Hey Friend,

Hope you’re having a good weekend.

I only have a minute - it’ back to THE LIST today, and I have some catch-up from yesterday.

I was looking through email from some of the guitar magazines I receive and saw this little gem of an article. There is also an accompanying video to walk you through the instruction.

Finger exercises are important for building strength and speed, but they’re also critical to helping you with chords. This is because they help you improve your finger independence.

No one likes a copycat, least of all your fingers - you want them to each be able to move without influencing what another finger does. This way you can shift each finger into chord configurations at will.

Yes, much of this is committing the chord shape to muscle memory through repetition, but simple rote memorization can promote a certain independence on the shape.

By teaching your fingers to move independently, you’ll be a lot more flexible, especially when you want to embellish a chord with a small adjustment to play a similar chord - for example playing an open D, then a Dsus4 by adding your pinky finger to the first string, third fret.

Granted, a very simple example, but you get the idea.

Paul Davids has a particularly fun exercise that runs you through chord arpeggios in the key of C. This is challenging, so if you decide to try it out, take it slow when starting. Try his “Mother of all Finger Exercises.”
 

He is a featured teacher over at Guitar World Magazine, so if you like his approach and stye, you can find more of his stuff out there, or on Youtube.

Back to the grind for me...

Peace~

Dave