The evil pinky (and controlling it!)

Hi all,

ive been playing guitar for about 5 years and only recently have i really knuckled down and set myself the aim of improving. Since about november ive been trying to crack Eugenes trick bag from the end of the crossroads (1986 movie) duel and had to practically re-invent my technique from the ground up to be able to play it. Im getting somewhere close to the full speed now, and this one piece has done more for my technique than anything else ever - ive started pulling off some sweet sweep picking licks and all sorts at speeds i never thought i would be able to play so im quite happy but theres one thing ever since i started playing guitar way back then thats still bothering me: The left hand pinky.

Theres a section in Eugenes Trick Bag that involves some E string arpegios with the open E as the pedal note.. and although i can play them at about 70 - 80 bpm they need to be at 150 bpm ish and i simply can not get my pinky to move that fast


Basic pattern:
(16th notes to be played at approx 160bpm)


-7--4-----0---7--4-----0- etc etc
-------5------------5----
-------------------------
-------------------------
-------------------------
-------------------------
4 1 2 ~ 4 1 2 ~ (fingering)

The thing is my pinky has this tendecy to lift about 2 inches (!!) away from the fret board whenever i lift it after fretting a note with it - especially when im in this hand position (knuckles at almost 45 degrees to the neck). when im plaing scales etc on lower strings its less of a problem but the pinky does tend to 'fly away' from the fretboard after its used whatever my hand position is. I was once told that you really need all 4 fingers covering 4 frets and floating just above them - i can do this fine if im playing up a scale but cant seem to ontain this position when im going down a scale. Hope this is making some sense.. if anyone can make any suggestions or suggest some excercises or licks to practice, or a specific trick to playing the above section it would be very appreciated
as i can (on agood day) pull off the rest of this piece without too much trouble.

Thanks,

~Tweak~

I hear you...I have speed and dexterty problems with my ring finger..and pentatonics dont help much.
Anyway...
I'm unsure if your pulling off from the 7th fret to the 4th fret(high E)or picking each note(alternate or otherwise)but here a suggestion either way...
since your hitting the 5th fret B string and the open high E is the same note heres what I would do...

E---7-4-0-0-7-4-0-0-----------------
B-----------------------------------
G-----------------------------------
D-----------------------------------
A-----------------------------------
E-----------------------------------
excetera...

You can alternate pick that or pull off...your choice.
Sounds the same(because it essentialy is)
I might have misunderstood the question/problem.
If you need dexterty and accuracy in you pinky then I'd say learn the end lead lick from "bark at the moon"(ozzy).

Later!

sorry i forgot to say about the pulling-off thing - i was alternate picking every note.. 'my pinky doesnt like doing pull offs'. Im with you on this one i think, ill stick to the two open E's. Theres a nice subtle change of tone between the two strings, but at the speed i want to be playing it at thats gonn make sod all difference thinking about it.

I was wondering if anyone else out there has experienced (and corrected) this problem with their little finger where it seems to stay miles away from the fretboard.

As for that Ozzy song, i discovered Mr Crowley a few weeks ago - love the solo in that! So im off to find tab for your suggestion now! Cheers

The only thing I can say is practice. This should help for this technique has served me well. When I hold the neck and lay my fingers over the neck. I slightly hover each finger evenly over the strings, my index over the (in this case) 5th fret, middle over the 6th, ring over the 7th, and pinky over the 8th. If you practice using this technique when playing, it should help from having your pinky fly off. Causes it's a strain to actually push the pinky away from the strings, and if you pull in down you'll bump a string so it will force you to keep it there. Then practice your scales using you pinky. Like the major pentatonic.


--------------4--7--
--------4--7--------
--5--7--------------
m p i p i p <~fingers used.


By position, you should have your index on the lowest fret needs to play a particular part on the guitar. Like with the major pent above, the lowest (4) fret played gets the index finger. The way works almost all the time and it makes you a more proficient player. Hope that helps.

[Edited by noticingthemistake on 07-19-2003 at 08:53 AM]

Tweak I had the same problem for the longest time. It took a LOT of practice to get it to stay down. I worked it out like this:



-----------1--3-4--2--4-5----------------
---------1--3-4------2--4-5--------------
-------1--3-4----------2--4-5------------
-----1--3-4--------------2--4-5----------
---1--3-4------------------2--4-5--------
-1--3-4----------------------2--45 Etc.--

work it both forwards and backward all the way to the 22 fret. Physically watch your pinky, so that you are concious of what you are doing.

also on the crossroads thing, I know it's a pain in the ass, but stick with working on your original pattern instead of using the double open e thing, because it is the same pattern as higher stuff, and it keeps you in the mode.

