Hello and welcome to our very first guitar session,
today I wish to address one topic that is, I believe, relevant to every guitar player wishing to become technically proficient. It’s also a very basic topic: this lesson is going to deal with a few simple warm-up exercises which in turn can also be implemented as a means to increase speed.
When I first began playing guitar, my teacher acquainted me with the chromatic exercise wherein you fret four neighbouring frets on each single string, playing each note as you fret it, attacking every string, shifting the position and eventually covering as many frets as possible. This exercise was performed at the beginning of each of my practice sessions for years, and while at the beginning I only viewed it as a means to get the tiny muscles in my hands all warmed up and ready to play music, after a while I started to increase the speed with which I’d play the notes, effectively turning the chromatic exercise into my very first speed exercise. Unbeknownst to me, a player in his early teens with no access to guitar forums or guitar videos (our internet connection was terrible), I was oblivious to the fact that practicing the chromatic exercise along to the beat of a metronome, eventually increasing the speed, was used by many guitar players as a means to get faster.
After years of doing pretty much the same, I felt I was ready to go beyond that simple exercise and started experimenting with alternative fretting patterns. Instead of doing 1,2,3,4 (as in, first fret, second fret and so on), I would do 1,3,4,5 (ex. 1)…or 1,2,4,5 (ex. 2)…or even take it to extremes, such as 1,3,4,6 (ex. 3). The latter will definitely stretch your hand and work your little finger’s strength as well. By practicing these new shapes, I was then able to play the original chromatic exercise effortlessly.
Another approach to chromatic warm-up exercises goes a bit further and involves string skipping patterns like these: fret the note on the first fret of the 6th string, and then place fingers 2,3 and 4 on the adjacent frets of the 5th string (ex. 4). Then, mirror this pattern by placing your pinky on the 4th fret of the 6th string, and your index, middle and ring finger on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd frets of the fifth string, respectively.
See me play all four exercises in the video below:
Now it’s your turn to play them: give these exercises a try and let me know what you think. Make sure you increase the speed as soon as it starts to get too easy at the speed you’re playing these exercises.
PS: I didn’t include any tabs for this lesson as it is fairly easy to figure out the fingerings and whatnot. More complex topics will obviously require tabs which I’ll glady post here.
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