Hey guys. Despite the cheeky title, this article has nothing to do with U.S. history. It does have everything to do with finger independence. This critical aspect of your left hand's development is what hinders the growth of both green-thumb and journeyman players alike.
What is finger independence? It may be easier to describe finger dependence first. Sympathetic tension is a biological phenomenon where one of your muscles will begin to tense and contract in response to another adjacent muscle's contraction. This phenomenon is to blame when you go to finger that pesky open C major chord and your fingers lock up, stiff as a board and unable to fret the chord. Sympathetic tension is not limited to the muscles in your left hand, either -- it can affect the muscles in your right hand as well as the other muscles in your playing mechanism such as your upper back, shoulders, and forearms. You should practice being aware of your entire body when you play guitar so that you can identify and eliminate tension as much as you can. This is much easier to do when you can videotape yourself playing or work with a teacher, but if you are consciously mindful of tension long enough, you will be able to effectively teach yourself correct technique by listening to your body's cues.
A major part of eliminating sympathetic tension comes from developing finger independence. A player with finger independence is capable of moving one finger without the others moving in reaction to it. Observe yourself as you play through one of your songs in the mirror. Do the fingers in your fretting hand move when they are not being used to fret a note? Is it a purposeful movement, i.e. muting unwanted strings? Or is it wasted movement? If the movement did not serve a purpose, you could probably stand to add some of these exercises to your practice routine. I'll repeat my philosophy on technical practice in case you didn't read my previous article; it is a necessary part of your practice routine but it should not be a high priority item. Technical practice is the kind of thing that pays off after consistent practice. Even as little as five minutes a day on a single exercise can drastically and permanently improve your technique after two months of diligence. Spend the first ten to fifteen minutes of practice on technical exercise to warm-up, then spend the rest of practice improvising or learning and perfecting your repertoire.
That said, it's time to show you the first exercise. This is one you have definitely seen before, but listen to me when I say that we are going to practice this one in a way that is probably different to how you have practiced it before. The notation above the tablature ("1 + t a" is short for "1-and-then-a") denotes that you're playing this in straight sixteenth notes, i.e. four notes per click. If sixteenth notes are a bit hard for you to play at your current skill, you may play this in eighth notes by taking two notes per click instead. In either case, pick a tempo that is very slow -- I usually use a metronome set for sixty beats per minute when I am warming up with technical practice and I will rarely push it past eighty beats per minute unless I am extremely comfortable with an exercise and am considering switching it out for a new one.
1 + t a 2 + t a 3 + t a 4 + t a
E|-----------------------------------
B|-----------------------------------
G|--------------------------6-7-8-9--
D|------------------6-7-8-9----------
A|----------6-7-8-9------------------
E|--6-7-8-9--------------------------
1 + t a 2 + t a 3 + t a 4 + t a
E|----------6-7-8-9------------------
B|--6-7-8-9---------6-7-8-9----------
G|--------------------------6-7-8-9--
D|-----------------------------------
A|-----------------------------------
E|-----------------------------------
1 + t a 2 + t a 3 + t a 4 + t a
E|---------------------------------
B|---------------------------------
G|---------------------------------
D|--6-7-8-9------------------etc---
A|----------6-7-8-9----------------
E|------------------6-7-8-9--------
IMPORTANT: Your fretting fingers should NOT move from the note they last fretted until it is time for them to fret a new note!
I can't tell you how many times I've seen this exercise listed in countless books and lessons on technical exercises for the guitar. Out of all the times I've seen this exercise listed, only a couple times has anybody ever imparted the all too critical advice, "Don't move each finger until it's time to fret the next note with that finger." This exercise will not impart finger independence if you do not follow this parameter. To clarify further-- once you play a note and release it, the finger that played that note will rest in place, touching the string but not pushing it down to the fret, until it is time for that finger to play its next note.
This is probably the most important of these two exercises simply for the reason that it can also improve another important skill: synchronization. Synchronization in terms of guitar playing refers to how well your fretting hand and your picking hand work with one another. A problem faced by many intermediate players striving to reach the advanced realm is that one hand -- usually the picking hand -- can play notes a lot faster than the other hand can keep up with. This exercise (and many others) can remedy that, but yet again, we have to use a little known secret.
The "Ready-Fret-Go" protocol will teach your hands to synchronize better. You can practice any song or exercise with this protocol. It has three steps. Perform one step for every click of the metronome.
