What to do With Your Fretting Hand When You’re Beginning Guitar
Do you find yourself not knowing where to put your fingers on the guitar? Are you finding things harder to play than you think they should be?
This lesson addresses two common problems that I’ve seen in beginning guitarists. The first problem is a tendency of novice guitarists to scrunch their fretting hand fingers together. This makes placing the fingers on the fretboard as intuitive as it should be. Figure 1 is an example of the scrunched hand problem. The second is finger independence, or being able to move each finger freely without the others getting in the way.
Figure 1 - The fretting hand has the fingers too close together to be able to play chords or scales.
Four Fret Spread Technique
The remedy to the two problems is a technique that I use with every student that I’ve had. I call it the Four Fret Spread. Being comfortable with this technique is the foundation of all other soloing techniques that will come as you progress as a guitarist, and it will help being able to move between chords quickly.
How the Four Fret Spread works is by assigning each finger to a specific, sequential set of four frets on the fingerboard. For example, if you’re playing a lick in the fifth position, your first, or pointer finger would capture all of the notes in the lick that occur on the fifth fret. Similarly, your second finger would cover the sixth fret notes, your third finger would cover the seventh fret, and your fourth finger would get all of the notes occurring on the eighth fret (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 - The Four Fret Spread where each finger is responsible for covering a specific fret across the strings.
It’s important to note that each finger should be placed just behind the corresponding fret. This way each fretted pitch will sound the way it should and your hand will get used to playing slightly wider.
Fretting Hand Positioning & Finger Independence Exercises
One of the first lessons that I assign my students utilizes the four finger spread in order to address fretting hand finger independence. Example 1 is a version of this lesson using the fifth position of the Four Fret Spread example. You can see that each finger is responsible for the notes on its dedicated fret.
Notice how the 1-2-3-4 finger pattern reverses to 4-3-2-1 after being played on the high E string. Also, for each of the examples in this lesson the picking should be up-down, alternate, picking.
Example 2 is a variation of the first exercise. This exercise, I’ve dubbed “Outside-Inside,” because it reflects the order in which the fretting hand fingers are placed in the pattern: 1-4-2-3. Again, this example is featured on frets five through eight, but can be played anywhere on the guitar. Starting on the low E string, on the A, the pattern goes to the C natural on fret eight, to the Bb on fret six, to the B natural on fret seven. This 5-8-6-7 pattern continues as you ascend the strings. Once the pattern is played on the first string, like the first example, it reverses to 8-5-7-6 before descending back to the low E string.
Example 3 is another variation of the first two exercises. This one is called “Inside-Outside,” for the same reasons mentioned in the previous example. The pattern starts with your middle finger on fret six, then goes to your ring finger on fret seven, then to your pointer finger on fret five, and finishes with your pinky on the eighth fret.
The final exercise, see Example 4, is an expansion of a lesson that my guitar teacher gave me years ago. This example should be played on all six strings, like the other exercises, but the patter stays the same regardless of whether you’re ascending and descending the strings. Also, like the first example, the numeric title refers to the order of your fingers in the pattern and can be used on any grouping of four sequential frets. This example is again shown at the fifth through eighth frets. For an extra challenge, set a tempo on your metronome and run this example at that speed for 90 seconds. Be careful of the tempo you choose because this is like running killers, but for your fretting hand.
These examples are just a few of the combinations that can be used to increase your finger independence and getting your hand to be comfortable playing with a wider grip. There are twenty-four different combinations for your fingers to play four frets on a single string. Go come up with your own versions!
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For the other finger independence posts in the series click the links below: