This is the fifth and final installment in our series on rapidly improving our dexterity, strength, stamina, power, and musicality of our fingers to improve our guitar playing.
So far we’ve gone over four easy, fast, and powerful exercises, and if you’ve been playing along each week and spending a few minutes practicing them each day, you’ve probably noticed some dramatic improvements in your guitar playing already.
What now? Are we going to go through every combination of those four fingers? Nope. It’s not necessary. See the video below:
This week I’m going to ask you to spend the next few minutes trying different combinations and see which ones are the most difficult. Chances are some will be easy for you at this point. That’s great! But we’re interested in the tough ones. We’re going to smooth out those wrinkles and so you can turn yourself into a fantastic and mellifluous guitar player.
Go through different combinations of fingers until you find one that is particularly difficult. Write it down, and practice that one this week.
Don’t think this is a “week off”. On the contrary, this week is more important than any of the others we’ve done so far. Why? Because this exercise involved diagnosing what you need to work on yourself, and setting about working it out for yourself. If you can do that, you can do anything with the guitar, and you’re guaranteed to become an awesome guitar player.
Just in case you’re curious, here are all the combinations of fingers you can do. There are only 24 and you’ve already done 4 of them. You can also repeat some fingers if you like for an even better finger workout.
- 1234
- 1243
- 1324
- 1342
- 1423
- 1432
- 2134
- 2143
- 2314
- 2341
- 2413
- 2431
- 3124
- 3142
- 3214
- 3241
- 3412
- 3421
- 4123
- 4132
- 4213
- 4231
- 4312
- 4321