your next station. Not dramatic, but nasty enough to try to prevent it.
We may conclude that a correct elbow position is very important and that the options are very narrow indeed!