Finger Twisting Exercise

Here is an exercise that looks quite simple but yet can offer you so many things for your fingers to learn. Practice this as much as you can to bring more finger independence. Here you go.

Major Seventh Arpeggio Exercise

This exercise is based on the major seventh arpeggio pattern. This exercise has sixteen notes. Treat them into groupings of four. Start each group with you middle finger. The goal is to play it accurate and as much fast as you can. This will develop your synchronization, picking ability as well as dexterity of your left hand. Here is the exercise.

Complete finger independence exercise

Here is an exercise totally meant for making each and every finger independent form each other. This is a very very simple yet very effective exercise. Use a metronome for sure while practicing this exercise and try to build speed over it. Please ensure you are using all your four fingers and please make sure that your first finger keeps fretting the note. That is, you have to move only your middle, ring and little finger and you have to keep your index finger continuously fretting the note.

Fingers allocation has to be exactly as given below:

3- Index
4- Middle
6- Little
5- Ring


Make sure you keep on holding the 3- note with your index finger while practicing. 

Alternate picking and Pinky finger isolation

Here is a very great exercise that will serve dual purpose for most of you out there. First one is the alternate picking. As the exercise is made to play only three notes per string, the alternate picking sequence goes on varying from string to string. Another great thing about this is that, you are required to play the exercise with your middle finger(1), ring finger(2) and the little (pinky) finger (3). In this way, you will have some difficulty, but once you are used to it, you will start developing a great amount of independence between your ring and little finger. Check this out.

Finger independence and strength building

Here is a very interesting exercise that will be very fun to practice. The exercise is very simple to learn and play but it has a very drastic effect on your finger capabilities. It will provide strength to your fingers as well as a great amount of independence too. 

The exercise is shown below. This is shown for a single string. But you need to practice this exercise on all the strings of your guitar. If you have 24 frets, start with 24th instead of 20 as shown in the exercise. 

You have to use all the four fingers to play this exercise starting with the little finger. Don't stop at 14th as the exercise shows but continue backwards to the first fret.

Practice this exercise twice before your each gig session or on a daily basis and you will surely see your finger capabilities going up. 

Sweep Picking Exercise

At one point of time in your guitar journey, you will have a desire to play lightning fast notes all over the fretboard. Here is a way you can do it. It's called sweep picking. Sweep picking is generally used where one have to play one note per string, but this is not a rule. 

If you are very much new to sweep picking, let me introduce you how to play sweep. Just as the name implies, you have to sweep the strings up and down. Look at the exercise below. It is a basic exercise to learn four string sweeps. 

While playing the notes, you do not have to pick each note individually, rather you have to play the first four notes with your pick going down the strings at one go. This downward motion should be between down-picking and down strumming. It is neither strumming nor picking but a boundary line motion between the two. 

Start slowly and first of all try to develop a smooth sweeping kind of motion over the strings and then start playing the above exercise. The exercise shown above is only a part, you are assumed to play the sequence across the whole fretboard. 

Sweep picking is not an easy task. You have to be very much patient and consistent with your exercise. Better use a metronome to judge your progress. Now start practicing, don't you want to play lighting fast? 

Steve vai's "trained ear secrets": in his own words!

Having a good and trained ear is a trait found in a good musician. And i strongly stress that steve vai has got wonderful ear! If you want to witness this try to check out steve's live performances of :THE STORY OF LIGHT" tour, where he created instantaneous songs. The words below are directly from steve vai. Check it out if you too want to have a brilliant ear for music. This is taken from steve vai's crash course in ear training as mentioned in the guitar world magazine.

PART 1

I could never overstate the importance of a musician’s need to develop his or her ear. Actually, I believe that developing a good “inner ear” — the art of being able to decipher musical components solely through listening — is the most important element in becoming a good musician. Possessing a healthy imagination is a necessary ingredient for creativity.

But without the ability to bring those imagined sounds into the real world, one’s creative aspirations will remain crippled. Training one’s ears to understand and recognize musical sounds and concepts is one of the most vital ways to fortify the connection between the musical ideas in one’s mind and the musical sounds created on one’s instrument.

