Flying Little Pinky Exercise | Guitar Lesson

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi there birthday caster here and welcome to my youtube channel I hope you have a great day it's quite common to hear a lot of guitarists say that they don't use their left hand pinky while playing saying that it's their weakest finger and that it's the hardest to control so in this video I'll try to address those concerns give you some things to think about and give you an awesome finger exercise that will help you work on controlling this wayward little pinky finger right here first of all let's dispel the notion that the pinky is the weakest finger so if we put our hands together by the fingers and then fold the middle finger in like this okay you'll find that you'll be able to move all the fingers independently except the ring finger I can't do it now if we do the same thing but this time folding the ring finger I can move the pinky I can move the index finger I can move the thumb I can move the middle finger but you will feel that the ring finger wants to move along with it so which brings me back to the question why is the pinky finger the weakest feeling finger when we play guitar now the answer to that lies in the thumb position when you hold on to the guitar neck a lot of times beginners grab the guitar and you will see that their thumb is running along the length of the guitar now the correct position is that you should hold your thumb perpendicular to the neck of the guitar so when you play your thumb should be peeking away like this not like that in some extreme cases I've seen players try to play guitar with the thumb under the neck like this which makes it even more difficult to use your fingers because the thumbs role in the hand is to oppose the fingers that is its job when you hold your thumb like this your your fingers are not posing anything so what ends up happening is instead of using the tendons to move and control your fingers you use this part of your palm to move the fingers like so and that explains that a lack of control and the perceived a hand weakness you can try it yourself hold your thumb like this and press it against your index and middle fingers and you can press it against your pinky as well again you feel more control over the Pinky and the ring fingers now I try to do the same thing with the thumb pointing upwards automatically you can see my hand like stiffen up right here and try to move the finger using this part of the hand and you can also see it this way as soon as you move your thumb here the fingers especially the pinky straighten salad which is a bad position for it to be and when you're playing guitar you want the fingers to curl so that you can play the strings on your very fingertips now holding it again this way as soon as I move my thumb opposite the index and middle fingers you can see my pinky relax and go into a natural curled state it's not straight like that anymore so this is your natural neutral hand position that has the least amount of tension if you straighten out your fingers you're tensing it you're activating your extensor muscles and if you're pulling the finger in then you're activating your flexor muscles but if you just let them hang out like that the hand is in a natural curve state and again as soon as I move the thumb out of the way everything straightens out and tenses up so let's apply this to the guitar hold your hand up like this put your thumb opposite the index and the middle fingers and then let the other fingers just curl up naturally and we're gonna go into playing position so as you can see here my fingers are nicely curled over right no straight knuckles no tense fingers and you can see my thumb perpendicular against the back of the neck now from here let's do the very first finger exercise that everybody learns the chromatic scale [Applause] [Music] you don't have to play it fast just make sure that you are focusing on your fingers movements and you'll instantly notice how much stronger your pinkie has become [Music] this also applies regardless whether you adopt the precision grip which is the thumb behind the neck or the power grip which is the thump over so look closely I can still curl my fingers over and grab the strings by the very fingertips and as soon as I move my thumb here you can see this tenses up and straighten this out and suddenly I can't control my fingers anymore so always should for your thumb to be opposite your index and middle fingers this is also applicable to chords I've seen countless players try to play bar chords like this with the thumb here and what they end up doing is pushing the fingers like down there to mash the fingers to get a sound out of it and you will find that as soon as you move your thumb to opposite your middle finger the other fingers relax and curl allowing you to play the strings on your fingertips that applies to open chords as well I've seen G chords being played like this with the pinky really straight like that as soon as you move your thumb opposite maybe this time the index finger pinkie relaxes and the third finger relaxes and this feels much comfortable as opposed to this same thing with the D chord C opposite the index and middle fingers C chord opposite this middle finger G chord opposite the middle finger again if you play a G chord this way opposite the index finger and so on and so forth now finally we get to the flying little pinky exercise that I promised you earlier it's very simple we're going to take the chromatic exercise and we're going to do variations on it so the pattern is 1 2 3 4 1 4 3 4 2 4 3 4 3 4 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 4 3 4 2 4 3 4 3 4 3 4 and again you don't have to play it fast focus on moving your fingers correctly with the least amount of tension and focus on keeping your thumb in the correct position opposite the index and middle fingers I try it on different strings [Music] also make sure that you're moving the fingers by themselves don't include any input from the palm of your hand okay so no no flappy hands so do it just like this fingers only and not you can also play it along the string moving it up or down one fret at a time [Music] well there you have it I hope this video has given you some food for thought and has helped you gain more control over your guitar playing fingers as always I welcome your comments your reactions your thoughts put them in the comments box below of course feel free to share it with your friends and if you haven't yet please subscribe now go on play your guitar work on those fingers and I will see you in the next video Cheers

Channel: Perfecto De Castro

Views: 352,905

Keywords: perf de castro, guitar, guitarist, perfecto de castro, electric, guitar lesson, tutorial, guitar exercises, guitar finger exercises, guitar technique, guitar tutorial, flying little pinky exercise, guitar left hand technique, flying fingers guitar, pinky guitar, pinky guitar problem, pinky guitar exercises, guitar exercises for beginners, guitar exercises to do every day, guitar exercises intermediate, guitar exercises for finger independence, guitar exercises for pinky finger

Id: yHE6vvImrss

Length: 9min 56sec (596 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 12 2019