Guitar Technique and Fingering Exercises

How to improve technique on guitar

Depending on the type of player (or teacher) you are the phrase "guitar technique" can conjure up a wide range of images and scenarios

Strumming basic chords in time requires technique as does two handed tapping and shredding through the modes at warp speed ten but at the risk of stating the obvious they require different kinds of technical approaches to the instrument and the music

You don't need a lot of technique exercises to get results

I am a lifelong guitar teacher and it wasnt until I started to put this page together that I realised how relatively few purely technical (as opposed to a mixture of technical and musical) exercises I routinely use in order to help my students to (as my wife once put it) "wiggle their fingers around to press wires down onto bits of wood!"

The ones that I use by far the most are those aimed at beginner and intermediate players which I suppose is no surprise because for the vast majority of guitar teachers thats where the work (and the money!) is

Guitar Technique Exercise: One Octave Blues Scale

When teaching beginners to play guitar I tend to throw the one octave blues scale in as a first exercise in picking single notes and at the same time give a student examples of how the scale can be used to play a couple of tunes or single note riffs etc with which they will already be familiar I often use the obvious ones such as "Sunshine Of Your love" by Cream or Deep Purple's' "Smoke On The Water"

At the earliest stages I do not spend any time at all on the music theory for guitar element of the scale (the diagram on the right of the handout above that looks at Blues Scale in relation to its Root, b3,4,b5,5,b7 construction) I just tell my students that we will look at music theory in greater detail when understanding it will be more useful than at the beginner stage where the priority is just to get their fingers moving independently

Guitar Technique Exercises

Exercise 1: The one octave moveable Blues Scale

Exercise 2: The one octave C Major Scale using open strings

Exercise 3: One octave moveable scale in 3rds (ascending and descending)

Exercise 4: Major Scale in 6ths exercise (ascending only)

The few exercises above are enough to make sure that students make real and measurable progress with regard to developing independent finger movement and the ability to play single note phrases and passages required to allow them to (in time) solo effectively

Guitar Technique exercise: C Major Scale (using open strings)

The main component of teaching an absolute novice to play the guitar is quite rightly concerned with learning to move smoothly between the eight chords that any beginner should learn first but alongside materials designed to do that there are opportunities to develop the beginnings of single note techniques that will increase a learners actual and potential skill set on the guitar

I use the one octave C major scale because it is an ideal way to encourage left and right hand co-ordination and because it complements something that a student can already do (play the C Major chord shape)

If you look at the illustration above which shows the handout for this scale you will be able to see that fig 1 identifies the notes (C D E F G A B and another C) that make up the scale

fig 2 identifies the (left hand) fingers used (alongside the open strings)for each note of the scale

Fig three is the notation and guitar tab for the exercise

Although the tab and notation only relates to a one octave ascending form of the scale I encourage my students to work out and learn and commit to memory bothe the ascending and descending form of the scale

I also try to plant some "seeds of music theory" by asking them to notice that the notes of E and F and also B and C are right next to each other while D and E and G and A are two frets apart

This is to introduce students to the idea that there are two types of intervals (gaps between notes) that will turn out to be very important when we come to start to explore basic music theory just a few lessons down the line

Turning exercises into music

I mentioned earlier that I tend to use relatively few "pure" technique exercises preferring instead to turn things like scales etc into music as quickly as possible

The reality is that a guitar player could spend a lifetime ploughing through a never ending sequence of ever more complicated fingering exercises and be no nearer to playing anything worthy of the term "music"

I like to get my students to use techniqe exercises as a springboard to making "real" music as quickly as possible helping them to realise that dry theoretical elements and concepts such as scales are actually the "raw materials" of the music that they know and love

Here's a short video I have up there on youtube that looks at turning the c Major Scale into music as quickly as possible using "The Can Can" as spurce material

I must stress that beginner and intermediate students will not be able to play at the speed of the music on the video and that is perfectly allright

The exercise should be learned slowly and only when the fingerings and movements are fully secure should the tempo be increased

It sounds good and is a great way to build technique at any speed

"The Can Can"

After looking at The Can Can the video goes on to demonstrate the some of the other fingering exercises (the major scale in thirds and in sixths) covered on this page

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Guitar Technique exercise: C Major scale in thirds

Normally it is not seen as an altogether good thing to go two steps forward and one step back but thats exactly whats happening when you play an ascending scale in thirds

The guitar technique handout above presents the C Major scale in thirds in both ascending and descending form

A great way to help your student realise that the notes which combine to make a scale are not just to be run up and down in sequence (like a lot of frankly not very good lead guitar players seem to do) and helps to make them realise that the notes of a scale combine to make up a vocabulary when it comes to improvising solos or creating melodies

If you want to see (and hear )the major scale in thirds exercise in action it is featured as part of the "Can can" video above.

Guitar Technique exercise: C Major scale in sixths

This is a fantastic exercise

Strong fingers cannot support weaker fingers because they are always going somewhere else next which forces the weaker fingers to get stronger!

There is no descending version of this scale but by the time a student can play all of the exercises on this page (all of which you can see and hear on the 'Can Can' video above) they are really getting somewhere and they will have a very solid technical approach to the instrument engrained into their playing and the more they play (not just the exercises on this page but their guitar playing in general) the better they will get It's that simple'

What Is A good Guitar Technique?

Stick two guitar players together with enough time/caffine/alcohol on their hands or in their systems and they can bore civilians into a coma discussing the technical minutae of their current favourite guitar player/plank spanker/axeman/shredmeister/fretmonster etc.

I'm as guilty as the next man of this (and if you dont believe me ask my wife who will happily tell you of wasted evenings during which me and my chums have spent hours talking about how "people wiggle their fingers about pressing wires down onto bits of wood!") but as much fun as it is we need to develop a much more analytical and clear minded approach if we are to be effective guitar teachers

Guitar technique is aquired and developed by our students in the hours, days, months and years when we are not there to see them aquire it

Our job with regard to helping to develop their guitar technique is to get them from where they are now to the next step of the journey towards where they (currently) want to be

We are not there to cure them of liking "bad" music or to direct them towards the genres and players who float our boats which is not to say that we can't introduce them to music that they have not heard before (thats part of our job)

I will even go a step further and risk you hunting me down like the dog that I am by venturing the opinion that (gulp!).......

"Musicians generally have a terrible taste in music"

Whilst I obviously exclude me and you (after all I'm trying to sell you stuff and I don't want you hating me) from the accusation that we walk around implying to folks that the music we are cool enough to listen to is just a little bit "better" than the pap that they allow to clog up their ears because we are musicians and therefore have a higher level of appreciation and understanding than muggles and civilians but I'm pretty sure if you think of musicians that you know you might spot a few of them in there

"Education is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire"

I love the above (mis)quote that is often attributed to Irish Poet William Butler Yeats but which may well be from Ancient Greece's Philosopher about town Plutarch and I think that it really comes into play when guitar technique is discussed

A "good" guitar technique is nothing more than the physical ability to execute the movements required to allow you to make the noises that you want to make

It goes without saying that if those noises are not a million miles away from the ones that Joe Satriani makes then they will involve a different journey, timescale and level of application than if they are akin to those made by (the aptly named) Joe Strummer

Both Joe's are responsible for remarkable music but one of them spent a lot more time aquiring the technique required to make that music

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