Guitar Practice: Improve Your Finger Strength, Stretch, Speed & Independence

1. Introduction: Hi everyone. I hope you're doing good. A big welcome to this class is all about improving your guitar technique and ability. My name is Mark. I'm a full-time musician and instructs out yours over 15 years teaching experience. I also run a music charity that specializes in engaging with and developing your musicianship of people of all ages and abilities. This class is designed for guitarist. You want to put the right foundations for their guitar playing Journey. You could be a beginner or someone who has worked out to an intermediate level. Even the more experienced and accomplished guitar players would be able to take something from this class. The techniques we cover will give you the best platform to build upon and help you kick on to that professional level of playing ability if you're completely new to the instrument and I recommend checking out my complete beginners guide to guitar. Start with the absolute basics and then guide you through a big range of songs, scales very songwriting and loads more and will develop you to become a competent and creative media player. You can find the link in the description or there'll be some images popping up on the screen. I also have some other classes that cover different aspects of the guitar, which you might want to check out as well. But back to this class for now, building the correct techniques at the start of your guitar playing Journey is essential for ensuring that you go on to develop in the right way. We're going to look at exercises that develop your finger strength, independence, stretching capabilities, and speed, you're able to play it. They are rooted in the classical world of guitar, skills that are transferred across all styles of music. The idea with this class is to give you a wide range of short exercises that you can learn, develop, and implement into your practice regardless of what stage you're at in your learning journey. I will also share some books and resources that I've learned about from other professional musicians that will give you some further material to look into it. I'll warn you ignore all of these exercises and pretty or harmonious, but are designed to develop your overall musicianship. As you say, they can solo, shred and bounce up and down the guitar would have started with tips and tricks. To mix up our practice, I've included a few risks from songs within the class that would demonstrate how we can implement these techniques into music both old and new. Start slowly with these exercises, practice them regularly, daily if possible, and you'll start to see a big improvement in your plane. I will be available all the way for your learning journey. I love hearing students, so please feel free to reach out with any questions you have at any time. I hope you join me in the next video. I'll look forward to seeing you in the class. Take care. 2. Class Project: We're gonna be covering a lot of different exercises in this class. And if you wanted to take part in the class project, it'd be great if you felt comfortable enough to record yourself playing one of these and upload it to share with the rest of the students so we can all learn and develop and be inspired by Jaffa. This recording can be done, it's just audio or as a video as well. You could just do it on your phone. Or if you want to know a little bit more about music software, then I recommend checking out this class if you are comfortable and confident enough to share it, which I hope you are. And this can be done with a SoundCloud or YouTube link. If you post it on any of the socials, then please use the hashtags that are coming up on the screen. And then there'll be picked up by myself and Skillshare as well. If you want to take this last project a little bit further, once you've learned and work through the exercises that we're covering in this class. See if you can create your own technique that develops you're stretching, strength, finger independence, or speed on the guitar. Maybe create a little PDF of it, or just film yourself playing this exercise and an upload it and share it with the rest of the community. It'd be amazing and really inspiring to see what you could come up with. Yeah, hopefully you will take part in the class project and I'll catch you in the next video. 3. Guidance: Before we get going with the plan, I just wanted to speak in a bit more detail about where these exercises come from and what they're gonna be able to do for you. Most of these are taken from the classical world. There are exercises that are really important for developing a guitarists finger strength, independence, stretching capabilities, and the speed they're able to play it. There's been some really good books that were recommended to me and that I've used over the years. In particular, when I did Classical Studies, which I didn't start until later in life, I started playing guitar at 12, and it went until I was 18, 19. And I started looking at the classical row. And that's when I really felt like I kicked on and developed my overall musicianship. There's one called pumping nylon that is coming up now, excuse to all full cheesy title and cover. But in terms of content is really valuable and I definitely recommend checking it out. There's gonna be some exercises throughout this class that you'll recognize from them. And I've kinda tweaked a couple of things and develops them in ways that I've learned over the years. Another one I recommend is Frederick nodes, solo guitar playing book, some great information and exercises in there, and also a nice, easy introduction to music notation. Now, you don't need to learn to read sheet music for this class. We're just going to be focusing on tab, which has a much more user-friendly way of digesting. And I'm reading music. Hopefully you know about tab. If you don't, then the classes of mine I mentioned earlier, have a nice little lesson on there that will take you through all the basics and get you up and running nice and easy with how to read tab. The grading books are worth looking at music notation again, but the scales, they include a great for developing the technical aspects that we're covering. Scales in general are really good things to learn great for developing your overall musicianship. I plan on doing a specific scales class one day, but if you check my beginner's guide, there's a bit more information in there. And we are going to be including a scale in this class which is going to tie in really nicely with what we're working on. Most of these exercises and techniques were recommended to me by my classical, which you are as daily exercises or warmups. So they are designed for regular practice. Start these exercises slow and if possible, use a metronome because that will hold you to account. It will provide a beat that you need to land on. There's no hiding from the consistency of a metronome. Each time that beat comes back around and you need to be ready for it. You could start down at 70 bpm or slower if you need to, and then just add two BPM gradually each time you play, or even just each day for 14 days, and monitor your progress with videos to see how much you've come on. It might not feel like much progress at the time when you're in the moment, but when you look back after those two weeks, you'll be surprised at how much faster your plan. If you feel comfortable to please share those videos and your successes and development with the rest of us. These exercises will be mainly chromatic, meaning there's one after the other without big intervals in-between, they weren't all sound plays into the ear, but we're not looking for harmony. We're looking to improve. Our playing capabilities are stretched speed, our overall technique. What I will do is help you play a big mix of reefs, solos, compose your own beautiful leads leaks, challenge your play an ability, and tackle a wide variety of music. Once you've learned these exercises, alternate the order of things. Keep your practice varied. Don't get too comfortable with a set routine. Keep things fresh and challenge yourself by all means, create a routine for practicing set times for this, but keep the content that you practice within that time fresh. Once you're comfortable with this content, you could alternate the order that I've presented these lessons in. You could chop up a merge bits of them together and also start to try and think of how you could create some of your own exercises. So there's not lots of different songs covered in this class. There's a couple of my other classes have a bigger focus on that kind of thing. This is all about utilizing exercises to build great foundations in your guitar technique. The crack on with some plane. 