Insane difficult finger independence exercise!
She does it so flaweless, and also the alternate picking is very good!
Good luck wuth this one!
I tried and tried…but failed…
Fingers are not independent in any sense. They cannot be trained to become independent.
This exercise is being performed well, but there’s essentially zero transfer of training to actual guitar playing. If anything, it requires you to adopt and habituate fretting postures which are suboptimal for real playing, and demands muscular cocontractions which add unnecessary load and stress.
If you aren’t excited to play this for it’s own sake, either because you love how it sounds or because you enjoy it for some other reason, I see no value to practicing this at all.
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I do not agree with you.
To perform this exercise at such a speed so flaweless requires a loooot of focus, practice and patience.; that alone will help you a lot in learning to play the guitar and perform difficult passages in music.
Besides that it is a good excercise for synchronisation and finger strength.
I am doing this one for a few weeks now and already can feel the benefits of it.
Each to his own.
Fingers are not independent and cannot be trained to become independent. This is an anatomical, physiological and neurological fact.
Any exercise which purports to develop “finger independence” cannot possibly develop such a thing, because such a thing does not and cannot exist.
All coordinations involve a degree of specificity. Any motor pattern/chunk has invariant features. They are
- Action sequence
- Relative timing
- Relative force
The problem with these types of exercises is the first point. The sequences of fretting actions do not transfer to actual playing, because these sequences do not fit over the fretboard figures used in actual playing.
So, the coordinations trained are specific to these exercises only. The coordinations don’t transfer to actual playing because the motor invariants are not compatible.
Moreover, all of these exercises (anything involving all four fingers in awkward sequences) demands strenuous muscular cocontractions.
Everything above is fact, not my opinion.
It is my opinion that practicing exercises such as these is largely worthless, and that time could be better spent practicing coordinations that are naturally and immediately transferrable to musical figures on the fretboard.
You are absolutely entitled to disagree with my opinions. I would ask that you explain your reasons to me, because if there is some value I have not recognised then I will acknowledge it.
I spent many years practicing exercises such as this. I made far more dramatic progress after I stopped practicing all of these exercises and began focusing on developing transferrable coordinations.
I have students come to me who have spent decades practicing them and who can perform them expertly, but who aren’t happy with their fretting hand in actual musical contexts.
Developing focus and patience is important, but these traits can be developed while practicing coordinations that are actually transferrable. Everybody has limited practice time, and unless you enjoy playing these types of exercises for their own sake, I can’t see any value to them.
Children have strong enough fingers to play guitars with efficient fretting mechanics. If an adult man or woman is struggling with “finger strength” while playing guitar, their fretting mechanics are very poor.
Without writing a full article on the topic (a project which is in preparation and which will be much more detailed), synchronisation just doesn’t work how people think it does. You don’t develop it, you already have it. If you didn’t, you couldn’t walk, run or jump.
You ensure the synchronisation of your coordinations by creating compatible motor phase relationships for both hands in your chunks, then your motor system does synchronisation for you.
Absolutely, do whatever makes you happy. If you enjoy these exercises, then more power to you.
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I am aware of all he points you mentioned.
I am a pro player, graduated from the Conservatory (Jazz) and a teacher myself.
I Never did these kind off excercises myself and therefore never thaught such to my students.
But, since i am doing this one for a few weeks now i do find some benefits from it.
I still can’t (and probably never will never be able to do it as flaweless and fast as that Asian girl does), but it helpes me to focus.
Especially the movement between 1st and 3d and 2nd and 4th finger while keeping the other fingers fixed.
You can use this in a musical way for letting a note ring (ok, you therefore don’t need to fix 2 fingers on a string, one will do) while playing other notes arround it.
It for sure is not an excercise that will make you a fare better guitarplayer but i still like it for the reasons i mentioned.
Anton Oparin (monster player) in an interview also talks about doing these kind of exericises.
It still is impressive how flaweless and fast that girl can execute this one. You for sure can impress your fellow guitarplayers with it 
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