Left Hand Finger Patterns

Left hand finger patterns.

Rob Schumann: The subject to this tutorial is left hand finger patterns for a warm up exercise and if you look at the charts that we have with the beginning of the video segment, you will notice the four columns of numbers and these are basically every variation of left hand finger sequences that you can have and so it's going through the different sequences of your four fingers.

The first column starts with the first finger and we start off with just a simple one, two, three, four and then the next to one, two, four, three then one, three, two, four. Seriously it sounds very random and sort of chromatics so the purposes of really to sound melodic but it's just sort of technique exercise for your left hand. So the second column starts with the second finger. So the first one has got two, one, three, four. So it's just assigning the finger one, two, three, four.

So the first one in that second column, two, one, three, four then the second one two, one, four, three, so it's going to go through all the possibilities where that you fingers can go through and basically the purpose of doing this is to develop a reflexes within your left hand or being able to execute any movement to be able to learn unusual movements and sequences very quickly to get your hand use to it going through all this different possibilities.

A lot of times when people first start taking guitar their guitar teacher might get them a exercise such as this and so on and so forth that's using the fingering that's very first one on the left hand column there. So people will take that exercise and go home and quickly go through it in this fashion and think of that they have just got the whole thing down where you notice that was very sloppy on the flats of the fingers which really doesn't get to the point of the exercises.

When we do these finger sequences, the whole point is getting our hand use to coming down in a consistent fashion and so as you are doing these, speed isn't really the point, you are really wanting to get your fingers use to coming down on the very tips that is going to help your tone. It's going to help you with hammer-ons and pull-offs later on and maybe faster in the short term to play on the flat through your fingers but you are going to get better result just teaching your hand to come down on the tips.

Also as you are doing exercise such as this where you have got a finger assigned to each fret. You really want to keep your hand perpendicular to the fretboard. So that your four fingers really on a advantage for being on the come straight down rather than having to stretch out like that which really a puts a little disadvantage when you aren't using your fourth finger correctly you are really loosing 25% of your capabilities on the instrument.

So let's just start with the first one and look at some different ways to use this to practice and we are not tied and doing this for hours. It just really like just a five minute a day warm up and rather than going through all of the possibilities that we have written these four columns, it's a Good idea just to pick two of them and really focus on those for a few days then go to the next couple and that will really be -- in just a few weeks you will notice a difference in your left hand as far as what you are able to do.

So picking the first one, one, two, three, four in the left hand you want to be able to practice that along the neck in this fashion horizontally but also vertically across the strings. One purpose is you want to synchronize your right and left hands get to where your alternate picking is the same speed as what you are executing the frets and then also when you are shifting position you don't want to have a nice hand position on that as you shift up kind of revert back to bad habit, you want to keep that hand position consistent.

So I will start here at the third fret but you can really start anywhere give way to practice that is just to start on a fret. So that's get us lining the fingers up then as we go down the column we start mixing it up a little a bit the next one is one, two, four, three and so you could take that up as well. And so the point is getting these fingers even when they are doing sort of random motions just still be consistent in their technique.

Once you get that down you can start moving vertically along the strings to. So if I take the third example there in the first column I have got I have got one, three, two, four, and it maybe a good idea when you first start with these to really just repeat the same one over and over, starting out slowly, to really get your hand to chance to learn it.

So then as I am ready all then take that across the strings. Now you can go upper fret and back down and keep going to up a fret at the same time, that was just for a nice and lengthy exercise it. So I really a great warm up, if you have never done this type of exercise before I should warn you it's actually more challenging than you might think getting those fingers to come down on the tips every time.

So it really does have a positive effect on your playing if you can make point and doing it consistently everyday. So as you go across, we go to ones where it starts on the second finger and that goes through all those combinations and then we have to start on the fourth finger and the third finger as well. So that just gets all the possibilities.

Well once you have got to where you have sinking your hands up you are able to execute the left hand frets and alternate pick with your right hand and get it very smooth. The next step is taking this and incorporating slurs, hammer-ons and pull-offs and that can make these a lot more challenging. Let's start with one that's on the starting with the third finger in the third column.

Our first one there is three one two four. Not very difficult in that incidence once you get it on to your fingers but if we start slurring ever note we have a sequence of hammer-ons and pull-offs. So here to go from three to one we will have to start with the pull-off and then hammer-on from one to two and then also hammer-on from two to four and then if we are going to loop that shape, well then have to pull-off back to three. So looping that several times will look like this.

So once you have done that little a bit if there is any problems in your hammer-on pull-off technique that will definitely exploit it and help you to fix it. So in that case a couple of things to watch out for we want be on the tips of the fingers. We also want the timing to be even that's particularly hard sometimes on hammer-ons. Those tend to be rush sometimes because you are trying to come down with such force and you will have to get to where--if you are doing eighth notes of 16th notes everything is even.

And particularly this one sequence here at three one, two, four, this one is great for your fourth finger. A lot of times people really neglect being good at hammer-on with the fourth finger they will straightened out and beyond the flat of the finger and instead of bringing around like that, so this one would be a vital exercise for developing that. One other challenge that you can run into is as you get to the strings that are lower in that second third fourth etcetera. You can run into problems where when you pull-off you will end up hitting that open first string or some other strings below where you are doing the slur.

So to avoid that, you want to get to the point where this finger that you pulling off to is leaned back a little bit and muting the string behind it, and so you hear that when I do that pull-off, I can actually hit that first string as I am pulling back and it won't make a sound because the first finger is leaned back muting it and that way it just keeps your sound clean and keeps extra string from ringing and cluttering up the clarity of what you are trying to play.

The last group that we have is the fourth finger and so this is great for really developing your fourth finger when it's doing pull-offs. So for instance the first one that I have got is four, one, two, three. So that I can help you get use to really setting up that fourth fi

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