5. EX 1 - Metronome Practice: We spoke earlier about the use of a metronome and how important that is for developing our time. And like we said, there's nowhere to hide that metronome is going to occur consistently every beat. And if we want to play on each of those beats, we need to land exactly the right time. So when a good practicing with that one and we can gradually build speed, but without the metronome, we don't have an awareness of exactly how in time we are. So it's good to have a balance of both. So I'm going to demonstrate this exercise with the metronome. Now, I'm going to play at 70 bpm, 70 beats per minute. We're going to do our 1234. We're going to shift all the way up to the point where we have been. I'm going to land on h. I'll give you an example now. I will give you a 1234 count as well if you want to join him with me. But basically every time the next beat arrives, we move to the next node, shifting up and then shifting them. Let's give it a go to free fall. We're getting back. An MRI seemed quite easy, but it's a really good way to start and it will gradually build our technique later I foundations all that sort of stuff. What we're gonna do now is filling the gaps. So you had a 1234, There's beats, smaller increments, smaller movements between those beats to exist. So we want to now fill those gaps. And the way we're gonna do that is by going 1234. And so in-between each one, two, there's an end. And on that and we're going to have our second. Then we're going to play third on the beat and I'm going to fall off, is going to be on an end. And then our fifth will be on the first beat, the first beat, and second beat, and first beat and secondly, and 1234. I'm going to demonstrate that joining with me if you'd like. If not just watched, digest the information, then have a go yourself. 1234123123. And the planet so far with the nice stretch as a unit but travelled a bunch in as well. Cool, you can see how that's doubled the situation for us, made it a lot harder, but really good to improve what we're doing. So now we can have a one around and going on this, what we're going to try in between the first and the second beat, instead of just 1.2. And we're going to have one around a tour and a free year end for our NDA, which is kinda like a up and down the neck of the guitar. We're going to land on the first beat, but it's how we get to the second beat. We want to make sure that our first finger is on the fifth fret. We go 12.3 year and it's quite tricky, but I'm going to count you in again with a 1234 just to demonstrate, have a go along if you want or just watch, digest it. Ever go afterwards. 1234. So let's try that again. 1234. Excellent. So you can see what started as a very simple exercise as very quickly turn into something that's really pushing the speed of your plane and improving that finger strength and stretch as well. A lot of time, all these different attributes we talk about stretch, strength, capabilities of speed. All of that will come into each of these exercises that have an initial focus like this one was with the stretching. But then quite quickly, we've incorporated the other attributes and we're pushing a lot of our plan ability. 6. Hammer-Ons: We're now going to take exercise a bit further by incorporating a hammer on technique. Now, hopefully you've had a look at Hamilton technique before. If not, don't worry, we're going to have a quick little breakdown of what it is now. So let's start by putting our first finger on the lowest E string again, because it makes this technique a little bit harder to do when we work on the thickest string. So we want to push ourselves here, right first finger, first fret of the low. We pluck that once. And then our second finger just comes down with a bit of false onto the second fret. Hammers them. Can see where the name comes from. Night. We're only playing this E string once. But we're getting two nodes because of that hammer on. This, just develop that hammer on technique for a bit. Well, if you play it once, you've got that smooth, that second finger is hammering down just behind the second fret, tucked nice and smooth, clear tone. It four times. Plucking the first string each time, alternating the pattern. Once you're comfortable with that, keep your second finger down. Start hammering the third finger down onto the third fret once. Get nice and confident with that. Once you comfortable, do it for Todd. Third fingers now, down at little finger wants to come into play and we're going to develop the strength with this technique for that little finger onto the full fret. Clear, smooth time. Four times. Another. For now, when you're looking at solos, when you're listening to your favorite lead guitar players, hammer ons will appear all over the place. Doing this technique is going to develop each finger and make sure they're really competent and really good applying Hamilton's. Now let's take that a little bit further. We're just going to play our first finger once. But then our second, third, and fourth fingers are going to hammer on to the second, third, and fourth. Threats like so. We played the string once, we've ended up with four notes. Really good for building the strength. Everything attacks behind the fret, nice clear tone. Once you're comfortable with their slide your first finger to the fifth fret. Same thing. Then slide to the ninth fret. We're doing that first exercise. That is hammer ons. Making good strong contact with that first fret that you pluck. Well, the fifth fret, wherever your starting point at those blocking for is we don't want to ****** of the string. We still want a nice clean time. We want it to be play confidently. We want to get enough of that note. Again, start slow with that. Use your metronome as a reference. You could maybe put it around 70 bpm slower if you need to. And on that first beat, play that first note. See if you can land all the other fingers before you have to get to the next beat. If you can't, that's fine. Like it all land on the beat. Or they could all exist in-between. Start slowly, gradually build to improve the stretching of our fingers that a little bit more. In that first lesson, we also did the exercise where we went one to one and our second finger stretch to the third. You can try those as Hammer runs as well. And if you've already done the first exercise we did earlier when you're doing your daily practice or your regular practice, you should hopefully know is where you've already stretched and warmed up your fingers. They're quite good at making that stretch. Now, the CI you get on with that, see how far you can push it. Don't overdo it. If you're feeling too many strains around your wrist, stop, relax, take it easy. Give yourself a bit of a break. We don't want to overdo anything. We're just looking to gradually stretch and improve the capabilities of our hands. Another development at this with the freshness in mind and alternating things is once you've played the first floor on the low E string, one slide to the a string, and then the date. And then the GI. It's really good for trial to test your brain to remember where your next time point is because you're not just going little finger over to the same string. You're not having to jump to the next string. And remember what your starting point would be. Fifth Friday, I know I'm Fred today. For infrared, the 17th fret of the B that you fall in, 15, 16, 17. Excellent. You can choose where to implement these into your practice. I think they're great things to do at the beginning before you start properly getting into the song scales, riffs, lead leaks wherever it is you're learning because they're great way of getting your hands warmed up. I'm going to sell that point a lot in this class. If you find that you've just started to do some cold work, you're playing along to a few of your favorite tracks, you're about to tackle some scales or lead risks than our warm up with a few of these exercises before you go any further. 7. Pull-Offs: Next we're going to look at a technique called pull-ups, covered Hammer runs. This is basically a reverse technique of that style. Here it loads in different pieces of music really cool thing to have in your locker to mix it up. We're going to start on a different strings. So we're going to start with the d this time. If you could put your first finger on the first fret of the D, Then your second finger on the second fret of the D. We're going to play that the string. After we've played it. We pull our second finger across the string. Hence, why it's called a pull off. When we do that, we want to make sure our first finger stays where it is. We don't want to be bending that first finger down as well. Because then we're really affecting the note, the technique that we're trying to build. So first thing is stay where it is. Second finger on the second fret. Lucky ones. And pull across. Once you've done that second to first, put your third finger down and we go to second. We played it a string again. This time I'm keeping our first and second finger down. And a third finger is pulling off. Just so you can see that I'm on the tips of my fingers and I play that string pool finger across the strings. Once you've got those three down, we start with our little finger on the forefront. We pull that off to the third. Notice we're only plucking the string once. And then our left hand, a fretting hand, whether that's your left or right, that's the rest of the technique. Once you've done on them individually, Let's go from our forefinger to our first one here again on the D string, 12344. Notes taking place. You're really working on the strength of each finger here as well. Once you've done that first position of the first four frets, move up to the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth, but start with your little finger. And pulled way back to the fifth fret in another four. And then another four. And then the last row. I'm reversed. And that we spoke about before. Try these on different strings. If you do it on the lowest string, the thick E string, you get more resistance. It's harder to put a cross but give it a go, because as always, it will improve and build that technique. Start with just a second, first, second, third. And then all of them. To keep building this who are affected and improving our overall ability. Start to combine these elements that we've just learned. Initial stretching exercise with a hammer on and pull offs across each string. You can hammer the frets all the way up. And then when you went back down, you can do to pull off. So let's try it out on the ice stream. Then pull ups on the way down. With that working down, remember that when we did the initial stretching exercise, as soon as you've played that last note of that block of four, we need that little finger ready to jump into the next block of four. Then maybe try and jump across different strings, starting on that with a hammer on day. You could maybe pick the first foreign way back and then pull off and then pick and pull off an alternate that technique. And then work your way back up. It's so important to have variety to these techniques. Don't be too rigid with them. When you see these sort of things on paper, they can be quite formal. We want to be creative with them. I feel like I'm just opening the door for you with these techniques. I'm showing you some exercises that are going to be really beneficial. Your guitar plan to take this initial advice and then approach it in your own unique way. Cfr, you can take it, see how much variety you can add and see how much it's really going to positively affect your guitar playing. Because you will approach this in your own style. Everyone has their own style and it's really important to recognize and appreciate your own unique creative voice. So be aware of that. Learn more about IT. Discovery as often as you can and look to expand on it and see what you can create as a result. 8. Mark Tremonti - Riff & Exercise: We're now going to look at something that I'm going to say is a riff and an exercise brought together and it utilizes the exercises and the techniques we've just been working. This was created by the guitarist mark true Monte. You might know him from bands like all to bridge and creed. And he's also done a ton of his own stuff. Amazing guitarist, if I'm totally honest, it weren't a sort of guitar playing and style that got me into music and guitar when I was a kid. My background was more Nirvana, pixies, radio ed, early Green Day. But I always had a huge admiration for guitarist that could play in this way. And I had a ton of mates that were banging to Metallica. I made and pant era dabble with a bit of soul flying machine and that sort of thing. But anyway, this ray for this exercise, I've found it in a metal hammer magazine when I was like 13, 14 amounts of money had said this was something that he'd written as a way to warm up, get your fingers go in before it play a show or before I was about to rehearse or wherever. This was a little exercise that he designed and I've always remembered it. It just stuck in my head because as much as I wasn't listening to tons of that sort of music, I took this is a really cool way to be able to develop my guitar playing. And I think that's so important. Never shut the door. Two different styles of music, because they'll always be something you can take from it and implement into your own style and own development. So this is gonna be really cool for stretching our fingers. It's got a good little slide in it, a tiny little hammer on and pull off section. And generally just very good for our finger independence. Also a thing to highlight with this riff is it's going to be in drop, which means we need to detune our lowest E string down to a D. I'm not too sure where you are in your awareness of tuning, but for those people that might need to know a little bit about it, I'm just going to briefly explain. That means that we need to drop our E string a whole step down to it. The one way we can do this is by using a headstock tuner. And we would just want to bring that down until it becomes Lovely. Another way we can do it if we don't have a tuner, is we can use the a string to help us tune that lowest E string down to a D. So I'm just going to quickly demonstrate that for us. Sharpen that E string again a little bit. If I play the fifth fret of the a string, that's actually a dino. I'd want that low E string to sound the same as the fifth fret of the eye, which he doesn't at the moment. So we would just bring that down a little bit more. The more you do it, you'll get used to hearing what they sound like together, the a and the a string. And then once you think that's in a closed position, you check it again. And here they sound the same. Now, I can make that a little bit sharper. Here itself. I bring that down again. Now sounded exactly the same. We've turned that Loewy and two a day. That union is used loads in all sorts of music, but particularly in more of that metal Vive, it's got a real sort of chugging filter. It sounds good. Okay, So this crack on with that riff, we're going to start by playing at the open a string. This now the tuned to a day three times. We're going to have our fingers ready to play the temp fret of the a string with our third, the eighth fret of the E string with our first. Then we go 1, 231-231-2310, a ten. Once you've played that, we then go back to our free open notes. But this time we got 878. So altogether got back to our tonight. And as soon as you've played that temp fret, we want to slow it our first finger to the 12th. Remember when we spoke about stretching exercises early or finger is covering each fret. That first thing is they're waiting to go up to the 12th. You could even bunch it. Soon as you've played that tenth fret, first finger comes a little bit closer, slides to the 12th altogether. 710. Up to the 12th. When you get to that 12, we go 12, 14, 15. And then 12, 15, 14 on the a. We woke up and then back down starting with a 12th fret of the fifth day info in on the when we play that 12th fret of the I don't move your furred and little fingers far away from the guitar. Keep them ready to play the E string because we know we're gonna go back to that. The further we move away, the further we have to come back. We lose that fluid that either we're after. Excellent altogether from the top. And keeping that alternating pattern that we spoke about at the beginning so that we're getting more speed, more consistency with your picking hand risks nice and low thumb center of the neck so we can get a nice spread with our fingers. We didn't go back to the top of the roof. This time once we've played that 87, we go down to the seventh fret of D. Our first finger is already on that. Fred just needs to move a couple of strings down. Nice small little movements. And this is where a little hammer on and pull off takes place. Nice and simple. It loads that earlier. We can smash this. Once you've done that with the second finger on the eighth fret, we bring our little finger up to the temp for LEA, and back to the seventh fret other days, so that little section goes, lovely little sound. Hammer on little finger. Tenth for the a, acted the same for the day. So that second section altogether. Now we have a little run back and run up on the a string. We're going to go 107 and then back up to the tenth. So we get a little hammer on. And they said it was seven from the day and ten from the eye there again as well. Let's go from that hammer on it slowly. 107107 from the D back to the a. And I see when we're around this shape, I'm never moving my fingers too far away from the strings are the threats that they're going to need to use. I've pretty much got that four fret stretch going on the whole time. Even though that third finger doesn't appear, we don't need to use it on the ninth fret of the a. It's there to give me that stability and continue that stretch across all the threats that we need. And that is your whole exercise, slash riff. Cool, Nice and slow to begin with, the build that place. It's one that sounds pretty cool once you start to pick up the tempo with it, but don't rush there, don't get there too quick. Start nice and slow. Gradually build it. Maybe use a metronome like we did in our exercises earlier. Use that metronome at a couple of BPM. And then over time you'll slowly notice how much your improvement in how much you're smashing the speed of it. Just as another example. Love that. Maybe just take little parts of it as well. I really liked that little hammer on and run down here. You could turn that into its own little exercise as well, right? Let's crack on with some more exercises. 9. Exercise 2: Now we're going to look at a technique to improve the strength and speed of our fingers. We're going to start nice and simple, incorporating the techniques that we've already worked on where we've had a fourth finger stretch. But we're going to develop that idea of moving our fingers as a unit, all supporting each other. And this is going to become really handy in the riff that we're going to learn after this lesson. So let's just start on the a string. This time. We're going to play OpenID. And we're going to go first finger down onto the first fret. Second finger down with the first finger comes with it. Fingers go down. Oh, free thing is go down this time. On and off together and then open. Everything's moving as a unit. I think that speed up a little bit. Cool. That's a nice way to start. I'd recommend once you're comfortable with that and you maybe have tried it on strings. Maybe we haven't used the high strings much for this trailer. High E is something I should be more mindful of and it's definitely somehow back to work on over the years. He's making sure my little finger is curved and close to the strings and doesn't come too far away. I notice that bad habit creeping still sometimes. So I want to make sure that little thing ready to come down, It's not really far away. Further away is the February has to travel back. So that's something for you to be mindful of as well. Now, once you've done that as a warm up, we're now going to slide, but still try and move as a unit. We're gonna go from the first fret to the 13th fret. I'm sliding under the D there, but let's get back to the first frame. And then 13. Note ring for him. Then we slide it to the 13th. We relaxed. It is not too much threatened. And we just bouncing from one end to the guitar. Now at the second, which would be 13, 14, it's the same note, an octave up. They said the Fed three. Is that the full 15, 16? Let's go from the top now, start quite slow, but we'll go 112-123-1234 with that bounce to the higher octave as well. See, I'm trying to not leave a gap in-between the now apply here and then now I play out, bear, if there's one. I want to be straight up to that. Fair enough away. It's 123. I'm straight up and I'm adding the 15th, 16th. That's a really good one to practice with a metronome as well. Now let's reverse that. Say we finished up here on our 1234 16. Now this reverse 16 has gotta jump back to 416, 50% for freight and so on. Moving as a unit. See how I'm making that joke. I'm keeping four fret stretch times. Each finger is ready line. Now it needs to play in between shifts. Another really important one to start slow and then gradually build. I always remember my classical guitar to you, telling me a story about a world famous violin plot fan of Hades who got to stay in the hotel room next to this violin player. And we're so excited about getting to hear him play and potentially practice in the room next door to him. And was so disappointed when he realized that just everything is player practiced was so slow, he was expecting this beautiful montage of master violin playing already heard was just this slow repetition of bouncing up and down around the violin player one octave to another, just all these slow, beautiful notes, but every single one of them came through clear as day. That's the point. If you could do something that's slow and play it perfectly and you've given yourself the right platform to build upon. That's the thing when you're playing that slow your iron in our every crease, you're making sure your technique is perfect, I think are really important variation to implement. So you're really getting the most out of this exercise is to ensure that you jumped from string to string. Don't get too complacent and comfortable. Just plan on that. If you start on the I got to the same as if you're reversing. Say you're on the sixth, fret, too much. I've been up to really starting to challenge yourself. Now, you can see how that leads to those virtuoso guitar players that you see that applying something really complicated up here and then they fly it. Or if I render the guitar, throw out another crazy lick. All about this. This is building those right foundations, that right techniques to get you used to be comfortable all over the guitar. So let's try it with a metronome set at 70 bpm, like we did earlier. 10. EX 2 - Metronome Practice: So like earlier, I'm going to start by playing on the beat with this exercise. So it's just gonna be the first fret on the first beat, 13th, three on the second beat, and I'm back, and I'm going to do 12 on beats 1.2 for full Wayne on beats 1.2, and so on. Then I'm going to fill the gap with the 1.2 ends. Then I'm going to fit free nodes in-between each beat. And then I'm going to do it are one or two around three, around four or random that we spoke about earlier. That might sound a bit confusing at first, but just watch this part of the lesson. Try and follow along if you want to. If not, just sit back, take it all in and then have a go yourself, you will make more sense when I play in front of you. 1234. You can see how that changes from being nice and relaxed a pretty odd very quickly, especially when you have to fit those free nodes in-between the beats, the one around up. Again, amazing. You can just see how much that would benefit your ability to bounce around from place to place with a really good, solid technique, clear tonal quality, and loads of great finger strength, independence and stretch. 11. Riff: Muse - Plug In Baby: We're now going to look at the track plugging baby by the band news. This is a really cool riff to utilize all these exercises and techniques that we've been working on. And it's just a cool riff to play it with something I learned when I was really young and getting involved in playing the guitar. And I honestly feel like it was something that really kicked on my belly. So I'm just going to play that riff through for you once and then we'll get cracking with it. So straight away hopefully you can see how we've got that four fret stretch going on site techniques we've worked on really handy for this. We need to have that capability of going across those four frets and being tucked nicely behind each one. There was a little hammer on in there as well. Then that means another big stretch as well. And then bend in there. We're going to work a bit more on bins later on. So yeah, great one to incorporate a loaded the techniques we've been working on this, break it down. So we're going to start with our third finger on the eighth fret of the D string. We want our first and second fingers down on the sixth and seventh as well in just for that anchor, for that stability and to prepare themselves for the notes that are coming later, we start by going on the D string and then we played our 8.9 again, we add the seventh fret of the G, so we're adding one each time. Keeping a third and fourth. These fingers despair at the moment, ready to get back and play with? I need to play after this first and second finger of finished. So from the top. This time when we go back to the d, We just played a ninth. We don't worry about playing the eighth. This time. We've gone. Once we hang on that note and the G, This is where our first hammer on comes in and we're going to use as second and third fingers. We go seven fret. Third finger hammers down. Remember when we did our Hammer runs with each finger earlier. This is where that comes in handy. Commas down off the ice. And then we do a rundown. Loved. This time when we start the riff again, we think of this as the next section. Draw a line under that first bit. First section done, we've done, I haven't run and run. There. We go. We play again. Then this time the sick phrase as starting point. We go to that fret of the B. I'd like you to move your first finger there rather than using your second finger. And you'll see why in a minute. So let's go from that second section, which was on the ninth fret of the D. First thing that goes to the seventh for the b. And then we pulled off again. Then this time our little finger comes across to the temp played at Tim fret of the G. Back to the sub problems we haven't resonating together. A bit nasty. So we've done a hammer on the G, him from the GI. The top, the top of that second section. This Trump put both those sections together. Now let's think of that as section one and section two. For the day. She'll second finger I'm first the hammer on and pull off. And this is where we want to lay our first finger flat across the B, G, and E strings for that little run up the strings that you hear as well. Let me go. And third finger comes across to the ninth by itself to fight that hammer on and the temp fret of the G. We're going to resolve that last little bit now, go back to that flat across the BD. And before me, your third finger comes to the ninth fret of the B. End up a half-step. We come back down to resolve that bed. Seventh fret of the B, frame, the chin. So let's go back to that little run up the strings. Bending sim for Tim, 777, 67. Here we go back to where we started with the eighth fret of the D. To the little finger on the ninth fret, the day shift to the first finger on the seventh fret of the B hammer on the string. Except firstly, we'll look. So that is the whole beginning of the song. Now I'm going to play that from the top for you. Nice and slow. Really good. That's a great one to get in. You're lucky, you can totally see how that would benefit so much of your techniques. I persevered without one, Take it slow build know by now and I promise eventually you'll get there. You'd be playing that really smooth. 12. Exercise 3: Notice there's been a little bit of a change of guitar going on here. That's because the jazz master, for some reasons now, to make this really weird buzzing noise. But I've always got this Old Faithful on me. As you can see, it's been through the wars a little bit over the years, but I love that it's got a few good scars and scratches. And this has been with me from the early days. So yeah, I love playing this guitar anyway, but enough, reminiscing for me about how much I loved his guitar. I'm sure you're not interested in that. We're now going to work on an exercise that's going to improve our finger independence and strength is gonna be played across four strings and four frets. Whereas before we were just using one string and working our way up, we're now gonna be spreading across stage strings and threats at the same time. Like if you supply code is an arpeggio. Asynchronous sound, as pretty as that does. But that's okay because this is just about improving our technique yet. So let's start with the first finger on the first fret of the lowest E string. We then play the second fret of the a string, second finger, and then third fret of the D. Third finger. Forefinger. Nice big stretch from staying nice and central on the back of that. Next, we can really help our fingers fan out and at rest is nice and low as well. And as you can see, that helps us, like we did earlier with that technique, helps us with this one as well. And you have some plan that in a more of staccato like a stagy kind of way. I'm relaxing the fingers so the notes cut dead. I'm not letting it ring out. And I'm doing that on every string. And I'm alternating that peak in as well. Once you've played those first four frets, 5678, you get divided by now, we're working our way up. This time once you get there, rather than just reversing that shape to keep things fresh, to keep things getting mixed up, swap around the order of the strings. So instead of our first two full finger go from the e to the g first and then status and the J and works out to the lowest day your little finger. And we do that all the way back. Ascending, descending. When we've got to that last one up here, we want to think a bit like a bunching technique earlier. Remember once we played the first note with the first finger, we started to move that first finger. There was bunching up. We are now going to do a similar thing here. But once that first fingers played, it starts to make its way down to the j. So that when we've got a play D sending our first finger hasn't got travel as far. Again, when we speak about all those little nuances, all those tiny little bits that we can glue together to make things a bit smoother. I'm just tidying up that transition. Actually, you can make that a little exercise itself. Always be aware of that action. You could stumble across something that you're like. Cool, that'll be a really good little techniques to improve my development rather than just going up and down the whole time. Let's do that. Really cool for getting your hand to work. You could do that anywhere. Feel like we're knocking on the door at jazz there. Okay, so we've done the first fret all the way up and we've got ascending and descending play around with that. So what you can do something that'd be really good for your technique, really good stretch, really good strength and independence there to be fair, ticking all the boxes. Now another little exercise that I learned from one of those books I recommended earlier, we're going to cover two strings this