Building Finger Strength

NorioDS

I love playing on light strings. The lighter the better. But it means that, by default, my fingers aren't particularly strong and get lazy QUICKLY.

To fix this, I pick up my trusty Yamaha acoustic (my 1st guitar ever) which has ludicrously high action and I start *trying* to play all over the fretboard. It's fun because it's musical and it's effective coz it's a bitch bending on an acoustic, especially one with high action.

I also play lots of chords (coz my lead doesn't sound great on an acoustic ?) which also very quickly strengthens my fingers again.

A lovely exercise I enjoy a lot is to harmonise the C-Major scale. So I play C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim, C. I play about four bars of each. That very quickly gets my fingers strong(er) and it's still musical thanks to the rhythmic strumming and the chords themselves. I haven't done this in a while so please excuse me if those chords are wrong - I'm not yet where I want to be in terms of theory.

After this, I play on my electric for a while to get out of the habit of pressing so darned hard and, voila, I find bends, chords, etc 100x easier to do ?

This is also great for those of us who haven't been playing much lately - it gets back into it a bit faster than practising for longer on the electric.

Enjoy!

evolucian

Yeah, I find this exercise helps a bit too... seeing as I only have an electric, I add more to it by playing "stretchy" chords... for example playing a Cmaj barre chord at 3rd fret, then using my index finger to shift the basslines. So in other words, my index goes from 3 to 1 on the A string, followed by an open A... then 3 to 1 on the low E aswell... so it gives a good stretch to the index and midle, but all the while you are playing this... your other 3 fingers are still glued to the 5th fret holding the C.

Another finger exercise is hammering on a chromatic scale... but slooooooowly. Almost like a tai-chi exercise for guitar, hehe. It warms up the hand nicely along with adding dexterity...

NorioDS

A nice song you should learn if you wanna focus on finger-stretches, chord-changes and finger strength is Joe Satriani's "Tears in the Rain". Video below. Got sheet music for it somewhere - can organise scanning it if requested.

For the full effect, play it on a classical guitar. Those massive frets will really work your stretches ?

You can hear it here:

Oh ja and it also helps you work on your finger-picking.

Jack-Flash-Jr

When I started a.... long... time ago I bought one of those spring crusher exercisers for fingers. Meh... just play instead!

chris77

I only recently rediscovered the joy of electric guitar. For the ten years before that I played steel

Bob-Dubery

chris77 wrote: I only recently rediscovered the joy of electric guitar. For the ten years before that I played steel

When you say "steel" do you mean lap steel? Pedal steel? Steel string acoustic?

Jack-Flash-Jr

X-rated Bob wrote:
chris77 wrote: I only recently rediscovered the joy of electric guitar. For the ten years before that I played steel
When you say "steel" do you mean lap steel? Pedal steel? Steel string acoustic?

Ignore him, he's a pedant ?

chris77

Hehehe, no Bob, its these stupid cellphone buttons... Posted when I wanted to use a space. It should've read : - steel string accoustic. Having played steel string acc for so long my finger strenght is pretty decent. I noticed that my fingertips feel it a lot more than finger fatigue when I play for long periods. So yip, acc guitar is a great way to build strength.

Jack-Flash-Jr

chris77 wrote: Hehehe, no Bob, its these stupid cellphone buttons... Posted when I wanted to use a space. It should've read : - steel string accoustic. Having played steel string acc for so long my finger strenght is pretty decent. I noticed that my fingertips feel it a lot more than finger fatigue when I play for long periods. So yip, acc guitar is a great way to build strength.

Good point and to take it further, bass guitar is a brilliant way to develop strength...