Beyond Bedroom Guitar by Spencer Westwood - HTML preview

Finger exercises as part of your practice at the guitar

There are five different exercises for you to do. Not all at once, and not all in the same week. They are ordered in level of difficulty.

1. Pressure pumps
2. 1-2-3-4-3-2-1-1-4-3-4-2-4- single string 1^st fret to 12^th fret each string
3. The stretcher (1-3-5-7 starting at 9^th fret)
4. The wasp 6 string

Pressure pumps

A very simple exercise – but don’t overdo it. Place your fingers, one fret apart, anywhere on the neck on any string. If you’re just starting use the G-string with your first finger on the 8^th fret.

Now press your first finger down on the fret and apply more pressure. More pressure and even more. Hold for a count of two and release the finger from the string.
Do the same for each of the other fingers.
Now repeat except this time whilst applying the pressure, rock the first knuckle backwards and forwards.

Figure 5-5 First knuckle bending backwards and forwards - Finger pumps
1-2-3-4-3-2-1-1-4-3-4-2-4- single string 1^st fret to 12^th fret each string

This was the first exercise I ever learned, and it still proves useful even after 25 years. It Improves your 4^th finger strength and it gets the muscles all working. Start slowly at first and don’t be afraid to stop if you get tired. If you do stop, count four beats and begin again.

Set your metronome between 40-60 bpm. Play the following pattern using alternative picking and then move the whole pattern up one fret and play again. Keep going up until you reach the 12^th fret and then go back down again.

Figure 5-6 Simple Finger Warmup

Shift onto the B string and repeat – 1^st to 12^th fret to 1^st and then the other four remaining strings.
Stop and shake out your hands.

The stretcher (1-3-5-7-5-3-1 starting at 9^th fret)

Simple to explain, more and more difficult to do – at first. Start with your first finger on the B string 8^th fret and place fingers with a 1 fret gap in-between each one (so 8^th 10^th 12^th 14^th frets). If your guitar does not have a cutaway (steel string for example) then start lower say 5^th fret

Now play a 123432114342434 pattern keeping fingers in the same fret position.
Slide down a fret and repeat

Figure 5-7 Finger Stretch Exercise
The wasp 6 string

One of the most common exercises I’ve seen on the net is to play a repeating finger movement such as 1^st fret, 2^nd, 3^rd 4^th on each string with alternative picking – then move up a fret and repeat.

Now this will build up speed and muscle memory – slowly – but it takes a long time.
What happens is that after a while the finger movement becomes boring and unconscious. Something we want – but it also becomes programmed in and it’s all we want to play – not useful. The awareness goes to the wrong place.

I developed the wasp exercise that overloads the conscious mind and forces you to keep track of what’s going on rather than it becoming a mindless repetitive (read boring!) exercise.

There are 24 ways you can order your four fingers.

1234 2134 3124 4123
1243 2143 3142 4132
1324 2341 3214 4213
1342 2314 3241 4231
1423 2413 3412 4312
1432 2431 3421 4321

The exercise cycles through every one of these starting on the top E string and doing one pattern per string down to the low E. Then it moves up a fret and starts again with the second column, then the third and finally the fourth column.

Practice this mentally first one column at a time – at a very slow 40 bpm playing one note per beat of the metronome.

 

Hint: Each column starts with the column number finger

 

Then do the physical practice for the first column.

 

Repeat for each column

 

Then combine columns 1 and 2

 

Then combine columns 3 and 4

 

Then combine columns 2 and 3

 

The whole lot 1,2,3 & 4 And rest it for a day.

The Wasp 6 String © Spencer Westwood, 2003

Figure 5-8 The Wasp Exercise