Welcome to the first installment of my new series with Best Bass Gear, “Theory Thursdays with Andy”
I thought I’d start you all off with a pretty basic and common concept that many of you readers may already be familiar with, and apply to your playing all the time.
Positional Playing
Positional playing is a concept that I have always tried to stress to my students. This topic may be old news for some of you, but a good refresher anyway.
One of the most important things to constantly take into consideration in all areas of your playing; reading, improvising, etc. is the minimization of movement. My theory is that the less you have to move around the neck, the more accurately you can hone in the attack of your notes.
Most stringed instruments are tuned in such a way that every note is available in one octave or another inside of one position. Consequently, what this means, is that if you know your way around the fretboard enough, you can play anything, in any position.
The idea of a positional playing is this; you have 4 fingers that you can play the bass with at any one time, and whenever possible, you should assign each of your four fingers to a set of four consecutive frets. We refer to this set of four frets as a “position”.
Positions are named after whatever number fret your first finger is assigned to. For example, if your first finger is assigned to the 3rd fret, your 2nd to the 4th fret, your 3rd to the 5th fret, and your 4th to the 6th fret, you are in “3rd position”.
Stay tuned for more concepts in music theory!
good lesson especially for 5 & 6 string Players
Invaluable building block. I went to a 5 string bass for this very reason. Better positioning less lateral movement. You can easily play 3 oct. w/o going the length of the neck. The extra 5 notes below E are a bonus.
yah, i too play 5 string fender jazz and i love using the lower notes as well,adds drama to endings,and have few extra’s !
It was a huge eye-opener to me in my beginner years when a guitarist pointed out to me finger positions 2-4, 1-2-4, 1-3-4 to create any Major scale – all of a sudden I could play in any key!
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