4 finger notes.

[samtheman27]

Hey.
My names Sam but am new to this forum thing. haven't been playing long (only few months) n I was wondering if anyone had any tips for me. when playing fast songs (e.g. red hot chilli peppers) I cant seem to stretch or move my fingers to the correct notes. I started playing with one finger on one note and have to quickly swap to next note but sometimes am just not fast enough. I could really do with some help/tips to play with all of my four fingers.

cheers for the help.

[4dog]

Practice practice practice ya got the fingers use em

[Chef FourString]

Practice, dude. Slow down and work those muscles. It's going to take a while to get all of that trained. Just, practice.

[fearceol]

Hi Sam, and welcome to the forum.

As ChiefFourString said, slow down. The best way to build up speed is to start at a comfortable tempo, and build up the speed gradually.

Be careful with over stretching, especially on the lower (1-5) frets. If you over do it, you may have physical problems at a later stage. Use the thumb as a pivot to move the hand/fingers to where they are needed.

You have only being playing a very short time, so take it step by step, and be patient with yourself.

Give your hands and fingers time to adjust to this new task being asked of them. Speed will happen with time and practice.

Best of luck, and welcome to the low end !!


You may find this link useful. About half way through, he shows how to use the thumb as a pivot.

It is worth watching the whole clip though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeRoQuXlj9w

[cjmodulus]

there are a bunch of good exercises to build fretting hand dexterity. if you search around on here you'll find a lot of them. Here's one that I always like to do when I'm warming up;

use one finger per fret, tabbed out like so;

G----------------------------1-2-3-4-
D-------------------1-2-3-4----------
A----------1-2-3-4-------------------
E-1-2-3-4----------------------------

then just reverse it going down (4 3 2 1 on G, then D, then A, then E)
as has been mentioned, go slow at first. I like to start at quarter note = 60 (if you've got a metronome) and do it in quarter notes, then eighth notes, then eighth note triplets, then sixteenth notes to start. As you start to build dexterity, you can bump up the tempo.
best of luck!