I am a 61 year Noob and started playing in January 2025. I finished the Beginner to Badass course and continually repeat lessons. I don’t know if it is arthritis, but my short, stubby fingers can NOT separate and stay low. I know it is called “flying fingers” and I have tried numerous exercises to be able to spread them out. Any suggestions on what to do. I use a lot of energy playing but have adapted. Thanks in advance.
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First of all, welcome to the forum!
How’s your thumb position? If it’s too high on the neck, it can make spreading the fingers more difficult. Maybe experiment with lowering it a bit to see if it makes any difference for you.
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I have arthritis and that’s never been an issue. People’s bodies are different, but in any case excercizes and practice will help
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It’s just strength. you just need to play a little more and gain the finger strength then the control will come.
I believe playing with less tension makes a huge difference with fine motor skills. Also stretching my hands before playing helps too. They may be (or not) placebo fixes but they work for me.
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Flying fingers takes a long time to fix. You have to dedicate time to it and be prepared to see only slow progress.
My fingers still fly but not quite so much as they used to…. It used to look like I was drinking a posh cup of tea, my pinky flew so much!
Here’s what I did -
Start high enough up the neck that you can play four fingers on four frets with out having to micro shift or stretch too much.
Play a scale or shape very very slowly concentrating on minimum viable pressure for each note and also minimum lift off distance when moving on to the next note, keeping all 4 fingers in the right sort of place for their assigned fret.
It doesn’t matter which scale or shape, but one that emphasises pinky and ring finger is nice.
If you can only keep your fingers with a few centimetres of the string - no problem, just keep going over and over, spending some time on it every day. After time my fingers could be within 1cm of the string. This is not a speed exercise.
Or if you are learning a new baseline, slow it way way down and focus more on finger-to-string distance than timing even.
it just takes ages. For fun, film yourself now and look again in 3 months - you may surprise yourself!
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Josh has an exercise here:
starting at about the 2 minute mark.
I had really bad flying fingers and this was pretty magical. I’m not cured, but my flying fingers improved by orders of magnitude. It’s not even a playing practice, just an actual finger exercise.