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.
"My whole life is a dark room...ONE BIG DARK ROOM" - a.f.i.