All musicians practice ear training constantly, whether or not they are cognizant of it. If, when listening to a piece of music, a musician is envisioning how to play it or is trying to play along, that musician is using his or her “ear” — the understanding and recognition of musical elements — for guidance.

This is also true when trying to emulate a piece of music, or transcribe it, or even just finding inspiration in it. No matter what one is playing, one’s ear is the navigational device that steers the musical ship where it will go. Without a good ear at the helm, you could find yourself musically adrift at sea.

I have always been fascinated with looking at music written on paper. When I was in college, I took a class called solfege, which entailed learning how to sight-sing. Sight-singing is the art of looking at a piece of written music and singing it. First, you identify the key center, and then you sing the written pitches, using the “doe-ray-me” phonetic structure, just like that song in the movie The Sound of Music. “Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do” (pronounced “Doe-ray-me-fa-so-la-tee-doe”) represents a major scale; there are other monosyllabic sounds that represent the other pitches that reside within a 12-tone octave. These solfege classes in college were difficult courses, but they were well worth the time invested. A thorough study and analysis of solfege within the confines of this column would be impractical, so I can only encourage you to investigate it on your own.

I’ve always considered transcribing to be an invaluable tool in the development of one’s musical ear and, over the years, I have spent countless glorious hours transcribing different kinds of music, either guitar-oriented or not. The most well-known example of my guitar-based transcribing labors is The Frank Zappa Guitar Book (Hal Leonard), for which I transcribed, among other things, the entire Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar series of recordings. Many musicians, however, do not have the ability to pull the sounds — guitar solos, rhythm parts, melody lines, etc.—off the records that they love. Transcribing is an art that takes a lot of practice and a study that I encourage everyone to experiment with.

But fear not: you do not need to have the ability to sight-read or transcribe in order to practice ear training exercises. If you are just sitting there with a guitar, there are still a great many ways to develop your ears, in the quest to strengthen the connection between your head and your fingers. Below, I have outlined some of the ways a guitarist can work on ear training exercises using just the guitar.

As guitarists, there are certain things that most of us do that are simply part of the program: we learn some scales, develop some exercises intended to improve our physical abilities, work on chord forms on different parts of the neck, etc. I believe it is extremely important to put aside some time dedicated solely to focusing on ear training.

One of the easiest ways to begin working on ear training is to sing what you play. For example, you can play a C major scale (C D E F G A B) in any position — preferably one that is physically comfortable for you—and sing each note of the scale as you play it, being very careful to sing on pitch as accurately as possible. Start with one note: play the note, sing it, and then play and sing the note simultaneously. Then go to two notes. Once you feel comfortable, take a little piece of that scale, say, the notes C, D, E and F, and create a very simple melody with these notes for you to sing simultaneously, à la jazz guitarist George Benson.

This is an easy way to get your ear in sync with the sounds your fingers are creating. Whether you’re soloing over a rhythmic vamp or are playing alone in free time, you have to really stick with it, and don’t allow yourself to slip up or drift into something else. The idea is to endlessly improvise and sing what you are playing, using any key.

Another good thing to do is to record a simple one-chord vamp to play over. First, only play/sing notes that fall within the key, staying within a basic note structure of a five-, six- or seven-tone scale. Don’t start wandering off into your favorite guitar licks to play; save that for another time, when you’ve developed your ear to the point where you can sing just about anything you can play. This is an exercise in discipline: do not play anything that you cannot follow perfectly with your voice. Whether you stay within one octave of the guitar, or you sing the notes an octave lower than the sounding pitches, or you use falsetto to hit the high notes, you must be able to recreate all of the notes played on the guitar with your voice.

If you work on this every day, you’ll find yourself getting better and better at it, and it will become easier to do. The cool thing that happens is that you’ll begin to hear music more clearly in your head, allowing you to formulate musical ideas—write music—within your head, without the aid of a guitar. When you finally do pick up the instrument, you will discover that you will instinctively be able to play these ideas that have taken form in your mind.