I've got problems with some of the first arpeggios cuz of the same reason you were talkin about. But I can play the part you had problems with just fine. Dunno why it comes easier to me then the first arpeggios (not the ones you sweep). I also have more trouble with the pinky when I'm running up a scale then when Im going down. ehh.. sorry about the laungauge.

Hey thanks thanks thanks! For all your advice guys - ive already started incorporating all of this into my practicing and its beginning to help a bit - owe you one!

Niklasl: Thats wierd that you have the same problem as me but in different places - i played those arpeggios over and over till i was blue in the face for a good few months before i cracked them; i cheat a bit too (i think) with some of the slides and ocasionally throw in a bit of sweeping, but the majority i just alternate pick (and pray!) I kind of dont sound the frst note very well on the slides when i play it at full speed, but at that speed it isnt _really_ noticeable. something i intend to come back to working on when i have cracked the rest of the piece.
i wish i had a proper video of Vai (or someone else for that matter!) playing the full thing from start to finish with a good camera angle at all times - unlike the crossroads movie clip i have. Any suggestions anyone? Id like to see exactly how the man does it.

anywayz.. many thanks again all!

~Tweak~

i got the same problem, but i can live (play) with it. when i started playing i had that with all 4 fingers - i eventually got them all under controll - all but the pinky - while the other fingers lift like a max of 8 mm form the fretboard, my pinky jumps off like 4 cm. nevertheless my pinky is fast enough to compensate that, so i can play at any desired speed without having problems with my pinky - it just looks a bit extreme *L*

Right - ive tried loads of excercises and been really careful about studying whats going on with my 4th fingure.. and ive noticed something. Its fine for every scale / sequence of notes except for when my second finger is used. This may not make much sense, but heres what happens:

If i lift my little finger up, and then play a note with finger 2 afterwards, as soon as i lower finger 2 ontro the strings to fret a note my 4th finger flys backwards / outwards so it is sticking out away from the neck. I can maintain a good floating position, close to the frets with fingers 1 3 and 4 (for example while playing the excercise posted here:

--1-3-4------------
---------1-3-4-----
---------------1-3-4 etc etc

but if i then try to play something involving second and fourth finger

e.g.
the crossroads thing

---7---4------0-----
----------5-------


i have the problem return with finger 4. this is getting frustrating because whatever i try to do about it doesnt seem to work - its almost like my little finger has like only two positions it locks into - fretting a not and sticking out away from the neck (it isnt quit that bad but that how it feels)

also i notice that when i push finger 4 down, finger 2 kind of moves away from the fretboard - the two are antagonistic to each other - i push one down and the other flys off - especially when i try to play fast. have tried relaxing more, helps a bit but not much.

amy futher advice / excercises would be great... Many thanks once again all.

~Tweak~

I had the same sort of problem although it was with my ring and pinky. Not as bad as you seem to have it, but it was a problem. I think it's just a natural problem with your hands mechanics. Something you can try which helped me with my pinky and ring is to try playing finger patterns just using those fingers. Try this exercise.


-----------------------7-5----------------------
-------------------5-7-----5-7------------------
---------------7-5-------------7-5--------------
-----------5-7---------------------5-7----------
-------7-5-----------------------------7-5------
---5-7-------------------------------------5-7--
m p p m m p p m m p p m m p p m m p p m m p


At first this exercise may seem fustrating since your concentrating on using only the fingers that are giving you problems. But if you sit down each day for a minute and run through it before trying the solo your working on. It will definitely help or at least I hope it helps you. Don't worry about speed just play it at a tempo that you remain in control. The best way to overcome something that is giving you problem is to isolate it, and kick it's a$$!!

Don't beat yourself up over it, especially the first couple of times you try this exercise. Your fingers are going to act the same as before, but if you stay relaxed; your fingers will eventually calm down and they'll gradually work the way you want them to.
Good luck! :)

Cheers!

This is one of those things i wish i had put the time into correcting a few years back.. hell you live you learn right? I just want to have that nice smooth relaxed looking L.H position that everyone seems to have these days - fingers hardly moving it looks like on so many vids ive seen (vai / satch / angelo / gilbert etc...)

My main aim at the moment is to be able to play a chromatic scale at a rapid speed flawlessly - a quest which is constantly eluding me - i can zoom up the scale at the moment but when it comes to going back down and playing it backwards... it all falls appart - i choke notes and my picking gets all out of synch.. its frustrating :) im gonna try your little gem of an excercise for a bit.

ok sorry to pester.. just a quick Q about that little gem of an excercise (it feels like this ones really gonna help havoing played it a few times so thx!!) but should i be rolling each finger across the strings at 5 and 7 or should i be distinctly lift the finger up and place it down on the next string?

I have a similar problem with my ring and pinky as well. Still haven't conquered it.

Stupid pinky.

