Learn a Chromatic Exercise on the G String: Double Bass

Video Transcript

"CASEY CORMIER: Okay. So let's take the chromatic exercises we've done. Remember we do them on open position on the strings. Let's try taking that chromatic idea, and instead of going when we hit G sharp, for example, on the E string, 'instead of going to open A, let's play the A on the E string and keep going up until we hit the octave. There's gotta be a 12th fret octave or the same thing. Remember, on bass we have the 12th fret octaves; there's gotta be something like that. So, let's try that out. Okay. E, F, F#, G. Okay? Now, because we're not worried about going to here, we can play G# now with our first finger. G#, A, A#, you know, I can skip for B. B, C, C#, D, D#. Now, around here in this area should be your octave. Now here's one thing, notice how our thumb has unfortunately left us. The neck ends around, it depends on your double bass, but at the E flat, it's kinda where the neck ends. So when we're up here, we can't use our thumb now. So now, once we ditch our thumb, our third finger is back in the play. And we can use instead of actually playing this E here, we can use the harmonic. Remember, harmonic is where you're finger barely touches on top of the string. So watch me again. I'm going to play up to neck using this, and I'll just tell you where I'm switching my hand. E, F, F#, G, switch, G#, A, A#, switch, B, C, C#, switch D, D#, E with our third finger. So we really only play each time with our fingers pretending that we have three fingers, because these two are joined together. We'll get used to this and when we use--if we use a chromatic tuner, that sometimes that will help us workout any problems we have."