Steve Rieck: So I want to use this tutorial to talk about warming up and stretching your left hand fingers and getting some good stretches for some interesting chords and patterns, and one of the first things I want to say is you should never ever do anything that you feel like is stressing your hand out too much. Obviously, you don't want to get Carpal Tunnel or anything like that.
So absolutely if you feel like you are kind of pushing it to the limit, back off a little bit and try things slower, try smaller stretches. One of the best exercises you can do, is practice this group of fifths and what I mean by fifths, is if I am playing them lets say, the fifth fret here at the sixth string, and then I move up to the fifth note of that scale, that would be an E here on the fifth string.
So we got, that's the fifth and that shape is going to be huge as far as understanding this exercise. So that's two frets up and one string up, and then adding the fourth finger on to the ninth fret of the fourth string that would be, a pattern of consecutive fifths and those are A, E, B.
And so far we will play an A chord, let's say an A minor chord.
The next note here is a C on the fifth fret of the third string and then I am going to play a fifth above that. And now in this case, between the third and second string, I am actually going to need to go up three frets, so I am at the eighth fret for the note G.
And then the note D on the tenth fret. It sort of makes like a minor nine, with an eleven on top. So --
The idea of being to practice just that pattern very, very slowly and see if we can get those three notes to ring together. Now if that's really difficult at this point, I want you to stop and not try this exercise down here. Just yeah, what I would rather you do, is maybe move this whole concert up to the tenth fret like that. And obviously, the frets are skinnier here; there is less room to stretch.
So if you practice that, until that's comfortable and then gradually move them down until you fell like that stretch is manageable. At the fifth fret, so you have A minor, and I am just playing. Each of those, you can pick them down or you can alternate pick them, really the point of it is to do it slowly and work on just the left hand.
So in this case, I have got the fourth finger on the ninth fret, the third finger on the seventh fret and the first finger on the fifth fret.
Pierre Bensusan: My name is Pierre Bensusan. I would like to play for you a tune dedicated to Michael Hedges, which I wrote some years ago. I am going to put my index on that fifteenth fret and I am going to pick that string either with my ring finger or with my little finger.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services