Better late than never. I know there is stuff that I wish I had learned before I did, everyone is like that. Right now, I’m working on classical guitar. Something I feel I should have started long ago, and right now it seems like the hardest thing. I had to actually go over and start wailing on the bag for a half an hour because I got ticked off cause I kept accidentally bumping the wrong string. hehe I have a bad temper. :D Anyways to get that technique you just have to practice keeping your fingers just above the strings, and always in position. It’s not hard once you get the feel for it and it improves your playing especially when it comes to speed. You’ll get it.

[u]Chromatics[/u]

It’s because your trying to do it too fast from the start. You’ve probably heard this a million times but use a metronome and start on a tempo that you can play each note clearly, even if it’s 10 bpm. ;) Probably not -LOL- but start where your at not where you want to be. Then once you get it at one tempo move it up 5-10 bpm. Don’t rush, you should allow yourself a year or so of consistent practice to reach that goal. Especially if your talking about Malmsteen speed. In the end it doesn’t matter how fast you can play if you can’t play it clearly and coherently. Nothing turns a listener off more than someone who tries to play something he/she can’t play well. Especially yourself.

[u]Question about exercise[/u]

Lift it off, hehe. I know that’s probably not what you wanted to hear. But the idea of the practice is to be able to move and control those fingers but at the same time keep them close to the string. So when you change strings, you should only slightly arc the finger over to the next string. Reason being that not all string skips are going to be the next string above or below. You may have to skip 3, 4, 5 strings. Rolling them off is definitely not going to work. Remember slight arc, don’t completely extend your pinky then flop it back down and control yourself from pulling off and sounding the open string. Mute either with your picking hand or your index finger.

[u]Reply to Pantallica[/u]

My problem was my pinky would always stiffen up when I would have to play this weird trill. Extremely frustrating so I came up with that exercise. So Pant just apply that exercise to you ring and pinky. So instead of being 5 - 7 middle - pinky, do 6 - 7 ring - pinky. Plus it’s a great exercise that is often neglected. You hardly ever have to play that pattern so it will keep your dexterity up.

A good calisthenics is practicing patterns like 1324, 1423, 1342, and so on. Well you’ve probably seen these before. There a great way to warm up and keep your dexterity in great shape.

I feel better alredy for hearing all that. Its always nice to know that other people have been exactly where i am at the moment - i play in a band but dont come into contact with many people who arnt beginners or les experienced than myself - inclusing the rest of the band - its kinda depressing sometimes feeling that you cant get yourself out of a rut etc.

So thanks all for the assistance! MUCH appreciated. :)

~Tweak~

Noticing

Yeah I've been doing dexterity excersises for a long time, I can play most of them fast, but that's because I know what I'm going to do ahead of time, with my pinky.

It's like my pinky and ring finger are best buds and don't go anywhere without each other. My pinky tends to hide right next to my ring when I'm not using it.

I've tried all kinds of dexterity exercises to help, yours is helping with the pinky being able to trill. It's not that it isn't accurate, it just tends to stay away from the fretboard.


By the way, how's the classical pieces coming along?

[u]Tweak[/u]

Yeah. I don’t come into contact with many people who I can talk about music with. I think that’s why I come here a lot. I’m glad to help tweak. Don’t let yourself get depressed over it man, enjoy the fact that you learning and one day you’ll be able to play it. The longer the journey to get something, the more satisfying it is to finally get it. The only thing your doing by cracking down on yourself and getting frustrated is taking away the best thing about guitar. That it’s fun and believe it or not you’ll learn quicker if your having fun than if your being hard on yourself. I know it’s a hard mindset to get in the habit of, but if you start to get frustrated with something. Start playing something you can play well (the exercise I gave), and then come back to it after.

[u]Pantallica[/u]

The classical pieces are becoming more and more interesting. hehe. Besides the other smaller or easier pieces I’m working on, I’m at the point on Fur Elise where the piece picks up to 16th notes and there’s a million quick chord changes while I’m playing the melody. So it’s quite a challenge and probably hilarious to see me try to play it. ;) I’m lucky if I get one measure a day. But that’s my long term goal. Anyways the dexterity exercises sound like they’ve become finger knowledge exercises. So change them up, you don’t have to play the same 1423 forever on 1 string. Try skipping the strings while your doing it, like play 1 on the e string, then 4 on the d string. or whatever. Mix ‘em up, there are a million ways to alter these exercises to keep building up your dexterity. A good thing to do is apply them to the technique your learning at the moment. Like if your learning to sweep, apply the exercise to sweeping. i.e. sweep down the strings in those patterns. .I’m sure you can think of many creative ways to mess with those exercises and challenge yourself in new ways.

