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Hey, guys?
It's Lauren with Discover Double Bass.
Today I wanted to teach you one of our most beloved technique exercises, "The Vomit Exercise."
Now, this is also known as the shifting drill, but that's not nearly as fun to say and so
it is affectionately known as, "The Vomit Exercise."
And if you're not familiar with this, then I think after watching this lesson you'll
quickly realize why it's referred to as The Vomit Exercise.
Now, there are many different ways that you can do the vomit exercise but I'm gonna be
teaching you how I learnt it.
And have included a link to the PDF of this exercise underneath this video and that has
my bowings and the fingerings that I'm gonna be talking about, and the notes so it might
be easier for you to follow along.
So, go ahead and get that out if you would like.
Now, the vomit exercise or the shifting drill is a shifting exercise.
And it is essentially a scale, a progressive scale, in intervals all the way up and all
the way back down.
So, you shift from the first note of the scale which in this case we're gonna be doing A
major.
You shift from that first note to each note in the scale, up and then back down.
So now, you're gonna shift a C sharp, that was B. And then D. So on and so forth, until
you get all the way up to the octave .
And so, then I work my way all the way back down.
And what I do is I use the same finger pattern for one take all the way up and all the way
back down.
And I'll get into this a little bit more later but there's a handful of fingerings that you
can use.
And in this case, I was going from one to two.
So, if you're following along at home and you're playing with me, then let's do one
to two together.
So, the first thing that I do when I'm doing this exercise is I put a drone on.
I always practice this exercise with a drone and I put it on the tonic note or the note
that the exercise is gonna be in which in this case, again, it's gonna be A or A major.
And the reason that I practice with a drone is because I'm focused on many things on this
exercise.
But one of biggest things is intonation.
And when I have a drone on the tonic note, I can hear every interval very clearly against
that tonic note.
So, let me do this now and show you a little bit of it.
So, I'm even matching that very first note that can be a tricky one to match.
And then so, I'm gonna work my way up.
So that interval of a second can be really tricky.
All of these can be tricky.
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So, when you're practicing this, do exactly what I did.
I went to that D, and it wasn't quite in tune.
So, I stopped on it, adjusted until I got it right in the center of the pitch, and then
went back and did it twice again.
Now, I repeat each interval shift two times.
I play B, A to B twice, A to C-sharp twice, so on and so forth.
And because this is a big part of this exercise is intonation work, then you wanna make sure
that you're really focusing on that.
And if you're consistently playing an interval out of tune, don't just keep going, stop and
make sure you've gotten in tune and then move on.
That's a really important part of this exercise.
So, the way that I play this is I repeat each note twice, like a said, and I slur two notes
together.
And I do this because I include that glist, that shifting sound as you can hear.
And when I'm slurring the two notes, it's a lot easier for me to hear that shifting
sound in between.
Now, the reason why I include that shifting sound is because I'm also practicing the technique
of shifting.
So, I'm practicing intonation, but I'm also practicing my shifting technique.
And so, sometimes that shifting sound is gonna be more or less.
In this case, if I'm first starting out with a key, I'm really gonna lay it on because
I'm new to the key and I wanna focus on getting comfortable shifting.
Anytime we do something new, any key, any exercise, we're gonna be a little bit uncomfortable
which gonna cause a technique to slip.
So, you really wanna go slowly and hear that shifting sound.
Now, you've got a lot that you need to fit into one bow.
You need to hear that first note very clearly.
And then you also need to hear the shifting sound.
And then, I also need to hear that second note.
So, slow bows, this is also great for bow control.
So, I wanna hear first pitch, gliss, second pitch.
And if you have the drone on, that's gonna be great for your intonation.
Now, one thing that I wanted to mention earlier is that when you're checking the intonation
on...throughout the whole drill, I'm mostly focused on the intonation of the second note.
But a really tricky one is the lower note.
Sometimes it feels like this shifting drill is actually a shifting drill just going back
to the original note.
But that A or whatever key you're in, that bottom note is always a little bit sharp,
it always has that tendency, so you wanna watch out for that.
And because you have the drone on the tonic note, it doesn't mean that it's easier to
hear that bottom note.
It's really still difficult.
So, you wanna make sure that you're going all the way back and focusing on both pitches.
Let me put the drone on.
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So a couple of times, I was a little bit flat on A because I was over shooting.
And so, you wanna find your tendencies when you're doing this shifting drill, and with
anything, really, in practicing.
The idea is to not play it perfectly every time, that's an impossible goal, but to figure
out where your tendencies are.
Are you over shooting for, say, the A to the E, or you're going to high on that E?
Once you figure that out, then you'll know the next time you do that shift, "Okay, I
don't have to go as far," and that helps develop your muscle memory and it also helps you hear
it more in tune, of course.
So let's talk about the different finger patterns.
Now, when you're in the key of A major, you can start this in the first position, right?
On the G string, that's where you start it.
And so, the options for fingers that you gonna on are one and two.
So, the finger patterns that you have available to you are one to one, one to two, one to
four or three when you get up to thumb position.
I start using third finger when I get to the F sharp on the G string, but some people will
use fourth finger there, that's fine.
But when you get into thumb position, you're gonna use third finger as opposed to fourth
finger.
So of course, when you do one to four, starting at the beginning of this, you're not gonna
have a shift, and then you will.
So, those are the available finger patterns starting on one.
You can also start in two in A major, two to one, two to two, and two, again, to four
or three.
Now, you can do this exercise in any key all the way up, the G string, D string, even the
A and the E string, all those, those are a little bit harder.
And let's say you're starting and you're doing a D major shifting drill, then you have all
of the finger patterns I mentioned, but then also you have fourth finger available to you
as well.
So, you can start four to one, four to two, and four to four or four to three.
And so, like I said, you can do this on any string starting at any position.
And when you're doing this shift, this can be really a tough exercise on your fingers
and on your hands, so you wanna watch out for tension in your hand.
The idea is that you wanna do the proper shifting technique all the way up.
So, you wanna be pulling back with the left hand.
Jeff has a great exercise on left-hand weight, and that's the idea.
When you're shifting, you wanna be using the weight in your arm, not squeezing, and you
wanna keep your fingers planted in the shift.
That's really important.
No lifting the fingers up.
That defeats the purpose of this exercise.
So really, glide, shifting on that planted finger all the way up and all the way back
down.
And I go all the way up to the octave and then back down.
And so, if you have any tension or any pain in the middle of it, don't try to be hero,
don't keep going, just stop, figure out where that pain is coming from, and then it might
just be that you're new to this exercise and when you do something new, sometimes things
get a little bit uncomfortable, as I mentioned earlier.
So, I'm gonna play this whole exercise for you , I'm gonna put the drone on, and I'm
just gonna go through the whole thing so you can see what I'm doing, all the way up and
all the way back down.
And I'm gonna use the finger pattern that we've been doing this whole time, bar one
to two.
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And when you're practicing this exercise, the main thing I want you to remember is to
not play this to fast.
This isn't a speed exercise, this is a slow practice on the motions and on your intonation.
So, I hope that this lesson helped.
If you have any questions over this or anything else, please leave a comment underneath this
video and I'll answer you as soon as I can.
If you enjoyed this lesson and you'd like to learn more from me, please check out my
full-length thumb position course available exclusively on discoverdoublebass.com.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.