The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #71332   Message #1219676
Posted By: Mark Clark
05-Jul-04 - 11:22 PM
Thread Name: left hand guitar exercises?
Subject: RE: left hand guitar exercises?
Actually, Meg, we've talked about what you're looking for but maybe not exhaustively. There are a lot of thing you can do includingFor starters, play a two-octave A Major scale beginning with A on the bass E string. This note is played with the middle finger. Now spread your hand and assign your first finger to the fourth fret, middle finger to the fifth fret, ring finger to the sixth fret and your little finger to the seventh fret. Never allow a finger to stray from its assigned fret. Now just play an A Major diatonic scale. Your ear will tell you where the notes are if you don't already know.

Run that scale up and down—across the neck—until you can do it quickly and smoothly. Once you have it down, you can begin going up and down in thirds. That is play A B C# B C# D C# D … all the way up and then reverse it coming down. If you find this exercise painful, start higher up the neck and play it in the key of C or D but eventually work yourself back down so you can play the same fingering in F# using the first four frets.

There are many other scales to practice but this will get you started.

I'll check back and see what others have suggested.

      - Mark