Mine is 5.5 cm (2 3/8")
Hello all,
I have been reading this thread with great interest. Confession: I started the B2B course awhile back and got to M5-L1 and then just put the bass aside. I felt that I was just going through the motions and not really learning much.
My hands likewise have short fingers and I seem to have trouble getting the proper fingers on the right frets. A week ago, I drove 750 miles from NE Tennessee back to northern Illinois, to visit an old friend, Mike, who is in a nursing home. Mike used to be a mechanic on the pin-setting equipment at area bowling alleys. I didn’t find out until after he had become a resident in a nursing home that he used to play bass in a country & western band.
I had known Mike since 1980 and he used to come over to the house to visit. We would sit in front of my ham radio station and just talk. He was very interested in ham radio. Mike was the kind of a guy who’d give you the shirt off of his back, if it would help you.
I visited with Mike in the nursing home and told him about my lack of progress in learning to play the bass. I looked at the fingers on his hands and they were not much longer than mine. I asked him how he learned how to play the bass - whether by taking lessons or by just picking the bass up and teaching himself. He told me that he just started playing and practicing - no lessons.
If I’d have known that he played bass when I first met him, I would’ve had him teach me how to play it. Mike told me to just stick with it, to not get discouraged and to practice. He said that I would learn it.
So that’s my story…
Brad
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Follow your friend’s advice. Practice and just mess around, too. Pick a song you really like, find the tab and learn it. Something easy and fun to play along with.
The hard cold truth is that learning to play takes time, effort and practice. And everyone, including Josh, has had to do it to be able to play.
If you love music and you want to be able to play, take a breath and take your time. Do the work but never forget that playing is fun, so have fun!
You got this. Just keep trying. You’ll get there.
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2+ years and I finally feeling on the edge of very minimenely competent.
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Yes! Progress!
It’s most likely in your head, but if there’s any issue you’ll overcome it with ease. Maybe if anything it’s just in the beginning. My Ex girlfriend is a piano teacher and play professionally, she has short fingers and relatively short pinky but watching her play some kicka$$ classical piece it’s an awesome sight. I’d prefer that over someone who has 4” long fingers lol.
Short pinky in bass actually not a handicap playing octave comes more naturally than you’d think looks cooler too.
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Bradley Hall is my favorite YT guitarist (and dumb entertainer, lol). He has exceptionally small hands and yet he is a pro and a shredder:
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I am glad to see I am not alone. 
We got great inputs on how overcoming the short pinkie issue, thanks everyone for the feedback!
I think the quickest and easiest way, is micro shifting. No doubt, I can “feel” progress since I started focusing on that.
Finger stretching exercises might help a lot, but I honestly don’t have patience to it methodically.
Second “easy” fix IMHO is buying a short scale bass and at the same time increasing your fleet and killing some GAS 
I am a huge Stingray fan and the Sterling By Music Man Short scales are awesome and affordable specially used ones, but in case Stingrays are not your cup of tea, there are a lot of good short scale basses to choose from.
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Hope this doesn’t count as off topic, but I’m wondering if anyone has suggestions. I’m not really concerned about my pinky length, but I struggle with my pinky not staying curved. It has a habit of bending just at the joint closest to my fingertip while the other joint locks in place (pic for reference if my description is unclear).
The worst part is, unless I’m really focused on it, I don’t even typically notice it’s doing it. It doesn’t feel painful or “wrong” because it’s done this outside of bass playing for years…but it’s really inconvenient! I’m trying to learn a song right now where it’d make sense for me to do a finger roll with my pinky at one point, but as of right now I have to pick it up and put it back down because when it “locks” I can’t easily squash it down onto the higher string. Even if I try to press down with a different part of the pad of my pinky, it still manages to pop up into this “locked” position.
So…does anyone have any tips to unlock a little finger? 
Obviously “practice, and pay special attention to your pinky until you assert your dominance over it”, but any specific exercises or experience anyone else has had would be amazing to hear.