Yeah I know what you mean, if I bend my pinky even slightly my ring finger will twitch. I think everyone’s hand does that or something like it. It’s just hand mechanics, and unless you find some alien doctor who knows how to fix it, it’s just a fact of life. It’s quite fine if your pinky flies away from the fret board when you don’t need to use it, just as long as you can bring it down when you need to use it and be accurate with it. Really that’s all you need to be concerned with. That’s probably a comfortable position for your hand, and forcing it out of it may cause worse technique. About playing the trills with the ring and pinky, you probably notice your pinky wants to stay close to the strings so it can play a quick trill. That’s what the exercise is targeting. I think tweaks problem was his pinky was flying off when it needed to be close.

Another good exercise to work on dexterity.

I think everyone has sat and waited for something and out of impatience started tapping there fingers on the nearest solid surface. Usually in the pattern of pinky, ring, middle, index, and yeah sometimes the thumb but we’ll leave that out. Naturally we can roll your fingers rather quickly in this pattern. But have you ever tried to play it as quickly in the opposite pattern, index, middle, ring, pinky. Probably more difficult. Anyway this is nice exercise to build finger dexterity even when your away from your guitar. Although you may want to do it on a surface where you don’t annoy anyone around you. hehe. Tweak this will help with your chromatics.

It's totally natural to have pinky and ring fingers slightly bound together, it's because they are controlled by tendons that naturally come into contact with one another. Even Chopin (Great, great pianist, wrote amongst many other things the minute waltz which you must have heard) who was a fabulous piano shredder complained that he couldn't master his little finger.
Here's an exercise for finger strength:

Fret with 1st finger, pick string with 2nd finger of hand,
Fret with 2nd finger, pick string with 3rd finger of hand,
etc..
Try picking notes with fingers different numbers of frets apart including using the pinky.
To be honest I've never tried the exercise but I do sometimes pick with the same hand as I fret and it's tough, don't overdo it.
This is an exercise you can use to play some chords which otherwise you couldn't play one-handedly because the involve barring strings with one finger e.g.

E 5 (pick with pinky)
B 5 (pick with pinky)
G 5 hammer
D7 hammer

I shan't pretend I don't have pinky problems, my pinky flies away too, but perhaps everyone needs to pull it back a bit esp for hammer ons.

This little exercise really helped me improve my speed and definition of notes.

THE PINKY:

It should be CLOSE. People invariably still have problems with left hand pinky height until they tackle them.

In short, always keep your pinky less than an inch from the neck . Not only that, keep it directly over the fret for which it is
responsible.

If this is a challenge, treat the pseudo-chromatic exercise
in the following manner:

While you ASCEND, keep your pinky FRETTING the string that you just
finished playing. Don't pick it, just keep it there.

like this...

E|------------------------------------------1-2-3-4-------------|
B|---------------------------------1-2-3-4--4-4-4---------------|
G|-------------------------1-2-3-4-4-4-4------------------------|
D|-----------------1-2-3-4-4-4-4--------------------------------|
A|---------1-2-3-4-4-4-4----------------------------------------|
E|-1-2-3-4-4-4-4------------------------------------------------|

While you DESCEND, place your pinky on the next string AS SOON AS
IT IS DONE WITH THE CURRENT STRING.

E|--5-4-3-2------------------------------------------------------------|
B|----5-5-5--5-4-3-2---------------------------------------------------|
G|-------------5-5-5--5-4-3-2------------------------------------------|
D|----------------------5-5-5--5-4-3-2---------------------------------|
A|-------------------------------5-5-5--5-4-3-2------------------------|
E|----------------------------------------5-5-5--5-4-3-2---------------|

Really, all of your fingers should be less than an inch from the neck,
but if you concentrate on your pinky, that should take care of them all.


Benefits:

It places less of a burden on your pinky when your palm is parallel
to the neck. It also makes it easier to keep your pinky close to the
strings.

If there is less of a distance for your pinky to travel to fret a note,
then you can ultimately achieve higher speed because of the travel time.
Not only that, it is easier to coordinate your picking with your left
hand because there is less margin for error.


-- if the tabs don't show up well copy and paste it in wordpad and choose some mono spaced font such as courier. For the first TAB (ascending); every second 4 is below the 1
For the second TAB (descending); every 5 begins under every 4.

Hope that helps

[Edited by munqy on 08-01-2003 at 01:59 AM]

**pants** *wheezes* Wow.

Ive been working all week (new job at MBNA UK head office)so havnt been able to check back here.. and wow! So much good advice - so many more ideas / explanations! and once again.. So many people that understand! Thank you _ALL_ for these tips, explanations etc. Im off to try a few things now.

And that finger tapping thing .. haha its funny actually i never thought of trying to do that in reverse but i do do it all the time out of imptience. Something to do at work when things are slow i guess!!