You want to play Chick Corea’s “Spain” on upright bass. Maybe you’ve already got a Spain bass transcription in front of you, and the notes aren’t the problem. Your left hand is. Every time the line jumps, it feels like you’re letting go of the bass and hoping you land somewhere close.
Spain is one of my favorite songs ever. I think it’s one of most jazz listeners’ favorite songs, because it’s so good. It’s off Light as a Feather, which is one of my favorite albums for a lot of reasons, including the fact that it used upright bass when everyone else was using electric. And of course it features the great Stanley Clarke on upright.
Here’s how I finger the first part on upright, and the ideas underneath those fingerings. They’re what make this tune playable, and they’ll help you with other hard tunes too.
Grab the G harmonic with your third finger
I start with my fourth finger on the B, and I’ve got the E right above the B. Then comes a question I get a lot: how do you get up to that G harmonic? We use that G harmonic a lot. It’s a note that sounds especially good on bass.
The answer is you play it with your third finger. I reach up and grab it with the third.
So what if you play that G with your second finger instead? Let’s see what happens. Now the F sharp is on my first finger, and I don’t want to be on my first finger there. If I’m on the first finger, I have to release my whole hand to jump back, and there’s nothing there to catch me. I’ve got no stability, and I want stability when I move around the instrument.
Let the open G catch you
That open G saves us every time. I talk about this a lot in my lessons. It’s the only open string in this song, and without it, Spain would be much harder to play.
Here’s the biggest goal when you’re playing a song like this: avoid using the same fingering twice in a row. If you can avoid that, you’ll be able to play Spain, or Humpty Dumpty, or any of these difficult songs.
That said, the next part actually uses the same fingering again, because we have to hit that G again. That’s pretty self-explanatory. It’s hard to execute, but the fingering itself isn’t the hard part. The hard part’s coming.
Stretch a little (it’s OK on upright)
It’s OK to stretch a little bit on the upright bass. I know I have large hands. I’m well aware of the privilege of having large hands. But just because I don’t have to stretch doesn’t mean you can’t do it with a little stretch. If you just stretch a little bit, that’s really not that much.
Think about how we stretch in everyday life. We hold a glass of water, and that’s a stretch. We carry our groceries home, and that’s a stretch. We’re stretching our hands all the time, because we use our hands in everyday life. But somehow, when we play upright bass, we don’t want to stretch a minor third from this E to this C sharp. That’s too much of a stretch.
We’ll hold a glass of water like this and carry three bags of groceries in one hand, but this is too much? I don’t agree with that.
Cole Davis
Even though it’s not the old Simandl fingering, I think it still works great. (I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a new Simandl: The New Simandl.)
The next bit is more or less the same thing. You want to get used to these stretches. The minor third and the major second are important ones.
Get out of the box when it gets tricky
Now it gets tricky. There’s an A sharp here. It’s really a B flat, but we’re going to call it A sharp.
If you’re familiar at all with my method books, you know I use this concept of positionless playing. Of course, when you’re in half position, you want to be in half position. But when you’re up higher on the neck, it doesn’t really matter. Here, I have my fourth finger on the A sharp, then I play the G sharp with my first finger, then the F sharp with my fourth finger.
I don’t need to be in a rigid, boxy position all the time, because that would make this song very difficult to play. Played that way, it’d be impossible at a faster tempo.
So by eliminating these rigid positions, I’m actually able to play more fluidly. It gets much easier when I get rid of the idea that everything has to be in position, and think about it in a positionless way instead, where my fourth finger can play the A sharp and also the F sharp. It doesn’t all have to be shifting.
Try this today
- Grab the harmonic. Fourth finger on the B, then reach up and grab the G harmonic with your third finger.
- Try it the other way once. Play the G with your second finger and notice where it leaves you: the F sharp on your first finger, and your whole hand letting go to jump back. Then go back to the third finger and feel the difference.
- Get used to the stretches. Play the minor third from E to C sharp, then a major second, until you’re used to those stretches.
- Check your fingerings. Go through the passage you’re working on and look for anywhere you’re using the same fingering twice in a row. Unless it’s on purpose, like the repeat that brings you back to the G, find another way.
Once those moves feel normal, the full transcription is in Chick Corea’s Spain, and there are more of my breakdowns on the transcriptions page. Put on Light as a Feather and see how far into Spain you can stay with Stanley Clarke.
