8,720
edits
Changes
m
no edit summary
{{Top-Level Crumbs|2}}
{{Exercise Crumbs|1}}
{{Technical Exercises Crumbs|2}}
== Fingering Exercises ==
These exercises take a common fretting pattern for 2 left hand fingers and repeat across all pairs of strings. Exercises 1-4 use adjacent pairs of strings, while 5-8 use pairs of strings separated by a unused string between them.
This exercise is designed to help the quality of your left-hand fretting, the accuracy of your right hand picking (picking the correct string), and the synchronization between both hands. It should also help to train your left-hand to make more complex inter-finger movements.
As a beginner player, you may want to start these exercises using only down-picking. Once you are more comfortable with left-hand fretting and finding the right string with the right hand, switch to strict alternate picking, even as you cross or jump strings.
=== Index and Middle ===
== Chromatic Scale ==
see [[Chromatic Scale Exercises]]
== Finger-Stretching ==
Similar to the [[#Petrucci Chords]] exercise above, we make a chord shape with each finger on adjacent frets. Each time you strum the chord, you move one of the fingers down one fret.
--12-\11--11--11--11-\10--10--10--10--...--2-\1--1--1--1--
--13--13-\12--12--12--12-\11--11--11--...--3--3-\2--2--2--
--14--14--14-\13--13--13--13-\12--12--...--4--4--4-\3--3--
--15--15--15--15-\14--14--14--14-\13--...--5--5--5--5-\4--
This exercise is great, because as you descend down each fret at a time, the exercise gets more and more difficult. It forces you to stretch between each pair of adjacent fingers, which really helps limber up your hands to make complex chord shapes and work through exotic scales all over the fretboard.
This will get insanely difficult quickly. Don't push yourself into injury - if you feel intense pain, stop immediately. Don't try to get through it quickly either. Hold each chord and let your fingers muscles accept the stretch.
Here's another one focusing on the index finger and pinky. Be sure to keep the index finger fretted at all times forcing you to stretch rather than bouncing back and forth.
-17-12--16-11--15-10-...-10-5---9--4---8--3--
p i p i p i p i p i p i
This follows the same premise of getting more and more difficult as you descend, but is focused on more traditional stretches. The same guidelines apply as above.
It can also be done using ring and index, middle and index, pinky and middle, and ring and middle, but you'll have to use a smaller stretch to be able to do it.
== Friedman Fingering Torture ==
I got this one from Marty Friedman - to get incredible finger dexterity, you play sets of 4 notes - 1 for each finger, in every possible combination. Then you repeat it adding a stretch between the index and middle finger. If you want to really torture yourself, then stretch the 2nd and 3rd fingers, and then 3rd and 4th.
You can do this exercise by playing each pattern once on all the strings before moving onto the next, or you can run through the entire set on each string before moving to the next.
{|
|-
| <pre>--1-2-3-4--</pre> || <pre>--2-1-3-4--</pre> || <pre>--3-1-2-4--</pre> || <pre>--4-1-2-3--</pre>
|-
| <pre>--1-2-4-3--</pre> || <pre>--2-1-4-3--</pre> || <pre>--3-1-4-2--</pre> || <pre>--4-1-3-2--</pre>
|-
| <pre>--1-3-2-4--</pre> || <pre>--2-3-1-4--</pre> || <pre>--3-2-1-4--</pre> || <pre>--4-2-1-3--</pre>
|-
| <pre>--1-3-4-2--</pre> || <pre>--2-3-4-1--</pre> || <pre>--3-2-4-1--</pre> || <pre>--4-2-3-1--</pre>
|-
| <pre>--1-4-2-3--</pre> || <pre>--2-4-1-3--</pre> || <pre>--3-4-1-2--</pre> || <pre>--4-3-1-2--</pre>
|-
| <pre>--1-4-3-2--</pre> || <pre>--2-4-3-1--</pre> || <pre>--3-4-2-1--</pre> || <pre>--4-3-2-1--</pre>
|}
[[Category:Guitar]]
[[Category:Exercises]]
[[Category:Technique]]