time. First finger is going to start covering the D and the G string in the first position. When I first fret, focus in the tip of our finger on that day, a second finger then place the second fret of the G. But we play them together at the same time. Once you've played that, once, we bring our second finger up to the second fret of the D, leaving our first finger where it is. But we need to make sure our first finger is flat enough, so it brings out the g. And we get something like this. We go back to where we started. Second thing is second fret. Up to the second fret. The chin blocks are free. When she played the first and second finger. Put that second finger on the second fret. Swap those around a third finger. Now place the third fret of the G, and then the third fret of the D, and then back to the third fret of the G. So together that would be keep first and second finger where they are bringing the third finger up. That's now our starting point. Little finger comes into the full fret of the G. Tonight in them. Hopefully be able to feel that tension around these fingers going down to the rest of your hertz at any point, stop. Rest. Never overdo it. But if you can push a little bit further, if it feels okay, if it feels like you're just developing and you're working your muscles, That's cool. If you're straining them, stop, take a break from the top. We move up to the next block of four. Now, Brian, Nice fingers, work and dependent muscle memory. If you've played him to the car. We did in the first half, natural and play legato. Let those notes ring out. Trying to make that transition as smooth as we can. You can begin to combine both the elements that we've learned here. You can start with that arpeggio exercise. For nervous hemorrhoids. When we're making ourselves think on the spot when not getting used to a rigid format. We're being creative with fluctuate in our plane. We're making it diverse. We're really adding loads of different elements. So applying, broadening our styles, really developing our ability. Brilliant. There we go. There's another couple of exercises that you've now got available. I always like to refer back to it's down to the student a lot of time where you implement these into your practice. It's not like you've got to do every one of these back-to-back. That's not going to be the most exciting and creative thing to do. From a few of them into your guitar practice. Start with one or two of these as a warm-up exercise. Maybe that's stretching when we did at the beginning, maybe then on this one. So you're kind of developing first exercise into something new to stretch. Don't do the same thing every time. If you're playing the guitar daily, don't always do the same order of stretching and warm up exercises. It's good to have routine. And that routine I believe should be playing the guitar. And it's good to form some habits obviously, and some structure, but it shouldn't be exactly the same every time. Challenge ourselves, break the mold. Don't always stick to the same format. And I firmly believe you will see your guitar playing and your ability developed a lot quicker when you're ready. Join me in the next lesson. 13. Guitar Bends: Okay, we're now going to look at Guitar bins. If this is something you're already familiar with, the so-called feel free to crack on and jump on to the next lesson if you want to, hopefully they'll still be something you can gain from this. So stick with us. Firstly, I want to say these are really good for incorporating the stretching and independence exercises that we were doing earlier. Because a lot of time bins will be spread over 23 or four frets and obviously using more than one finger. So we've been doing some good groundwork already there, great ear training and they're a great way of adding a bit of variety to what you're playing on the guitar. So to understand them a little bit further, Let's say if we was playing the seventh fret of the B string, That's an F-sharp. Now, if I then played the ninth fret of the G, that's an ino. Now, I could make that G and F sharp by going up a whole step. 11 for it would then be the same note as that seventh fret debated we just spoke about. I could also make that G string become an F sharp by bending it up with my third finger, but making sure I keep my first finger planted submitted. Where it's already here, how those two notes find each other. It's lucky, hits a sweet spot. That means you have pushed that G string that's currently playing an ino up, you've been the hub. So it becomes that F sharp. F sharp is what your first finger is playing. Coy, and they can be played up and down. The fretboard. Loved him. So it's great. And what you wanna do when you're bending is we're using that second finger to help us push up the third finger. Without this kind of second thing is in no man's land, we might as well have it there to help us get to where we need to bake another place we can play these bands, which is very common in the guitar solos do here, is if we play it, let's say the seventh fret of the E string now. And then the temp fret. If the base string, seventh fret of the a is playing a B note, this temp fret of the B string is playing an ANOVA. We want to move it a whole step Up to be the mates that Theano we have down here. We do it like that. We're utilizing our second finger again to help us push that third finger up. And we're keeping our first finger submitted where it was to begin with. Until those notes, me. And you find that sweet spot. That can also be done up and down the guitar. As long as you're keeping that distance of my first finger and then you go up 123 frets. So you're covering for friends who were together. String. You can get that bend. You will see some people play that bend with the little finger instead of the third. Which is cool, good way to do it. And actually by doing it that way, you get your second and your third finger to help you push your little finger up. If you're struggling with the first and third, feel like you need a bit more support to push that little finger up. Use your second and third. You can move them up and down as well. The reason I'm going through these bend is because I want you to start thinking about how you could write your own lead licks as well as their own and other people's, which is amazing and all these cool roofs and solos out there, I'm sure you're going to want to tackle. Each time you learn one, you'll probably pick up a new technique. You'll hear a guitarist approaches something a little bit differently. And that's what I've been trying to encourage in this class. Obviously that you should start to discover what your unique style is. So by learning these bins, when you start to approach different styles of music to learn, and then think about composing yourself. You can have this variety of techniques and exercises and little tips and tricks that you can implement into your own plan. Another bend I want to talk about is called a ghost note. A ghost Ben is where instead of playing a note and then bend it out, we start with the note already bent down. So if I was playing that temp fret of the G, cool, it's a nice f. Now, if I start down here, see that scope, you have a whole new field today. Give me a little bit of a wobble afterwards. Again, you can find them all over. When any string, it's not already been up. And come dance in the note that you want to get to. Not always going to be something you want to use, but a good thing to know about. Now what I thought we'd do in this lesson is take those bins and write our own little lead lick. I've put something together, quite simple, straightforward little riff that I'm going to show you just to demonstrate how we can use a couple of those bends to write a nice little lead riff. And then I'd encourage you to go and think about your own one and make sure you get at least two bends in there and it'll go spend and then something else with either the first and third are the first and fourth somewhere on the fretboard that's different to where I've started. Start by learning the one that I'm going to show you now in the tub will come up on the screen