Finger dexterity/flexibility

Playing Technique
#1

Lately I’ve been using the tried & true John Petrucci “rock discipline” warmup section to get my fretting hand nice & limber. It seems to do the trick & im beginning to have a much easier time with stretches in the fret hand…EXCEPT for the middle & ring finger. I can’t get those fingers to distance themselves (insert lame covid joke here) if their lives depended on it.

Do you guys have any exercises, stretches, routines, etc that have worked for you in creating looseness & flexibility in your fret hand, particularly in the middle & ring fingers?

#2

Don’t force it, don’t worry about it, look into refingerings and position shifts.

#3

It’s not so much an issue with fretting. I’m not having an issue playing a particular piece of music or anything, I’ve just noticed I have a lot of issue creating space between the ring & middle fingers. In the petrucci warmup exercises I’ve moved them further down the neck to make them more tolerable/playable but I’m just curious if anyone has had success trying anything else to make their hands limber up

#4

@ggreene66 , I’ve found that difficulty creating a certain reach can be caused by a variety of factors. Off the top of my head:

  • position of the guitar relative to the player’s body/the player’s body relative to the guitar; there isn’t one perfect position but depending on the player, the guitar, and the particular challenge, there can often be tweaks to make reaches easier.
  • position of the left hand thumb on the back of the neck - again no perfect ‘position’, it’s all relative to the big picture
  • fingertip placement - ‘sides’ vs tips , or degree of slant towards/away from nut
  • amount of ‘curl’ in finger joints
    probably lots of other things too, obviously the first bullet point there would have a dozen little subcategories

I think that posting a vid of you trying to do the thing that is tripping you up could be helpful. With fretting hand stuff for rock, if you post on forums you might see some people saying “angle the guitar neck up, keep your thumb low on the back of the neck, use a footstool and/or put the guitar on your left leg” or see people argue against that and say you’ll get back problems and be sticking your wrist out, but I’ve found it’s often problematic/counterproductive to isolate little “parts” of fretting hand technique without checking out what’s happening in the big picture. Similarly, can be tricky to discuss things in a theoretical framework without seeing the’reality’ of the player’s current orientation

As a small example of that, I teach guitar classes and often am on students’ cases about what they’re doing with their legs and even feet…

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