​​​​Guitar Fingering Exercises

Last Updated May 5, 2020

These exercises are designed to improve accuracy and finger independence. Finger independence is the ability to use each of your four fretting fingers, without any of them depending or interfering with the movement of others.

Above the tabs, above each note, is a number from one to four. These tell you which finger to use. One being your index finger through to four which is your little finger. You can use strict alternate picking or economy picking depending on your preference. If you’re unsure about these terms have a look at the short picking lesson which explains both these methods.

Important: Don’t try to play these exercises too fast. The most important thing is accuracy. Playing every note in time and cleanly without any duff notes. If you’re playing everything perfectly without any mistakes, then speed it up slightly. When you can play at this new speed perfectly then speed it up slightly again. It’s an old guitarist cliche but it’s very true, speed is a by-product of accuracy. Speed comes from accuracy, never the other way round. Trying to play to fast right away and making lots of mistakes won’t help you improve.

If you get tired or sore take a rest! Come back to it later when you’re feeling 100%. You won’t improve if you’re hurting yourself, you’ll just be punishing yourself for no reason.

​​​​Beginner Fingering Exercises

Ex. 1

Exercise 1 – Sound clip

This is a very simple exercise used the world over. It’s used to build stamina, accuracy and also as a warm up. It goes down from the low E to the top e, then moves along one fret and goes back up backwards. Try playing this lesson picking each note and also using hammers going down, and pull offs coming back up.

Concentrate on playing evenly and in time. When playing with hammers and pull offs it’s more difficult to stay in time.

Feel free to continue the exercise along the neck moving along one fret each time you come back up and down the strings.

This exercise is intended purely as a exercise. Musically it sounds awful so do your friends, family and neighbours a favour and turn the amp down low when playing this!

Ex.2

Exercise 2 – Sound clip

This example is very similar to the previous. The only difference is we’ve switched the order of the notes. This is to train our fingers to move in different patterns and not to get to comfortable only being able to move our fingers in one direction. You may be surprised to find this exercise is much more difficult than the previous, this may be because your little finger isn’t used to playing after your second finger and it may feel awkward moving your third finger after your little finger.

Some guitarists only feel comfortable moving their third and fourth fingers when following and anchored by the first finger. This type of exercise is designed to break that dependence.

As you can see it’s easy to modify the first example to create new exercises.

Ex. 3

Exercise 3 – Sound clip

This exercise is even more tough. This time instead of starting with the first finger we’re starting with the fourth finger. Starting playing with the first finger and anchoring with the first finger comes most natural to many guitarists. This exercise is designed to help you be able to break from that habit when required.

Ex. 4

Exercise 4 – Sound clip

Now we’re making you play each four note group along two strings. Playing all kinds of songs in all styles of music will require you to be comfortable playing all four fingers jumping to and from strings. This exercise is designed to help you get used to this.

Ex. 5

Exercise 5 – Sound clip

This follows on from the previous exercise but we’ve switched the order of the notes. Starting from the little finger should prove more difficult.

Ex. 6

Exercise6 – Sound clip

This exercise uses hammers and pull offs. Because we’re picking less we need to make sure we’re making firm contact. This exercise is designed to improve the stamina of all four fingers as well as your legato. If you haven’t already, have a look at the legato lesson for tips and a full explanation on playing hammers and pull offs.

Feel free to invent and modify these examples to create your own exercises.

KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER!

  • Timing is crucial. Dont rush parts and slow down in other parts.
  • Pick as cleanly as possible.
  • Accuracy is the aim of exercises, speed develops secondary from this.

​​​​Intermediate Fingering Exercises

Ex. 1

Exercise 1 – Sound clip

In the easy fingering exercises we where just playing examples designed to improve our technique and timing. They weren’t based on any musical scale. Now we’re going to start exercises designed to get us used to playing real music.

This is a simple exercise in C Major. All we’re doing is playing the C major scale across two octaves, up and then back down. We’ve arranged the scale three notes per string. You can play this in other keys too if you feel like it.

This will get our fingers stretched also. Hitting notes cleanly with our little finger as we stretch it across may be hard at first.

Ex. 2

Exercise 2 – Sound clip

Here we’re staying in the same C major scale positions but we’ve just altered the order of notes. In real music and in songs, it’s not often we’ll just play scale notes in order one after the other, so this exercise is designed to help us being comfortable playing notes out of order.

