Originally Posted by: jys2020I am 50 years old and have tried learning to play the guitar many times and have only ended up giving up. Part of my issue has been to try to do everything right at the same time...not look...not miss the string...etc., in the end I have gotten frustrated; so the advise is very encouraging.

In the tutorial people were encouraged to start the exercise and only use the 4th finger pinky if one was not scared or one wanted to take the practice to another level. Is it a good idea to leave out the 4th finger now and pursue it later, after the first three fingers are good to go? or should I try and make it work with my 4th finger as well??

At this point...its impossible for me to use my 4th finger without taking the other fingers off the frets

Yeah, I was wondering about this too. Im still in the Fundamentals stage and I remember LisaMcC saying we could throw in the 4th finger into our spider exercises if we dared to, but she never made it a point to use it so I figured it mustve not been that important at the time at least. Ill just wait until she suggests it. You should go to her subforum and ask her just to make sure.