Finger Dexterity and Independence Warm Up Exercises Video Transcript

All right. Hey, there. What's going on? Welcome to Beginning Guitar Online. In this week's episode, we're going to cover a fantastic finger independence exercise. It's also really, really good for building up the muscles in your fretting hand, your left hand. And it seems very simple, but if you pick the wrong tempo, it will destroy you.

So, it's a bit like weightlifting. You're going to want to start slower and easier than you think, and then, you know, work your way up. So, I really like this thing for what I call “Bust the Rust” activities. As you're a more developed player, more advanced player, you know, life gets in the way sometimes. You don't get a chance to play as often as you'd like. This is a great one to get your fingers back into the game, as well as sync up your picking and your fretting hands.

So, we're going to use alternate picking, up-down, up-down throughout. And for all of these, I'll be playing them in 8th notes. So, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and [inaudible]. But you can do any subdivision you want. Anything for your level. You know, slow it down, speed it up as much as you'd like.

Example 1 - 1434 Finger Pattern

Okay. So, with this, this is something that my guitar teacher showed me and it's fantastic. You start with your hand on the 7th fret.

It could be any four adjacent strings. For me when I first start, and I'm cold, I prefer the 7th fret, just fits my fingers better. And this is the finger pattern. You have 1, 4, 3, 4, and you do that twice.

So that's the first pattern. Now you change strings and you go down and up. But you don't just go down and up like most of the guitar mags or most of the examples that you see online, you do down and up for 90 seconds.

And this is where that length of time doesn't seem like much, but when you're doing it down and up, down and up, man, those small muscles get pretty tired. So, again, it starts slower than you'd think. I'm going to do the short version. I'm just going to start from the high and go to the bottom just to give you an idea of what to do with it.

But start off your next session with this and see what works for you. Again, this is a great warm-up. So, I typically start my practice sessions with this, but we're going to run through a couple of variations as well just to show you.

So, example one, we're going to start with the 1, 4, 3, 4 7th fret. And again, down-up, down-up.

Now with this, you can do a lot of different variations with it. You can, you know, play it clean, especially if you're syncing up your right and your left hands.

I would say don't do any distortion. Don't do any effects. Just start out, you know, clean, simple guitar, maybe you're in acoustic, so that you can really hear whether or not your pick and your fingers are matching up. But you can also do a little bit of palm muting to get a different sound. You can play with the timbre a little bit, right? So instead of...You get that more staccato note. Yeah. So different variations. Again, take these examples and make them your own, right?

Example 2 - 1424 Finger Pattern

Example number two, this is a different variation. So instead of 1, 4, 3, 4, you know, 1, 4, 2, 4.

For this, I'm going to back it up to the 5th fret. For me, and I know a bunch of other players that do this as well, if you start up high when you're first starting out, your fingers feel nice and eased into things. And then as you get more and more warmed up, you can, you know, march backwards on the fretboard so that you're not starting out those really wide finger placements.

So, again, fret 5, 1, 4, 2, 4, and we'll start.

Example 3 - 1434-1424 Finger Pattern Combination

All right. So, the third example is a combination of both of those.

So you start off 1, 4, 3, 4, then you go to 1, 4, 2, 4 on the same string, then you switch strings and do the same pattern. So, this one is good because you will find out where your muscle memory is with this pattern. Yeah.

All right. Ready? All right. Example three, 1, 4, 3, 4, 1, 4, 2, 4 on fret 7.

All right. Thanks.

I hope you find some use out of this. Let me know in the comments below how much fingers hurt after that first 90-second session. You know, this is a great thing that sets up not only, you know, building up your muscles, but also when you start getting into those scale patterns. If you have run these patterns before, you will find that you grab them more quickly just because your fingers are used to moving with each other.

So, thank you. Like, subscribe, share. And we'll see you in the next lesson. Take care.