How to develop your left hand for guitar. Useful exercises for a guitarist. Development of the fingers of the left hand. "Ladder on one string"

Greetings! For beginning virtuoso guitarists, coordinating the movements of hands and fingers when playing the guitar is quite difficult.

I want to offer you a few simple exercises for finger and hand coordination! It is advisable to practice with a metronome and start at a slow tempo. If you are already a seasoned guitarist, don’t run away - try these simple exercises. You may discover something new about how your fingers behave. To make the guitar sound, finger exercises are simply necessary.

Exercise 1

Place your hands on the table, palms down, and with your left hand pat slowly and evenly on the table, and with your right hand draw large circles on the table! Then hands switch tasks!

Exercise 2

Under the metronome, and lightly touching the table with the palms of your hands, simultaneously draw a square on the table with your left and right hands. Synchronously and asynchronously.

Exercise 3

Thumb with the left hand, at a moderate pace, touches the pads of the remaining fingers in the direction from the index to the little finger and back. Thumb right hand“walks” in the same direction and pace, but touches each finger twice! Then the hands change!

Exercise 4

Let's complicate exercise 3! "We're walking" thumbs both hands simultaneously in the following sequence:

Exercise 5

It's not unimportant to have good stretching for the left hand! Suitable for stretching next exercise: with your right hand, pull the adjacent fingers of your left hand, namely fingers 1-2, 2-3, 3-4.

Exercise 6

At first, when I was just starting to learn to play the guitar, I did this exercise for the fingers of both hands, and a slight tension appeared in the tendons of the fingers. A tutor showed me this exercise, and I tried to repeat it for some time until it started to work out. If you can do this feint with your little fingers, it will be just brilliant! I still can’t control my little fingers!

Exercise 7

And finally, running finger exercise, also coordinating hands and fingers with each other!

In the video I presented my achievements. Now you!

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If you are enlightened, it makes no difference whether you are the best guitarist in the world or not. George Harrison

If you are serious about music and plan to play complex compositions in the future, you need to devote time to training. Mastery always requires a lot of time and effort. Therefore, you need to approach your classes with full responsibility. In this article we will look at various exercises to develop speed and purity of playing the guitar, training a sense of rhythm. Let's start by warming up our hands.

Warming up your hands before playing

Make it a habit to stretch your hands before playing. Warming up should be an integral part of your training and public appearances. And the more time you devote to it, the better.

Firstly, by straining unheated muscles, you risk injuring them. Tendinitis (inflammation of the tendons) and arthritis (inflammation of the joint) are occupational diseases of guitarists. A simple warm-up greatly reduces the risk of injury.

Secondly, arm gymnastics greatly increases the effectiveness of training. Try warming up before playing and you will feel how much faster and more accurately your fingers run across the fretboard. Personal observation: no warm-up maximum speed performance of passages drops by 25-30%.

Gymnastics consists of 2 parts: with and without a guitar. First you need to put the tool aside and prepare your hands. Start with forearms and hands - do a few dozen circular rotations in both directions, as in physical education.

Next comes finger stretching. Try to spread the fingers of your left hand to the sides as far as possible. First, stretch without the help of your right hand, then with it. Watch your feelings - you shouldn’t let it get to the point of pain. It's also a good idea to curl your fingers one at a time while holding all the others. If you have an expander, you can do a little exercise with it.

By devoting just a few minutes a day to this, you will protect your hands from injury and also increase the effectiveness of your training. Special attention Pay attention to your left hand - it is the one that is loaded the most. But you shouldn’t forget about the right one either - fast play also tires her.

Warm-up with guitar - developing a sense of rhythm

When are you done simple charging– you can safely take up the guitar. Playing to the limit right away is fraught with trouble. You need to start slowly, gradually increasing the pace. Practice for at least 10-15 minutes - and your hands will thank you.

Now is the time to pay attention to rhythm. Rhythm is the basis of any music (except, perhaps, ambient). No matter what direction, and no matter what instrument you play, you must not forget about rhythm.

It's worth starting with a slow game. Perhaps you think that playing slowly is very easy and boring? Try to accurately hit the metronome beats with 4 notes at a tempo of 40-50 beats per minute. Most beginning guitarists won't be able to do this. You need to train at all speeds and definitely with a metronome. A metronome is a musician's best friend and teacher.

Set the metronome speed to 60 bpm (beats per minute). Play the passage shown in the picture. After a few minutes, increase the speed to 70 bpm, then to 80, 90 and so on.

Walk around it several times. Play 4 notes first, then 8 notes, then 16 notes. You can combine them to create simple rhythmic patterns, such as a gallop (8-8-4 or 16-16-8), or use triplets.

Then run through the scales. Build a scale from any note on the 6th string and play it in the same way. It is important not to “stay too long” in one place on the bar. Pay equal attention to both the first frets and the very last. Your fingers should always run confidently.

If you play with a pick, try it different ways attacks. First play the passage with an alternating stroke, then with a downstroke. Owners of electric guitars are recommended to practice both with a clean sound and with an overload. Their playing technique is slightly different, and you also need to work on it every day.

If you're in a hurry, exercise for at least 10 minutes. It's much better than nothing.

Exercises for speed play

Learning to play quickly is only half the battle. Many musicians can produce 20 notes per second, but it is very difficult to make out any melody in this. The point here is correct setting sound and clarity of the game. Sound is a very large-scale topic and deserves a whole series of separate articles. But you need to work on a clean game.

First, determine your maximum comfortable speed. Pick your favorite riff or simple scale, turn on the metronome and play through it. Then increase the speed and repeat. Increase until the melody starts to become muddy. Small rhythmic inaccuracies, the grinding of the pick on the braid of the strings, the touching of extra strings - all this greatly spoils the melody. Especially if you use overdrive or distortion in your music.

When you understand the limit of your capabilities, you can begin to expand it. Again: Forget about playing without a metronome! Start with the exercise described above. Choose any fret, build a similar passage from it and play. Keep it clean. If you play dirty, you should slow down the tempo a little or take a break.

Don't get stuck on one exercise. If you're tired of playing this passage, switch to other modes, scales. Playing your favorite works is no worse. Choose an interesting fast composition or an excerpt from it, learn it - and go into battle! The most important thing is to play as clearly as possible. Never lose the rhythm. Never hit the wrong chord.

When this works, increase the speed a little. Just 2-3 beats per minute. You will hardly feel the difference, and will play with warm hands without any problems. Even if you shift the threshold by 1 bpm per day, you will get a stunning result within a month.

Don't forget about various techniques games. If you are interested in sweeping, be sure to train it. If you like tapping, add new notes to your exercises. Try, for example, playing a passage from a picture with both hands.

The letter T in tablature shows which sounds are played with the finger of the right hand. When playing with tapping, pay attention to the volume of the note. Beginning guitarists are very poor at producing sound with their little and ring fingers - watch out for this. Mute all unnecessary strings to keep playing as clear as possible. Your task is to bring your performance at the current speed to perfection. And only then can you move to the next level.

Summarize

Let us repeat once again how your training should proceed:

1. Arm warm-up and stretching;
2. Playing scales slowly with a metronome;
3. Determination of comfortable speed for today;
4. Playing exercises for speed playing also with a metronome.

This approach may seem boring to you. Playing the same boring riff dozens of times, and also keeping track of hundreds of little details. But remember the proverb: “Repetition is the mother of learning.” Quick game- This is a very complex technique. Not every guitarist can boast of a clean performance of high-speed passages. It takes years of hard training to reach the pinnacle of mastery. Spend just 40 minutes a day on these exercises – and the results will not be long in coming.

Hello, gentlemen, guitarists. Today I want to offer you a simple, but at the same time very effective warm-up exercise.

Before starting the game (if you are already playing) or before learning lessons (if you are still studying), it will be useful to spend 15 minutes warming up.
Why is this warm-up even necessary? And it is needed at the beginning of learning to play the guitar, first of all, so that the hands get used to the instrument and movements, so that with the help simple exercises get calluses on your left hand to practice the simplest elements of the game.

Now about how to do the exercises. The tablatures below should be played slowly at first. It is not speed that is important, but accuracy and clarity of execution. The strings should not rattle, keep the tempo. To do this, turn on the metronome (download). To begin, set the metronome to tempo 60, and increase the tempo as you progress. Every day you will play faster and faster, but I repeat once again - it is very important to play correctly, that is, clearly and accurately.

Now the tablatures themselves. These are so-called chromatisms. The numbers indicate finger numbers. It is played across the entire neck of the guitar, i.e. start from the 1st fret of the 6th string, then the 6th string 2nd fret - 3rd fret 4th fret, 5th string 1st fret - 2− 3− 4... When you reach the 1st string of the 4th fret (little finger), then after playing the last note, move your little finger to the 5th fret and play in reverse order. And so on throughout the fingerboard.

Game example (slow):

Exercise 1. The simplest one. The fingers alternately play one note at a time.

Exercise 2. More difficult. Requires finger coordination.

Exercise 3. Even more difficult exercise, but you need to master it too.

To play any musical instrument well, you need to develop certain physical skills that cannot be developed without long and hard training. After systematically performing some exercises, the hands and fingers of beginning musicians become accustomed to automatically reproducing certain movements. This contributes to the development of playing technique.

If you decide to learn to play the guitar, you will have to do exercises that will help:

• Coordination and appropriateness in the movements of both hands develops.
• A stretch develops in the fingers of the left hand.
• Muscles are strengthened.
• Auditory perception develops and the sense of rhythm improves.

Any lesson should begin with a warm-up, the purpose of which is to help your hands get used to the instrument. It is advisable to spend about 15 minutes on it. Then you can move on to the main part.

Guitar Exercises

To make it easier to complete them, you can watch a video tutorial for each of the points and study the tablature.

1. "Ladder on one string." Starts on the sixth string. On it, we play a note on each fret, pressing it in turn with each of the four fingers. Having reached the last fret, we repeat the same steps in the opposite direction. Then we move on to the next string.

2. "Chromatic scale". For beginners it seems incomprehensible and tedious. Its essence is to alternately play the frets, starting with the fifth, located on string No. 6. Moving to the lower string, move your finger one fret.

3. "Spider." Requires skill. It is done like this: the first finger clamps the first fret on the 6th string, the second - the fret of the same name on the 5th string, the third - on the 4th string, respectively, the fourth - on the 3rd. In this case, each position must be lost. Then we move the little finger one position forward and repeat all the steps in reverse order.

4. To develop the hand and coordinate movements of the right hand. To do this, play the open strings in the order No. 1-2-3-2-1, using the second, third and fourth fingers.

Bass guitar lessons

1. If you prefer the bass guitar, then to develop your playing skills, it is best to practice scales and scales frequently, achieving a gradual increase in tempo.
2. A good result is also observed from performing the above-described “Spider” on the bass guitar.
3. The sense of rhythm develops faster from using a metronome.
4. Consistent play of three intervals across the entire fretboard and in the opposite direction has worked well.
5. Arpeggio.
6. Practicing sound production from the bass: finger technique and playing with a pick.

Regardless of whether you prefer an electric guitar or you prefer bass, in any case it is better to listen to these tips:

• Start each exercise at at a slow pace. When improvement is observed, you can gradually increase the speed.
• After practicing one exercise for about 15 minutes, you can move on to the next.
• Classes must be systematic.
• Don't be discouraged if you sometimes have setbacks and don't see progress in a short period of time. Many musicians have gone through this. Better be patient.

EXERCISES

If you arrived at this page through an exercise-related query for development guitar technique, then know that in addition to exercises on the site there is also educational literature for beginning guitarists(Section "Guitar Lessons"). And significant music collection, covering all types of guitar activities (Section "Guitarist's Library").

Thoughts on...

Guitar exercises, presented on this page are part of my textbook "A. Nosov's Guitar School" and are intended for the development and improvement of guitar technique, including mastering playing techniques, increasing the mobility of the fingers of the left and right hands, their strength and endurance. The exercises, with the exception of standard scales, are exclusive and are the fruit of many years of teaching. Having played them all, you the best way Prepare to perform works of any level of difficulty.

Exercises are designed for a wide range of performers, from beginner guitarists to students of secondary and higher musical educational institutions. All the necessary information for playing them is posted on the title page of the documents.

The bulk of the exercises goes beyond the scope of amateur guitar, so I did not consider it possible to supplement them with tablature (as I did, for example, in the “Arpeggio” exercises on the “Accompaniment” page), rightly believing that advanced guitarists do not need tips of this kind. If you are not one of them or, alternatively, do not know how to read music, then it’s time to fill this gap by completing training at my Guitar School. The first 5 lessons are available for free download (Section "Guitar Lessons").

Change of positions. Position, in relation to playing the guitar, is the fixed position of the fingers of the left hand (by default, responsible for changing the pitch of the sound) on the fingerboard. Consequently, changing position is an action associated with moving the fingers of the left hand from one part of the fingerboard to another (“Positions” is the topic of the 15th lesson of A. Nosov’s Guitar School).

In the guitar, there are four ways of changing positions (Substitution, Sliding, Jumping, Leading), which have common patterns. Knowledge of these patterns and, most importantly, their skillful application is precisely what allows the transition from one part of the fingerboard to another not only technically (quickly and silently), but also qualitatively (without interruption in sound or extraneous sounds). And this skill, in turn, will be in demand in any type of guitar activity, regardless of whether you accompany or solo. Therefore, if you have not heard anything about the rules for changing positions, then before starting the exercises, I would advise you to read the 51st lesson of A. Nosov’s Guitar School, which focuses on detailed information on this issue (section "Guitar Lessons").

Scales– an excellent tool for developing fine performing technique (fine technique, in turn, is when each next sound is taken on an adjacent fret or across a fret). Where is fine technique used when playing the guitar? When performing melodic lines (including with the support of accompanying guitar voices) and in passages. A passage - a sequence of sounds in fast movement - is not a frequent guest in guitar literature. Why? Because there are few guitar virtuosos, and authors, including myself, are forced to focus on the average performing level, only occasionally allowing themselves to embody in the notes a flight of fantasy, expressed by a cascade of sounds of a virtuoso orientation. However, talent, coupled with hard work, can work wonders. And I really hope that you will become the performer who will be able to handle the works top level difficulties.

Do you know what is the secret of the magical charm of the music of Niccolo Paganini, the unsurpassed Italian violinist and composer? In the most beautiful melodies and... incredibly difficult passages, close in spirit to the improvisational style (I mean his violin works, not his guitar works, of which there are also many written). And improvisation is something that is interesting to listen to, play and watch live. Improvisation is a flow of creative performing imagination, embodied by muscular efforts, which are based on... fine technique. However, learned improvisation also produces a stunning effect, as proven by the immortal creations of N. Paganini for several centuries in a row. Conclusion, if you want to be interesting to your listeners and enjoy playing, pay more attention to scales - the magic staircase on the path to passages and virtuosity, and I will help you with this with my advice (see section “Guitar Lessons”).

Arpeggio on a guitar, simply put, it’s plucking the strings. The success of this type of technique largely depends on the actions of the fingers of the right hand interacting with the strings to produce sound. The left hand also participates in the execution of arpeggios, the fingers of which form chords (not always typical...).

Any guitarist who plays at the everyday level considers himself an outstanding performer if he knows a few touches. And I propose... 60 types, each of which is considered not only as a separate exercise, but also has a purely practical significance, serving as a template for song accompaniment. Moreover, types can be combined (within the same musical size) and get an even larger number of searches. Details in the document "Arpeggio" and, of course, in my lessons (see section "Guitar Lessons").

Barre is a technique that involves simultaneously pressing several strings with one finger. The technique is certainly powerful, simplifying the game and allowing you to operate in different keys without much hassle (provided you press the strings with your index finger). If... the guitarist knows how to perform it correctly. That's right, this is when the finger involved in setting the barre acts with a force that does not exceed the limit necessary for high-quality pressing of the strings, and the remaining fingers are completely free and ready to participate in the extraction of additional sounds (barre can be performed with different fingers, so their name is not specified here ). There is no other approach to performing barre for anyone, not for accompaniment lovers, and especially not for classical guitarists.

