Importance of Guitar finger exercises

The hardest part about sounding good on guitar is getting your fingers to do what you want them to do. Learning how to play guitar chords is one thing, being able to switch from one chord to another quickly and smoothly is another. The more you practice switching between chords, the better you will get. But doing some guitar finger exercises every day will make a marked improvement in your guitar playing.

As with any other work-out program, in order to get the best results you need to warm-up and stretch the muscles you will be working on. It is no different with the muscles and tendons in your fingers, and the best way to warm them up is by doing some guitar finger exercises.

Before doing any guitar finger exercises you should stretch your fingers first. You can do this by bending your fingers back to the point of resistance and hold it there for about ten seconds. Do not bend them back to where it is painful. Once you have stretched your fingers you can now do some exercises.

The most basic guitar finger exercise is a four notes per string routine. Starting on the sixth string play the first fret with your first finger, then second fret,second finger,then third fret, third finger, and fourth fret fourth finger. Now repeat this on the fifth string, and then the fourth string and so on to the first string, and then back down again. Now move up one fret and repeat the whole sequence starting on the second fret. After each sequence move up one more fret and do this all the way through up to the twelfth fret. You should do this as slow as you have to in order to maintain an even tempo and making sure each note is played cleanly. One tip I would like to add here, and this might sound strange, but if you say the number of each finger out loud as you use it, this will help with the muscle memory connection between your brain and your fingers. In order to give your right hand a workout to you should use alternating picking while doing these exercises, meaning down up down up down up.

It is also very beneficial to use a metronome if you have one when ever you do any guitar finger exercises, as this will improve your sense of timing. Start out with a slow enough tempo to be able to play each note cleanly and then keep increasing the tempo a little at a time each time you do this exercise.