Eek, Flying Fingers! (and what you can do about them right now)

Technique
21

I think this is an incredibly well-made and important point.
The position taught is the accepted technique.
Depending on body type, hand size, comfort, and a bunch of other things, adjustments can and should be made.
Thanks, madden.

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22

Yes, totally! Glad you shared all that. What weā€™re shooting for is maximum ability+ease to minimum effort, the usual guidelines only go so far. Everyone, including me, has to find the sweet spot between shoulder, elbow and wrist placement and angle by experimenting.

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23

I am having similar problems with playing major and minor arpeggios. I am trying to train my pinky finger to play along. Its not being a teem player. In a major, I manage the root, the third, the fifth, but as I try to use my pinky on the octave, it usually makes a twang. Same thing with the minors. I am having fun playing, but I want to keep improving as I go along. Any suggestions on fingering technique?

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24

well dang this is a little off-topic but, some of the responses are like 3 inches long on my screen and I have a big screen lol

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25

Is your pinky reaching to the end (ish) of the fret, or are you maybe not stretching far enough? Twangs/rattles/etc. are usually either a location thing, or a pressure thing. If you are aiming for the right part of the fret, itā€™s just a matter of getting your pinky to apply a wee bit more pressure (not more than you need for a clean tone). Does that help?

You can always change the scale of the page in your browser to make text bigger or smaller if you preferā€¦ if Iā€™m understanding you right?

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26

no but Iā€™m just saying there called comments for a reason: there short and I have my screen set to normal and I have a monitor that 22 inch by 13 inch (22 wide 13 from top to bottom)

27

Oh, gotcha. Well you can always skim or not read anything you want! But itā€™s a forum, people are gonna talk, sometimes at length. :exploding_head:

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28

When playing notes with my pinky, my hand gets all crazy as shown. Sometimes I try and just place all my fingers on the string, to try and keep them low. Since they are lower notes (higher on the neck) they arenā€™t changing the sound.

Is this not mentioned as a way to tame the crazy fingers because itā€™s a bad habit?

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29

No. Thereā€™s nothing wrong with that. If I understand what your saying, youā€™re just muting the strings youā€™re not playing by doing that and thatā€™s a good thing.

30

Well, itā€™s frets above the note I am playing.

But module 4, lesson 3, part 2 kind of covers this a bit too. Should have been watching the videos instead of browsing the forums!

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31

Hey @cbaray, that sounds good to me! I actually talk about that in this video (in the Level 2 exercise):

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32

Josh,
I watched your finger exercise video, and started doing your finger exercise. At first my fingers dragged themselves over the fretboard, arthritis not helping. Iā€™m now getting good fretting with no buzz my fingers also feel more supple. I didnā€™have problem though, it felt more like fingering the lovely bagpipes. The instrument of my youth. Cant beat the drones.

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33

Glad those exercises are helping! I still do them too!

1 Like