This is somewhat similar to "3rd Position" ascending and descending fingering on the violin, viola, or cello. Makes sense since those instruments are also tuned in 5ths. Position playing on those instruments is sometimes done for tone just as much as it is for efficiency.

Actually upon review the bass fingerings are a bit different so greg your technique is very similar but "stickunique"!for example Ionian would be 14 24 14 24. Same idea different fingerings so I think you can patent it!!!!

...what is this....
...should I ask first somebody or anybody how to use my fingers...
...sorry for being direct and open...

Just like playing the double bass, Greg! The same thing me get there, where we have a lot more distance between the notes on the 'fretboard'.

Lol, no it was a slight joke. I don't think you can patent fingerings.

Brett

Balt-a-star,

Thanks for posting all those fingerings. The beauty of the scheme I propose is that the fingering is always the same, regardless of the key in question.

This is important because the hand must be both the bow and the hand, so it must have certainty of motion. Having key-based fingeriings takes away that certainty...

...thanks for your answer, Brett and Greg...

....IMHO the advantage isn't so much the fingering itself, but the regularity
of the finger shifts or position changes, this regularity make it possible
to perform them very fast and fluid...

Yes it does. Much faster and more fluid than 1-2-3-4

After jamming with some friends yesterday, I'm liking Greg's discovery more.

I think the 1-2-3-4 has a place though. If you want to de-emphasize the "2-3-4" part of your scale, like, do a descrescendo, it works well.

But playing the altered fingerings Greg just posted about is stronger, easier, and faster.

One more thing about the 1-2-3-4 fingering: You can play scales on both sides simultaneously, and it's easy to keep track of identical fingerings between hands, if you advance a couple of frets each time you cross a string on the right-hand side. Try it! It makes you cover a lot of real estate on the treble side.

R

Rather than advancing on the right hand, I like to use three fingers-per-string and go back two frets on the left hand with each higher string transition, this way, there's no alternate fingerings for different strings as with 4 fingers.

You can see this approach in action on this video at 5:55, (it can be very fast, as you will see)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-JK0vcPucc[/youtube]

But this approach doesn't always work well with written pieces, as you can run out of frets or bump into your other hand.