To take this a step further, try this exercise: without a guitar at your disposal, picture the guitar’s fretboard in your mind, and then envision playing something so that you will “hear” and “see” the notes as they are played. It may be helpful to sing the notes as you imagine them being played. This is an excellent exercise that will fortify your mind-fretboard relationship and actually improve your ear by strengthening the acknowledgment of “pitch relativity” (how one pitch relates to another, in terms of sound and placement) on the guitar’s fretboard. You may discover some cloudy areas in your mind’s eye/ear, but if you work through it, the picture will soon become clearer and clearer.

These techniques do not address the act of playing one thing on the guitar and singing something completely different. Someone like Jimi Hendrix had the uncanny ability to play very complex rhythm parts and single-note riffs while singing complementary parts. This technique requires a whole different set of brain muscles and is very difficult for many players. Playing one thing while singing another must be worked on as an independent field of study. If I could play the guitar and sing at the same time, hey, I might have a career! I’ll be back next time with some more effective ways to help you to develop your ear.

PART 2

As I mentioned last time, a valuable method of training your ear is to practice singing the notes that you play on the guitar. I’d like to elaborate on this fun approach and offer you some specific advice on how to go about doing this on your own.

A good way to start this training method is to stay within one scale and key and make sure that you can follow with your voice any melodies or licks that you play. Obviously, you can only sing one note at a time, so you’ll probably want to stick with playing single notes, at least for now, so you can zero in on specific pitches.

Let’s say you’re using the A-minor pentatonic scale, illustrated in FIGURE 1A, as your starting point. FIGURE 1B is an example of a line to play and sing simultaneously. This drill can be challenging, but it’s ultimately rewarding.

The next level of this exercise is to venture outside the fixed structure of one scale and add chromatic “passing” tones—the notes that fall between the scale degrees—to the lines you’re trying to sing and play.

FIGURE 1C is an example of how you might go about doing this within the A-minor-pentatonic pattern we just looked at. Venturing away from the fixed structure of the diatonic key presents a great challenge to your ears and will strengthen your “pitch-recognition muscles” immensely. If you practice this drill every day, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how quickly your ears will “grow.”

An essential element in ear training is the thorough understanding of intervals. An interval is the distance or gap between two notes: if you start on an A note and go up two frets to B, the intervallic distance between the two notes is a major second. If you were to go up four frets from A to C#, the interval between these two notes would be a major third.

FIGURE 2A depicts the A-major scale and indicates the intervallic relationships between the tonic (root note) and all the other notes in the scale. FIGURE 2B shows the chromatic scale, starting on A and covering an octave and a half, with the intervals indicated. I highly recommend memorizing all of these intervallic relationships; a good way to do this is to recite each interval name while playing the notes of the scale.

There are many different exercises one can do to strengthen interval recognition. Here’s one that I like: get a tape recorder and record yourself playing pairs of notes, using root notes combined with either major or minor thirds, as illustrated in FIGURE 3A. Play random pairs of major or minor thirds all over the guitar neck and, after each pair is played, wait a moment and then say either “major” or “minor” to identify the interval.

After filling up a 60-minute tape with this random stuff, listen back and try to identify the intervallic relationship by saying “major” or “minor” before your voice on the tape provides the answer. The purpose of this exercise is to train yourself to quickly identify major and minor intervals in all keys, anywhere on the guitar.

The next step is to proceed to other intervals, such as fourths and augmented fourths, which are one half step (one fret) higher than fourths. FIGURE 3B shows random pairs of fourths and augmented fourths; again, fill a 60-minute tape with pairs of notes, then go back and try to identify the intervallic relationships. Another idea is to make a tape of fourths combined with major and minor thirds, or fourths and augmented fourths combined with major and minor thirds. Then, continue this approach using all of the intervals in different combinations.

Another good exercise is to play every type of interval against a fixed root note. For example, if you choose the key of B, begin by playing a low B, and then play a variety of higher notes against this low B. After the higher note is played, identify on the tape what the interval is, and then move on to another interval. This type of exercise is illustrated in FIGURE 4.

