Electric Guitar – Finger Exercises
The more you practice the more strength you will build in your fingers fast. Lack of finger strength is one of the major problems of beginners. If you are practicing and making progress fast your fingers probably get tired rather quickly. Finger exercises will work your fingers over well and if you practice your fingers won’t get tired as quickly. Most finger exercises horrible at all and may be difficult to perform at first. Most of them are good for mental exercise as well.
Scales
Practicing scales is the best way to gain finger strength. Simply start playing the major scale up and down at a relaxing speed. Make sure that when you’re playing notes, they sound clean and there is no fret buzz. When you fret the string make sure you are pushing the string down between the frets and not directly above of them. When you move up a string don’t lift your finger off of the fret board more than you have to. After you are comfortable play a scale. Start playing it faster and faster. Do not play any faster than you feel comfortable. Play all the scales you know, major, minor, blues, whatever you know will work.
Staircase Exercise
This is a well-known John Petrucci riff that can take you a long way. This exercise can also be used on both acoustic and bass, maybe even more effectively because of their higher string gage. The shape used in the exercise is like a staircase that is inverted several times. Each time you play the shape once normally and once inverted, then you move it up one fret and continue. Make sure to keep your fingers on the fretboard as long as possible, and let the notes ring out the best you can. Keep the whole exercise flowing and moving. Start off slowly and pick up the speed gradually as you feel more comfortable. Don’t focus on making the shape and then playing, but start playing the shape before all of your fret fingers are all the way down. It’s the best way to keep everything flowing smoothly. This exercise will greatly help your fingers’ accuracy and speed.
Chromatic Exercises
The chromatic scale or exercise is a great way to develop your speed and accuracy. Play four notes in a row on a string and then move up to the next string and down a set of frets and go up four more notes, after that move up a string and down a fret and play up four more half steps. This will bring you to the last note of the exercise, if you want, you may continue it up through the rest of the strings if you can. Just make sure you’re playing smoothly and clean. Start out slow like all exercises and work up the speed as best as you can.
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