READY: This could be synonymous for rest. Relax. Make sure you muted the last note you played cleanly. Make sure you are not carrying over any tension in your playing mechanism from the last note you played. If need be, you can take two clicks of the metronome for this step, or you could even skip this step entirely once you are very comfortable with the passage.
FRET: Touch your fretting hand finger to the next note you are going to play at the same time you touch your pick to the string. It's very important to try to touch the string with your fretting finger and your pick at the same time. DON'T touch the string to the fret and DON'T pick the note yet - just touch the string.
GO: This could be synonymous for play. Simultaneously push the string down to the fret with your fretting hand as you push through the string with your pick to sound the note. Make that you let the note ring until the next metronome click. At slow tempos it is very easy to cut the note short as there is a longer time between each note whereas at a faster speeds it is less noticeable.
This method can used to turn pretty much any picked passage into a synchronization exercise. I would recommend you use this method when learning new ideas or exercises as you will find that it builds accuracy and control very quickly relative to just simply playing through an exercise for a few minutes. I really can't reiterate this enough, but this is an extremely effective technique and I would rank it up there as one of the most valuable insights I can give new players as a guitar teacher. I would recommend practicing this first exercise in the manner I have described for five minutes every day as part of your warm-up routine if you want to develop finger independence.
Moving on to the next exercise, things will be getting a little more chordal. This is another one of those exercises I have seen floating around many an exercise book. I've seen articles by both Joe Satriani and John Petrucci advocating this type of exercise for finger independence. There are more than a couple variations of this idea that we could employ, but here is the first and simplest one so you can learn the pattern.
1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 3
E|--7---7--10--------------------------
B|--8---9---9--10--10---7--------------
G|--9---8---8---9---8---8---7---7--10--
D|-10--10---7---8---9---9---8---9---9--
A|--------------7---7--10---9---8---8--
E|-------------------------10--10---7--
I apologize in advance. Aside from, "the sound of lurv," which is the C major seventh chord this exercise starts with, these are some pretty ugly sounding chords. Upon playing them you should get the pattern; you play the chord, you swap strings with your ring and middle fingers on the next beat, then you swap strings with your index and pinky fingers on the following beat, and then you shift the new chord down a string on the beat after that. Whenever you practice chords, you should always make sure you are sounding every note in the chord cleanly. To test this, you could play each chord as an arpeggio instead, one note at a time.
No gimmicky secret tips here, although you could still apply the "Ready, Fret, Go" method here as well. There are many variations on this type of exercise which I would encourage you to explore. For instance, what if you changed the order that you switch your fingers, instead starting by switching your index and pinky fingers and then switching your ring and middle fingers after that? What if you changed the pairings to index/middle and ring/pinky? Or better yet, what if you add a stretch?
1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 3
E|--6---6--10--------------------------
B|--8---9---9--10--10---6--------------
G|--9---8---8---9---8---8---6---6--10--
D|-10--10---6---8---9---9---8---9---9--
A|--------------6---6--10---9---8---8--
E|-------------------------10--10---6--
This simple variation adds a stretch between the index finger and the middle finger, something that would benefit those players who would like to play shred guitar using the three note per string scale fingerings made popular by players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen. We could even ramp up the difficulty a little more if we felt like it.
1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 3
E|--6---6--11--------------------------
B|--8---9---9--11--11---6--------------
G|--9---8---8---9---8---8---6---6--11--
D|-11--11---6---8---9---9---8---9---9--
A|--------------6---6--11---9---8---8--
E|-------------------------11--11---6--
Feel the burn, baby. Just kidding, if you feel discomfort or pain in your hands when trying these, stop. Practice the exercise further down the neck where the frets are closer together. You can shift the exercise up the neck towards the nut if you want to progressively stretch your fingers a little more each time. I would recommend approaching it in this way. You should only feel a slight stretch in your fingers though - this is not something you should over do. That said, if you really wanted to go nuts with this you could add a stretch between all four of your fingers (i.e. 12-14-16-18) and this would also be beneficial to your left hand health, but only if you do not overplay it. Once more, I recommend practicing this exercise for five minutes a day as part of your warm-up if you would like to build your left hand's flexibility and finger independence.
Alright folks, that's probably enough for one article. Those of you who have studied classical guitar may feel like I've neglected to include a particular staple exercise for finger independence and I absolutely have, but only because I'm going to give the granddaddy of all finger independence exercises its own article. Thanks for reading.
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