Ascending Finger Exercises for Electric Guitar

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell


Finger exercises in which a guitarist works their fretting hand up the fretboard are personally very enjoyable for me. Many years ago I would frequently start every one of my solos down on the lower frets and then climb my way up the fretboard using some basic finger exercise pattern. I once naively vowed to start ALL OF MY SOLOS in this fashion so that hopefully it would become my “style.” But of course I quickly abandoned this strange and ridiculous notion.

First we will begin this article with a simple scalar/chromatic pattern. I usually start around the second fret and perform it upward until I hit the 15th fret or so.


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--2-3-2-3-5-3-2--3-4-3-4-6-4-3----
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--4-5-4-5-7-5-4--5-6-5-6-8-6-5-...-
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So you can see this is a combination of a picking exercise and a fretting hand exercise that continues its way up the neck as far as you would like to take it. This finger exercise should increase your accuracy for playing quick picking patterns on single strings. Be sure to execute it on other strings as well. And even though the exercise above is technically chromatic since it moves up in half steps, it’s still fairly musical as a finger exercise. You could use it for transitioning between different positions of the neck if you wish.

Our next ascending exercise however, falls into the “harsh” or “ugly” sounding finger exercise category, and should be restricted to bedrooms, garages, woodsheds, and other secluded areas and definitely NOT incorporated into your solos.

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--1-4-1-2-3-2-1-2-5-2-3-4-3-2---
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--3-6-3-4-5-4-3-4-7-4-5-6-5-4-...--
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See, I told you it doesn’t sound good. But it works for building dexterity and increasing precision in the fingers and for improving fretboard shifts.

Our last ascending finger exercise will be one that you can definitely use in your solos. Even though it is chromatic from its ascension in half steps, it is still musical enough to include in your single note excursions.

-5-8-5—--6-9-6---7-10-7-------
---------6-------7---------8-...--
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This exercise is basically a simple 4-note pattern that climbs the neck chromatically, and ordinarily I would use pull-offs for the 8-5s, 9-6s, and 10-7s, etc. You may find using pull-offs in those portions of the exercise easier as well. Theory wise, I believe the notes of the ascending quadruplets above make up Minor Sharp 5th triads, but I’m not exactly positive. Move this lick quickly up the fretboard but keep the notes clean. While playing, your fretting hand should be in almost constant motion. This exercise, if inserted into a solo will build plenty of tension, which you can relieve at any point by stopping the ascension and going into any guitar lick of your choice.

-end-


Jason Earls is author of the books Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld, Thirteen, Chiaroscuro, Dogmatika, Neometropolis, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Recreational and Educational Computing, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Texas with his wife, Christine.

The Mohammedan Scale

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell & Red Zen

This will be a quick and easy article. We will only be dealing with only one scale, the Mohammedan Scale (which is almost a finger exercise in itself) along with a couple of additional finger exercises built from it.

As you can probably guess from the title, the Mohammedan Scale is used extensively in traditional Middle Eastern songs (of which I can’t say I’m familiar with even one), but I do love Eastern sounding scales, since most of them possess a particularly dark and somewhat eerie quality. Also they can be quite challenging to play since many of them have wide intervals interspersed with half steps. Here is the Mohammedan Scale in the key of A:

-----------------------------5-7-8-10--
-----------------------5-6-9-----------
-------------------5-7-----------------
-------------6-7-9---------------------
-------5-7-8---------------------------
-5-7-8---------------------------------

Listen to the overall dark tone of the scale. To me it seems very "emotional" sounding. Also notice the last four notes that occur on the high E string. If we assign one finger per note on that string, we can produce a nice, challenging finger exercise from that portion along. What I mean is, we can play the last four notes on the high E string using a 1-2-3-4 fingering combination (I’ll put the info below the tablature); and then to make the exercise cyclic we’ll use notes on the B string from the scale as well.

Try this making sure to pick every note:

(to see this article with tablature formatted correctly, go here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/8652244/The-Mohammedan-Scale )

-5-7-8-10-8-7-5-7-------------------
------------------5-6-9-10-9-6-5-6--
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1 2 3 4 3 2 1 2 1 2 4 4 4 2 1 2

The fingering here can be pretty tricky. Notice the information listed below the TAB. Again, you should use all four fingers for the notes on the high E string; and then for those on the B use all fingers EXCEPT your ring finger. That is, the three 4s in a row mean you should fret with your pinky and then slide up (with your pinky) to get the note on the 10th fret, then slide back down again and continue.

The exercise above uses notes directly from the Mohammedan scale, but now let’s generate another exercise using the same four note high E pattern on the B as well, being concerned only with working our fingers:

--5-7-8-10-8-7-5-7--------------------
--------------------5-7-8-10-8-7-5-7--
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Now that’s a real finger stretcher, isn’t it? Note that if the stretch is a little too wide for your hands, you can move it up the neck to frets that are not spaced so far apart.
The exercises above should help build your picking speed, increase finger coordination, finger strength and flexibility while improving your accuracy. Just make sure that your hands are sufficiently warmed up before attempting any of the exercises. And remember to use a metronome as well.

-end-

Jason Earls is author of the books How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Red Zen, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld, Thirteen, Chiaroscuro, Dogmatika, Neometropolis, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Recreational and Educational Computing, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Developing Finger Strength

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

Strengthening your fingers will help you play the electric guitar with more precision, speed, and dexterity. Having stronger muscles in your hands and fingers and continuously working to build more power in your tendons will make a considerable difference in your overall playing ability. There are actually a couple of non-playing exercises you can do for strengthening your fretting hand, which I will tell you about below. When I reveal some of these exercises, you are probably going to think something similar to, "Oh, that is simple, anyone can do that; why is he giving us this exercise when it's so easy? That won't build much hand strength." But when you finally curl those digits around your well-worn fretboard and try the chordal set of exercises, you are going to realize they aren't nearly as easy as they seem, and you just might find yourself confessing: "Oh, now I see, this exercise is pretty difficult after all."

Before we begin the challenging stuff, so that we do not strain any muscles, we need to start off easy, so try this:

1. With your hand in the fifth position, place all four fingers on the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th frets of the neck.

2. While holding your third and fourth (ring and pinky) fingers down, raise the other two fingers off the fretboard, holding them for a count of two, then set them down again. Repeat this ten times.

3. Do the same with the opposite fingers. That is, while holding your first and second (index and middle) fingers down, raise the other two up off the fretboard and hold them for a two count, then set them down again. Repeat this variation ten times. You can think of this as trying to do hammer-ons and pull-offs if you want, with the fingers being set down with enough force to "hammer-on" and sound a note.

That is the easy warm-up. Now it will get more difficult. So get prepared. Basically we are going to be doing the same exercise as above, except now we will use opposite fingers.

Read the rest here:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/703427/electric_guitar_developing_finger_strength.html?cat=33