By the time you’ve gotten this drill down cold—to the point where you consistently attain a near-perfect score—you will have established a firm grasp of intervals. You may have to make three or four 60-minute tapes, each in a different key, but, in time, you’ll end up knowing this stuff inside out. The study of intervals is something that many musicians work on their entire lives.

I’ll be back next time with some more ear training advice.

PART 3

My first two ear training columns (Part 1 andPart 2) outlined a variety of techniques intended to strengthen your note-recognition abilities, using the guitar as an ear training tool. This month, I’d like to turn you onto some ear training techniques that use chords.

Let’s begin by playing a series of random major and minor chords all over the neck, which we’ll record with a tape machine. First, play either a major or a minor chord in any key, anywhere on the neck, wait a moment and then identify on the tape either the chord type, i.e., major or minor, or, if you’re more ambitious, the chord name, i.e., G major, B minor, etc.

FIGURE 1 illustrates a short series of randomly chosen major and minor chords. Fill a 60-minute tape with random minor and major chords, and then listen to it, doing your best to identify each chord type or chord name before your voice on the tape is heard. No cheating by using the guitar to find these chords! Rely on your ears, make your best guess, and only then use the guitar to see if you are correct. If you’re only identifying “minor” or “major,” this exercise is still valuable in that you’re focusing on harmony and chord quality. If you take it a step further and identify the actual chord names, you’ll fortify your ability to identify root notes as well as harmony. This will get you started on the road to identifying the chord progressions you hear on records, when jamming, at a concert, etc.

You can expand this exercise by adding suspended chords to the mix. FIGURE 2a indicates a few different ways to play suspended chords: in the first three chords, the root notes are located on the sixth and fourth strings; in the second three chords, the roots are located on the fifth and third strings; in the last three chords, the roots are located on the fourth and second strings. Memorize all of these different suspended-chord voicings.

FIGURE 2b illustrates a sequence of randomly chosen major, minor and suspended chords. You can start by recording this example or, better yet, make up your own!
An important thing to remember is to not make these exercises too difficult for yourself. If you make them inordinately tricky or complex, you may only succeed in becoming discouraged. Start out with simple stuff, and gradually progress to chord changes that are more unusual or difficult.

Once you feel you’ve become accustomed to identifying major, minor and suspended chords, expand on the idea by including more complex chord qualities. A good place to start is by adding “tension” tones, such as major sevenths or dominant sevenths to major and minor chords. FIGURE 3 depicts an arbitrary sequence of major, minor, major seventh and minor seventh chords.

When you can correctly identify all of these chord names and chord types just from hearing them, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much the proverbial bar has been raised on your overall musicianship. Having this harmonic ear-training skill will positively affect your approach to composition, soloing and comping (rhythm guitar) and will give you a whole new appreciation of the structure of music.

To further enhance your ear training study, bring interval recognition into the equation: pick a chord and arpeggiate it (pick each note of the chord individually and in succession). Wait a moment, and then identify each interval in the chord. FIGURE 4 illustrates this type of exercise. The possibilities are endless; you can incorporate millions of chords, depending on how great a challenge you wish to give yourself.

All of the ear training exercises I’ve outlined in the last three columns are ones that I have spent hours and hours doing back when I was a teenager. There is no doubt that this is time-consuming hard work; you may find yourself becoming overloaded or frustrated. If this becomes the case, take a break and go do something else for a while. But the benefits to be reaped from this type of independent study are tremendous and will stay with you forever.

How to practice the major scale

The first thing you should do is master each shape separately. After you have mastered each piece separately, you should try to connect each shape to get the whole picture on the fret board.

Mastering each shape requires two things. First, you should be able to play the shape effortlessly. Second, you must at least know where the root notes are. Try different combination of notes from the shape and play them in different orders. This will help you with your technical abilities and finger dexterity. 

The next thing which is more important from the soloing point of view is that you should know the root note and the other scale degrees with reference to the root note.

