Many popular gadgets exist that are designed for strengthening your bass fingers. What I recommend may surprise you, though:
Video Transcript
So you want to strengthen your fingers. I’m sure these grip masters are wonderful for climbing, but for guitar and for bass there are better ways. Our biggest problem is not the lack of strength. Our biggest problem is coordination and feeling and finding those small little tendons and muscles that need to operate when we play bass, that in our daily life don’t operate.
We are born and we can grip. This is easy for us to do, but to move fingers separately – have coordination for each finger -that’s hard. If you’re looking for gadgets, I recommend things that support having feeling in the hand – things like these fidget toys. This is a personal favorite of mine. I have no idea where I got this, “fi-dil-ing”. It’s stimulating to touch and move. Cupping the hand together and finding each individual finger.
If you’re looking to do finger strengtheners on the bass, here are a few good ones, For example, let’s say I want to strengthen my pinky finger. Do pull-offs, hammer-on, pull-offs, hammer-on, pull-off. My right hand is doing nothing but muting the strings. This helps you find coordination and exactly those parts of your hand that you typically don’t use in everyday life.
You can do that with a variety of fingers you can even do permutations this way look one two four three. You just pull-off, into whatever finger number is lower and what you’re doing. One two four three – so one is pulled off in two – two is hammered on – four Is hammered on because they’re higher and then three, I pull off into two. Do that on several different strings. To get a good tone on the pull off, think pulling down. Don’t just lift the finger and hope for a tone, pull it into the fretboard.
When you feel any kind of discomfort try not to shake your hand you can actually injure yourself if you shake it just right. I see people stretch and coerce their fingers into position… don’t! Just let it drop and let the blood return into your fingers.