and think about how you could create your own one as well. So I'll quickly run through that. It will rip that off, put together, pause this if you want to have a little look at the tab that's coming up on the screen and then I'll break it down. Right? So we're starting there with the eighth fret of the G. We go 810. And then we got 11 on the B. And then I on the highest, a nice little run up, 1011. And then I go snout comes in. So we want to pull that G down, pluck it once, ghost. And then after we've done that, we go which is I and the j ten on the day that I own the gene. Lovely. Then we've got the big band, which is the eighth fret of the a and the 11th fret of the B with bending that. But you know, so it becomes the same note, which is a, C, a ghost. Bend. After we've done that, we come back down, we released the better, catch the B and E. And then we go in the bay ten on the j. And then we repeat that. I own the bay ten or Muji and on ten on the day. Cool. So I'm not gonna break that down too much. It's a good one. If you want to learn it, you can pause the lesson. You've got to tap coming up on the screen. Take your time with it for hopefully just learn a few things from what we've been covering there and try and create your own little lead leak. 14. Riff: Layla: We're going to look at one more riff in this class. And that is the one that appears in Leyla by the band Derek and the Dominos, who this be fair, probably best known for the guitarist Eric Clapton, phenomenal talent got to be honest once someone who necessarily inspired me when I was younger. But man, you gotta have respect for people that can do things like he can on their incredible. And this riff is great for bringing together a lot of the exercises that we've worked on. It's going to use our finger strength as stretching capabilities are independent and what we were just working on the bends, I'm just gonna have a quick plate, fruit that riff and then we'll start to break it down. Let's break that roof down. We start on the tenth fret of the pastry, and we hammer a little finger onto the 13th fret of the B. We can use a second, third finger to help us bring that strip them of the little finger more stable. Then we go to the 10th fret of the E. And we do again to the third fret, but this time it's pulled off as well. So we've gone from app-based string, a string. Then we go back to that thing for it to be. A very quick note that the infrared but you wouldn't comes back. And we got first big band bending up, so it becomes genome. And then once we've done the bins, we bring it back down payment Same for it again. Then we go to the 12th fret of the B. Sometimes you say, sometimes you say people play that day note here already, but we're going to go up to the slide that I lost. Note this time I'll pluck the string as well. Now we repeat most of that first phrase again. We did a hammer own attempts to define. The next bit. This time the bend happens here on the 15th fret of the a. And once we've bending up, we come back down and we played a note about the bend as well. We got back to the second half of that reef without higher band. Again, I lost know that 30 to 50 if you want to see what other people did. Second half of the husband. Since altogether, many does the first half of the game. The second half. This time instead of sliding up to the fifth day, it just does a little half-step. And that is the node is needed to fit the key of music that occurs after that lead riff altogether with that half-step end, at the end, the beginning, and into the rest of the music. It's one of those risks are when you play it slow, almost sounds a bit odd that hammer on and you kinda missing the fluidity. Once you speed it up to more of its normal tempo, then you start to really hear and feel the vibe of it. But don't get too quick. Like always, slow that down, it nice and steady, gradually build the place. I'll also point out that you might see Clapton and other guitarists play that hammer on to the third fret with the third finger. Because you are then ready to do that bend with the third finger because he wasn't doing it with the label. All those little nuances that make people's guitar playing live. We spoke about a lot in this class, a lot smoother to see what works best for you. I think it's quite good to get that little finger stronger and practicing that hammer on with the first and middle. But if that's too tricky, just go to that third. I mean, one of the best guitarists in the world does it let it, where we've been working on these little exercises about strengthening and stretching and independence, I thought was quite cool because you will see some guitarists as well do it like that with the little finger. But men, There's nothing wrong with getting through it that way. If you want everything else to stay the same, it's just the third finger replaces the little finger, so there's hammer on and pull off on the 13th fret would be Buford. Also another little thing to point out to make it even smoother. I think when you come back off of there and you go back to this fight for it here. It's almost like that no, isn't hammered on again, but without the addition of heat in the string. See what I'm doing there. That little finger goes back up to the base string, the tip for it still push down with the first little finger. Chromosomes. It's a really subtle little no, I think that makes everything sound a little bit cleaner. If you try to plot the note. Works, but it may be sometimes gets a little bit jumpy, especially if you're just starting to learn this riff. It's a bear that in mind as well. You might want to tweak in that slide as well from another little thing, rather than going need to pluck that string, you could just really nice smooth transition to play around with it. See what works best for yourself, but also chicken a few captive videos because you'll learn a thing or two from that. 15. Scales: For their good idea to include at least one scale shaping this class. And then what we can do is use the techniques that we were working on earlier, incorporate them within that scale. And then you'll hopefully see how much you've learned and how much they scale shape will continue to improve your plan ability for those who might not know, a scalar is basically a selection of notes following each other, either ascending or descending. When you take a particular set of nodes, combined them together, you create keys of music. Once in these keys of music, you can then take particular note is that exist there to create codes, e.g. if he was playing the first, the third, and the fifth note of a major scale together, you would be creating a major chord. I'm not too sure where you are on your music theory journey, but we're not going to delve deep here. We're just going to take a scale shape for the benefit of our technique development, where literally scratching the surface here. If you want to go a bit deeper than checkout my beginner guitar class, because there's some information in there. There's another really cool music theory class popping up on the screen now, or one day in the future, I'm gonna be doing a full class on music theory. So keep an eye out for that scale we're going to use is called the C major scale. We start on the eighth fret of the E string, and we play that with our second finger. Tap nice and closely behind the fret. Our first finger is on that seventh fret wire because we're going to need that later. But it's our second finger on the eighth fret, the sound in the night we want. Our little finger then comes across to that temp for it. We've already got that four fingers stretch going on that we spoke about earlier. Everything is lying in wait in case it's needed. Ten on the E string. Then we go seven. On the ice stream, which are the notes. I tend seven. We go 7910. We've actually played the first octave there, which means we've traveled from FSC to a highest. See. After that, we move into the second octave where we go 79107, this guy from the top. And then we reverse that 977. There'll be faster hoses lesson if you need to have a little look at the tablets coming up on