For some reason I tend to lift my fingers too much when playing. It's not a problem when playing slow. But it limits my ability to play fast. I'm pretty much stuck with 16th notes at 75-80 bpm when playing the pettruci exercise. As you can see even pettruci seems to do some uncontrolled pinky movements. But of course not nearly as much as I do. So any hints what I could do to teach my fingers some discipline so these bastards stay where I want them to stay?

Jonas

Sure I've transcribed some ex. to that purpose.
The main thing here is to let the finger that is indicated still in the place where is indicated so you only move the fingers that are supposed to move.

The names of the files says what you have to do and inside there is also the indication.

Please let me know if you find this helpful

I found the best way to improve this was to play incredibly slowly so I could control my fingers. I would just play simlpe chromatic exercises around the 7th fret. It helped me so it might help you.

I'd do exactly this but practise scales that you would use instead!!! Learn both at the same time.

Thanks guys! I guess it means going back to practicing those exercises very slowly But it's probably easier to get rid of this problem now than later...

Ramiro Delforte,
It looks helpful for sure! Let's see if it does help too.

- Jonas

This post has been edited by 29a: Feb 15 2009, 02:10 PM

I think it's not that important to keep the fingers close, I saw many awesome players who lift fingers and still fret them exactly where it's needed. The problem is just staying precise with fretting and practicing everything at a very slow pace and with precision. If you do have some extreme problem of finger moving away from the fretboard you can start practicing and focusing more on keeping them close. After a while of practicing like that it will all come into place. But again, I think minimizing the fretting movements is generally not that big of an issue when you go up the speed, it's more a problem of getting those frettings nice and precise.

Ivan, there are awesome players which don't use their pinky (eric clapton) or didn't know any music theory. It seems to be similar to me. But I could very well be wrong there.

Ok I've found some more advice now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvhZ80OsuTQ

Plus a recommendation from a friend of mine who plays piano:
"Put your fingers on the table like a spider. Now start by lifting individual fingers in the air. After that try to lift you pinky together with your middle finger and then your ring finger with your index finger." (she actually said that in german but anyway...). It's one of this creepy exercises that seem to be really simple (lifting two fingers in the air...) but that are actually difficult to do right especially fast.

Jonas

Have you seen Danilo Capezzuto's "Finger Independence" lessons?

https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/lessonser...er-Independence

They have several exercises that use the "spider" technique that your friend mentioned. The trick is to move ONLY the
correct set of fingers and move them all at EXACTLY the same time. It gets tricky as you raise the tempo! You can also construct your own variations of the exercises that work on particular problems.





This post has been edited by Resurrection: Feb 15 2009, 06:36 PM