Finger Gym 1 - Two Finger Hammer-On Combinations

In this video we're gonna look at a nice simple warm-up exercise, which is fantastic to do for this first couple of weeks of when you're picking up your guitar and you're getting your fingers ready. But before we do that, we're just gonna take 1 minute to look at 4 points for perfect fretting hand technique. This video, it's all about the fretting hand. And it starts. Starts off, as I hope you know, with making sure that your finger is right up against the fret of whatever fret you're going for. For example, if we're going for string 6, fret 5, we wanna make sure we're here and we don't wanna be at this side of the fret, we don't even wanna be in the middle, we want to be right up against that fret. We're gonna make sure that we're not hitting that with too much pressure. Especially if we have plenty of overdrive or gain on our sound. We really don't have to press on hard at all, and a great exercise for that is just pulling your thumb out or letting go of the neck at the back. And just making sure you've got enough pressure to hold that note down but not too much. That you're pressing on and squeezing for dear life because that is the biggest thing that will halt your progress at every level, but it needs a re-refinement at intermediate level for sure. That touch becomes so important, lighter the better. As long as your string's ringing out. practise a couple of things like this, fretting a note without your thumb pressing down at the back. It's a good way to check that you're not pressing down too hard. We also want to be aware that when we're fretting a note on string 6, we're probably gonna have our fingers more. Vertically in alignment with the frets. And when we move from the thinner three strings, we're probably going to be on more of an angle. Going into that fretboard or the back of the neck like a handshake is a great way to get used to that. And for example, if I'm fretting this note and I'm playing something like A minor pentatonic. I'm probably gonna fret it like this so that I can do that stretch, but also so I can do string bending, which we will look at in the next module and touch on it at this level, but this is what we wanna get used to that we might be vertical and then going up to this fret and if we're doing this we're not gonna be using the little finger. If we have a fret the thickest string. Like this, which does happen, I know I'm not gonna be using this little finger, or even maybe the 3rd, and the most I can do is like this. The little finger wants to be used when we're only in alignment like this. And finally that thumb placement becomes so crucial again, if we're on string 6 and little finger is here, thumb's gonna be directly at the back of the neck, in the middle, behind your first finger. As we move down, something like A minor pentatonic and we get to the 3rd string, thumb moves over the top in this fashion and fingers go more on an angle. Now those 4 points, finger placement, not too much pressure, either being in alignment or on the side, and the thumb moving from the back of the neck. Those are the 4 points that make perfect finger placement. And here's a nice exercise to kind of step through some of those things. However, whenever we're doing a technical exercise, we tend to do it in this fashion. We tend to do it more assigning a finger a fret and keeping things more vertical. That is to make sure that we're building the muscles in our hands as evenly as possible. But when we're practically playing a lot of electric guitar riffs or lead lines. Or little embellishments, we do tend to default to this method which we don't often practise in something like a warm-up or a technical exercise. Warm-ups that tend to be in this fashion, giving you the building blocks and the stability in your fingers and your ligaments in very small muscles so that we can then use them in any way we're called upon for both rhythm and lead playing. And the best way that we can do that is just with simple two finger combinations of hammer on exercises. For example, we're gonna go from string 6 to string 1 and we're gonna do index to ring finger, index to ring finger and pick an index, and we hammer on the ring finger. That is a 2 finger fretting hand exercise. And if we wanted to do that more for lead guitar, we can do that more in this fashion. But we tend to do that for specific licks. I don't advise it at this point, though I will break that rule later on, just not for early intermediate, because we need to build the muscles in the hand as evenly as possible before we get specific. To make that really clear, it would be a bit like taking someone who's wanting to get really good at bodybuilding and starting them off on kind of. Of the heaviest weights when they're skinny and they've not got any muscle. You need to build things up more evenly and gradually. You need to build up your ligaments first before you build up bigger muscles and or do any kind of fancier techniques. And this is the best way to do that in the safest way possible, but you can do it with any two fingers. So for example, index to middle. A clean guitar sound just with a little bit of sustain. So perhaps a clean sound with a booster pedal is fantastic. And what you're looking for. Is for it to sound as even as possible and no spaces. And also making sure that the pick sounds the same as the hammer on, that these. Whether I pick or hammer on. Sound as similar as possible. And we can also do this with index to pinky. Which is harder? Requires a bit more coordination. But this is just a really good way to kind of see what you've got. What are our fingers capable of, and it's also the best way to see the minute improvements that become really obvious in an exercise like this, but maybe aren't seen when you're playing your favourite song, cos you're distracted by a cool riff or overdrive and things like that. So I'm gonna demonstrate that in its own video below and we'll also put it in the video now. But you have any one of two finger combinations, you have index and middle, index and ring, index and pinky. More later intermediate stuff would for example be just index and pinky or just ring finger and pinky. That gets a lot more hard but that's what we're gonna end up doing a little later. We can also do the same thing with hammer-ons and flick-offs, which are the best way. To get speed Without having to pick every note, so let's have a demonstration of the exercise now to finish the video. 2 3 Oh 2 3 4 And this is something that you can do as a first warm up every time you pick up your guitar until we look at the next finger exercise warm up later in this course.