the screen and get familiar with that shape. Because once you are, we're then going to start to incorporate those techniques that we used earlier to really spice everything up a little bit. Now, instead of playing that and that really straight way that we did plucking each note, use those hammer ons that we worked on earlier. So we just play the first note. Then that little finger hands down onto the temp. We'd get to the eye and we'd play the seventh. Eighth and Tim for just hammered down. Next, drink. And bring your fingers too far away from the fretboard because they have to travel further back. Once you've got that, tried to pull offs to come back up. Which played at first note, which is the iFrame. But enough to seven. Start with what I think is a little finger pause after the name. And then a third finger pause after the seventh. But we only play the string once. Same as we move up. A little bit tougher on it, you get a bit more resistance. Really digging with our little finger. And you'll get that sound. So hammer on when you're ascending or descending. We've just pushed our playing forever. We've mixed up our routine. We haven't got to settled in a particular format. We're working ourselves hard to always push in our ability, always challenging ourselves. I lied a little bit when I said we're just going to do the C major scale because that shape can just be moved up and down the fretboard. It can be moved chromatically, which means it can go one at a time. And as long as you maintain that same distance between the frets, you will be playing the next scale, the next major scale. So if this was say, starting on the eighth fret of the a, if you move it up one, and you start on the ninth fret of the a when they're playing the C major scale. One more good plan that they may just go. You can go back. We're playing the G major scale if we start on the third. Good to play some one's lower on the fretboard as well because those threats are slightly further apart, so it makes it stretch a little bit more. There we go. You've now got a scale shape. Alright, we learned one. You've got every major key that you can play. Pick any string, or you can add those hammer ons and offs for technique development. For those of you who want to note that was the major scale because I was playing on the 12th fret. And if I'm telling you something, you already know the open strings, it's exactly the same notes when you play it on the 12th fret, the octave start again. So E, a, D G, B, E is the same on the 12th fret, E, D, G. Quite handy little trick if you didn't already know that, because that's basically pretty much half the length of the guitar. So if you didn't know all these notes to exist in-between, but you know your E, a, D, G, B, and E open. You also now I'm on the 12th fret, then you've only got to learn this pit in-between, still a lot, but learn the chromatic scale, Asimov beginning guitar class, remember that the notes open at the same on the 12th fret. Everything starts to become a little bit more digestible. There we go. We've covered a scale shape as well. I think that's a great one to leave you with. It covers all six strings. It's got two octaves. And we can start to incorporate those techniques to hammer on and pull off so that we spoke about earlier and mix that up as well. Don't feel like you have to do all his hammer ons all as Perloff orders, the Pickin, just start the frozen. And then you can start to hear how they become lead solos, lead licks, really cool roofs, and you can create your own just from that scholarship, I'll do a scale class one day. But for now, jumping out at the beginning guitar class if you want or just say what you can do with the information that we've covered here. 16. Final Thoughts: That brings us to the end of the class. Thank you so much for work in the hallway for it. It really does mean a lot. And I hope you feel like you've got plenty from it. So let's try and recap and sum everything up. Start slow, gradually build that speed. Like I said, you don't want to be cutting corners. You don't wanna be racing ahead when you haven't perfected everything IN OUT those creases, it really will give you the best foundations to build upon and make sure everything is as good as it can be. Keep your learning, interesting, fun, and creative. You don't want things to go style, like I've hit home a lot in this class and make sure everything feels fresh. You can vary the order of these lessons. You can take certain sections and merge them together. Chop up the exercise within the lessons, play one-half of one and then one half of another. Really, keep challenging yourself, making sure your fingers don't get too complacent because it's only going to benefit you if you keep things fresh in that way, you really will notice it's so much in your guitar playing and the things that you're able to do. One thing I always try to get home in my classes is believe in your own creative ability. All of these previous learning points and outcomes, and apply them in ways that will help you start to write your own music, lead ideas and silos. You definitely have the ability to create your own music or write your own silos if that's what you wanna do, that is some people are more than happy to play other people's music and that's totally cool as well. So go and learn as many different lead riffs, licks, solos, and songs that you possibly can, because each one will add something different you're playing ability. It's important to be diverse in this approach as this will really help broaden your style. It'd be great if you could get involved in the class projects, so please feel free to upload something if you ever recorded it. Remember, you can just take one of the exercises that we've worked on throughout this class. And you could record yourself just the audio or the video and the audio. Upload it to SoundCloud or YouTube. Share it with us on here, let everyone know what you're doing and we can receive feedback, share our successes, learn from each other and generally just be inspired by what everyone is up to you if you do share it on any other socials, remember those hashtags? And if you want any help with the music software side of recording checkout that class that I mentioned earlier, please feel free to get in touch with any questions or comments that you have to see from the interaction under these classes and the others that I always get back to students I genuinely loved hearing via. So please feel free to get in touch food or discussions that are within this class. Drop me a line on any of those contact details that are coming up on the screen. Reviews also huge for helping other people find this class and also to help me understand what's being received well, I want to learn and develop from you as well. So please, if you enjoyed this class, you've got any feedback, any comments you want to make them please leave a little review would be great to hear from you. And lastly, on that note about hearing from you, I've had students get in touch previously making requests about certain songs. So they wanted me to cover or certain topics they wanted me to look at. And I've actually managed to implement them into some of the classes I've created. So got any suggestions, anything you want to learn, hit me up and I'll see what I can do it. You might be at the end of this class, but those techniques aren't over this so much you can do with them. Push the boundaries, Be creative, mix it up, see what you can do. Hope you see those exercises for what they are. Really good ways of building good foundations, strong technique, improving the stretch, strength and independence of your fingers. Implement them within your practice in a way and a routine that works for you. Don't be scared to be diverse, don't be scared to mix up the schedule and the routine. Be creative with your thinking and be creative with your plane. You've definitely got the ability and by the looks of it, you've got the attention because you've made it to the end of this class. I wish you all the best. Please feel free to get in touch and hopefully see you in another class soon. Take care.