Now one more important thing. Try to listen to the overall sound of the scale or each shape. Try to connect the sound with some real life situation. Try to think some examples where this scale can be used to convey the situation. 

By doing so, you will be training your ears to get familiar with the sound and feel of that particular scale. So whenever you will be playing, you will be knowing what to use to describe or fit a particular situation.

Practicing chord changes

In order to practice chord changes effectively, you should start slow. And the most important thing is that choose a strumming pattern which is very very simple and you are very much used to that strumming pattern. The motto behind it is that while practicing chord changes, you want your whole focus on the chord changes and not on the strumming pattern. So chose a strumming pattern which you can play without thinking about
it. So now your whole focus will be on chord changes. Try to follow the concept of common fingers and strictly apply them to your playing.
 It is not always necessary to strum the guitar while practicing chord changes. You can just try the changes on your guitar without strumming the guitar too. And this kind of thing can be practiced when people around you don't want to get disturbed by your practice.
Remember, be slow and accurate and better results will follow.

Learning chord changes

The most challenging thing that you will ever face in your guitar journey is chord changes. At times you will be demoralised too. But don't worry guys, here is a very cool way to get this down. And I call it the intersection of common fingers. After learning your basic chord shapes, you must have realised that there are different chords shapes where one or two of the fingers are common. This concept will be exploited as it is very very useful and a superb way to learn chord changes.
Here is provided a list of grouped chords for practising chord changes.
1.Em-E-Em
2.Em-Asus2-Em
3.Em-E-Am-Em
4.Am-Asus2-Em-E-Am
5.Am-C-Am-C-Asus2-Am
6.G-Cadd9-G-D-G
7.A-Asus2-A-Am-A
8.Em-C-Em-C-Am-Em
9.G-Em-C-D-G
 Before changing the chord, try to figure out which finger is going to be at its original place in the next chord too. After figuring this out, try to keep that finger stuck, and using that finger as a centre point, try to shift your other fingers to occupy the next chord shape. These list of chord changes as given above are very crucial for dexterity and smooth playing. So practice them as much as you can. Some of these changes may look repeated in the list, but the more you practice, the more skill you produce.

Some more finger exercises

There are many more finger exercises that can be practiced to enhance the strength, dexterity and fluency of your fingers. Needless to say you have to focus on the correct practicing techniques and evenness in the beginning. And as you get comfortable and easy with these exercises, then only go for speed. Always use your metronome and while going for a higher speed, do it in small steps. At the most you should
increase the tempo by 6bpm and not more than that. But that is not a restriction and if you think you can jump higher on your metronome, then do it. But always remember, clarity, evenness and correct technique should not be the cost of gaining speed. And yes, remember to play these exercises starting with different frets all over the fret board. Here are the tabs for the exercises.

Basic finger exercise

As far as dexterity and playability of your hands is concerned, there is a very popular and good finger exercise to practice. By doing this exercise, your fingers will become independent and comfortable with the fret board. Below is provided a tabulator which you need to play with a specific goal. The specific goals are clarity,evenness,timing and proper techniques. The warning is please do not try to go for speed. Speed will hamper your dexterity and technique as far as a beginner is concerned. The exercise is given starting with first fret. But as a beginner if you do not find yourself comfortable to stretch that much, I suggest you to start on the fifth fret. And after getting comfortable, play this exercise all over the fret board, each time starting on a different fret.

So the above image shows the basic exercise you need to practice. Use your all the four fingers except the thumb. The rule to be followed is "ONE FINGER PER FRET". Remember to play everything with timing and use alternate picking. But do not always stick to alternate picking. It is a good practice to devote 20 percent of your practice time with only up picking or with only down picking. Rest 80 percent should be devoted to alternate picking. Alternate picking means hitting the string alternately with a down stroke followed by an up stroke. Down picking means hitting the string only with a down stroke.
Now while playing it is always better to use a metronome. A metronome is a device which produces a clicking sound on a particular interval of time. So you just need to set the timing and tempo and try to play along with those clicks. This will improve your evenness and timing in playing. And last but not the least, do not run after speed, focus on good practising techniques.