Left hand finger independence

Playing Technique
#1

I noticed that when playing patterns that has 4 or more notes in a row without using index finger is very tricky. Im talking about left hand here. I am practicing 7th chord arpeggios descending in 4 note sequence. Lets say G7 : 5 3 1 b7, 3 1 b7 5, 1 b7 5 3 etc…
Im practicing playing it in a position (index finger at 7th fret) and there are some spots where there are four notes played without using an index finger.
I notice it gets very sloppy in these cases.
Not only playing this patterns, but in other situations too when you have to play more notes without using an index finger.

Is this a case where it will always be sloppy duo to anatomical reasons or its something to practice more?

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#2

You can try practicing on an acoustic guitar, as it requires more strength. This way you’ll fly when you’re back on electric !

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#3

My understanding of that is there are 2 ways to fret.

One is a rolling motion which comes from the wrist or the grip mechanic from the hand. This has a lot of strength and I think most palyers do this intuively at the beginning.

The other one is an independant finger motion where you kindof cut the chain to the rest of the hand, this can be pretty frustrating in the beginning when you see for the first time how much even relatively complex motions are bound to the hand or other fingers.

I see notthing bad in the rolling motion, it’s efficient and if you use the thumb to mute or fret basslines the indepency goes away at least partially due to the hand angle.
But some patterns, especially in arpegios, require the independant motion.

The good thing that there are few (if no) secrets how to work on that, just it takes time to get used to it.
My fretting hand is pretty weak actually, I didn’t paly for several years and my pinky and ring finger lost most of their independant strength.
So what I practice from time time (for more exercises ask google or youtube) are these:

Play a a chormatic scale ascending, move only ONE finger at a time.
This is not about speed, it’s about finding the right motion, when moving to the next string you’ll realize, that your hand tries to move more than one finger (first finger tries to take the second with him and so on).
Make sure that does not happen.

Fret four frets on one string and play hammer und pullof on the next higher string, leave the other fingers fretted.

I’m not sure if this a real exercise but from time to time I force myself to playe the thumb behnid the neck (I don’t play this way in general). It seems to me that at least some strength of the rolling motion is removed (which might the reason that it’s tought like that in classical).

I plan to keep that exercises at least ocasionaly, the reason is that after that long break for the picking hand all motions and most of stamina were there from the beginning. The fretting hand became weak and esxecutes motions poorly, I think it just lost the strength, muscle memory seems to be still there.

So my guess is it’s not an antomical reason, you just have to train that indepent motion.

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#4

Yeah, it’s just hard. Here are some permutations to try (fingering) on a single string, or mix it up and do it across strings:

2,2,4
2,3,2
2,3,3
2,3,4
2,4,2
2,4,3
2,4,4
3,2,2
3,2,3
3,2,4
3,3,2
3,3,4
3,4,2
3,4,3
3,4,4
4,2,2
4,2,3
4,2,4
4,3,2
4,3,3
4,3,4
4,4,2
4,4,3

Edited to add: Definitely don’t practice this kind of thing for more than 10 minutes at a time - 10 minutes on, break and do something else, then go back to it for another 10 minutes. This is useful practice but can easily lead to injury. Ring and pinky don’t like being separated much.

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#5

What do these numbers represent?

#6

Sorry for not being clear - fingering. Fingers 2, 3, and 4. Could do them on any adjacent frets, for example, frets 7, 8, and 9.