Notice at the end of the second and fourth bars we’ve made the effort to finish on a C note. Since we’re playing a C major scale it makes sense musically to resolve each segment on a C note. Although there is no rule saying you have to do this.

Ex. 3

Exercise 3 – Sound clip

We’ve mixed things around again by going backwards on each string. This is just to get you fingers and brain used to working in all directions. Moving our fingers backwards when going up to the high strings, and moving forwards when going back down to the low strings.

Ex. 4

Exercise 4 – Sound clip

This is the same idea as exercise one, only we’re using E minor scale. You can use the ideas from exercise two and three on this one also.

Ex. 5

Exercise 5 – Sound clip

Now we’re going to try a exercise moving across one string whilst keeping in key. This is based on C major. We start with a C note and play the first three notes in that scale. Then we go back to the second note and play the next three notes from there.Then we go back to the third…and so forth. Once we’ve gone up high, we come back down in the opposite direction.

Some guitarists are comfortable playing back and forth across the strings but aren’t to comfortable playing horizontally. This exercise is designed to help that.

Ex. 6

Exercise 6 – Sound clip

This is based on the previous exercise but we’ve changed the order on notes again to get your fingers used to playing in different patterns.

Ex. 7

Exercise 7 – Sound clip

Now we’re back to that E minor scale. You can try this exercise with the major scales also, or any other scale you prefer for that matter. This exercise is for improving our legato technique and stamina. It’s similar to the final exercise of the easy fingering lesson, only this time we’re playing an actual musical scale.

Feel free to use these all these examples with other scales and in other keys. As many as you can think of the better.

KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER!

  • Timing is crucial. Dont rush parts and slow down in other parts.
  • Pick as cleanly as possible.
  • Accuracy is the aim of exercises, speed develops secondary from this.

Advanced Fingering Exercises

Ex. 1

Exercise 1 – Sound clip

This exercise forces us to move horizontally and vertically. Based on the E minor scale we’re moving from the open low E note, through to the twelfth fret E note on the top e string. We then go back in the other direction. If you know a scale across the whole fret board, or if you have a full fret board diagram, you can try this with other scales.

You can try mixing up the order of the notes also.

Ex. 2

Exercise 2 – Sound clip

This exercise is again based on E minor. We start on a E note and then play six notes of the scale in order. We then jump back to the second note of that scale and then play six notes in order again. And then we just repeat this pattern. The exercise has all been arranged to be played on the top b and e strings. Exercises like this are designed to familiarise us with scales across the neck. Some guitarists can become to used to playing scales in limited positions.

Try this type of exercise with other scales.

Ex. 3

Exercise 3 – Sound clip

This exercise gives all our fingers a workout using string skipping. When skipping strings it can be difficult to jump over strings without accidently hitting or touching them. It can also be difficult to hit the right notes when we’re leaping across like that. It can be surprisingly easy to miss the intended note if you’re not used to string skipping, especially with the fourth finger. String skipping is more common in classical and more traditional music, but it’s well worth getting used to it.

Ex. 4

Exercise 4 – Sound clip

This exercise combines arpeggios with quick horizontal movement. Depending on how fast you can play this exercise you may need to use sweep picking. If you’re unsure about sweep picking take a look at the advanced arpeggios lesson. When we shift positions, in order to keep in key the shape of the arpeggio changes also, be careful not to get caught out.

Ex. 5

Exercise 5 – Sound clip

This exercise is based on D major. It combines picked notes with legato, helping you get used to jumping in and out of the two methods. The legato parts use both hammers and pull offs and require you to use your fourth finger, which is often the weakest. If you’ve not already done so, take a look at the legato lesson which has some useful tips on making hammered and pull off notes sound clearer.

Ex. 6

Exercise 6 – Sound clip

Finally we have a exercise that combines chords with leads. This type of exercise should help us get used to jumping quickly between the two. This exercise is played in the key of E minor.

Hopefully all of these exercises should have helped improve your accuracy and technique. If you repeat the exercises often, these ones and also ones of your own invention, it will have the knock on effect of improving your speed also.

KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER!

  • Timing is crucial. Try not to rush parts.
  • Pick as cleanly as possible.
  • Accuracy is the aim of exercises, speed develops secondary from this.
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