And here the question arises, how to learn to take the barre (or teach, as an option)? In short, you need, at a minimum, a normal gap between the strings and the neck (the topic of the 1st lesson of A. Nosov’s Guitar School) and a tension on the strings that does not interfere with the development of this technique. Exactly. For many, loosening the standard string tension is the only way to master the technique correctly and painlessly. Everything else is quite teachable: the strength required to simultaneously press several strings, endurance, and the ability to freely act with the remaining fingers when holding the “Barre”. Details in the document "Barre" and, of course, in my lessons (see section "Guitar Lessons").

Legato- a technique of playing that is included in the scope of activity of the left hand, which by default is responsible for pressing the strings to the fingerboard, with little or no participation of the right hand. Legato, conventionally, is divided into ascending, descending and mixed, and differs in the method of execution. I won't go into details, all this is done in lessons with examples and exercises. I'll just point out that the most difficult one is the downstroke, and I'd recommend installing synthetic strings to learn it if you haven't already. Otherwise, you will suffer... I am writing here for those who are interested in understanding all types of guitar technique, including melismas - grace notes, mordents, gruppettos, trills, found in advanced works. Although, the legato technique is certainly useful for all guitarists, regardless of the goals and objectives that they set for themselves. It is useful because it facilitates performance and diversifies the sound, softening the sound.

Melismas. In the 68th lesson, the study of melismas begins - melodic embellishments (if you like, original musical vignettes). Let's start with grace notes, then we'll master mordents, gruppettos and trills. What can be said about melismas in the review article? Firstly, the fact that they really decorate the melody and are used in almost any work of the romantic style. Therefore, if you are a fan of Spanish authors or dream of playing Hungarian, gypsy music, Russian romances, then this is just for you. Although, of course, the presence of melismas in the text does not depend on the nationality of the author or his geographical location. Secondly, the fact that they are written in small notes (more precisely, notes in a smaller font) or... are indicated by special icons that require decoding. I'm sure you've seen melismas if you've ever looked at sheet music for "advanced" guitarists. And, I have no doubt, they asked themselves a couple of questions, such as: “How to calculate the length of small notes?”, “How to combine them with notes related to other guitar voices?”. So, to successfully read melismas, you need to know that each guitar voice is independent in the recording (namely, the melody, bass, middle voice and the rare 4th voice are independent). And that all minor durations are part of the main note that follows them. That's all in a nutshell, and the details are in the lessons.

Flajolets- sounds that imitate the singing of a flute. But this is not their only use when playing the guitar. Harmonics are also used to produce ultra-high sounds that are inaccessible with conventional sound production. Does this mean that harmonics are taken in a special way? - Exactly. Therefore, if you are not aware of their performance, I would advise you to study the key lessons on this topic (141st - natural harmonics, 146th - artificial harmonics, 150th - combined harmonics), which spell out everything you need to know about this type of guitar technique. I would advise it because it is impossible to guess about the features of extracting harmonics and their designations on your own. For example, if you don’t know that harmonics are taken not within the fret (as can be understood by the Roman numeral used to number the frets), but above the fret nut, they will not sound. The same thing will happen if you interact with the string with the wrong force and for the wrong duration. And that's just the most easy look harmonics – natural. But there are also artificial and combined ones, which are much more difficult to perform. In general, read my lessons if you are not already in the subject.

Arpeggiato and techniques such as glissando, staccato, vibrato, string tightening, pizzicato, tambourine, tremolo, tremolando are very often used when playing the guitar, regardless of its type (acoustic, electric), style of music played (classical, jazz, flamenco, chanson ), method of sound production (fingers, special plate). They are used, of course, with varying degrees of intensity. But this does not mean that an electric guitarist should not master, say, the “Tambourine” technique, and a classical guitarist should not master the “String Tightening” or “False Vibrato” technique. Must! At least to expand the horizons of your instrument. And then... no one knows what they will have to play on tomorrow.

I really hope that I could be useful to you.