Left hand technique practice

Playing Technique
#1

I’ve noticed since working primarily on my picking that my fretting hand seems to be a bit behind the curve. Are there specific drills or practice routines for improving the left hand?

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#2

What helped me a lot is playing with accents.
For instance if you would play something simple like a repeating 4 notes chromatic pattern, practice it first with accenting the 1 then the 2 etc…

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#3

that probably applies to lots of us on this site since we focus on rt hand so much. The left hand is a whole world unto itself

Ill just say 2 things from the common sense point of view.

  1. be a bit careful adding extra work…especially stuff like stretches. Take it really slow

  2. In general, do most of your heavy left hand focus near the end of your daily practice. You dont really want do be doing your “skill” work with a cramping/pumped/tired left hand

You might start with something basic like some left hand trills and simple legato stuff at the end of your daily practice. Just that little bit might be enough and would be a good place to start

#4

The best single thing I’ve been doing lately is using a swung rhythm to play legato scales (ie strict swing or shuffle rhythm eighth notes). I’ve seen both Tom Quayle and Rick Graham recommend it and they’re right. It improves both strength and control of the left hand because the accents fall on different notes in the scale. You can throw in a triplet every now and then for interest too.

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#5

Any examples of this? I think I get the gist, but I’m not positive.

#6

happy cramping lol

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#7

The whole video is worth watching but 9:48 is where he talks about swinging (dotted eighth note) rhythms.

I can’t post the Tom Quayle video because it’s part of his legato course I purchased (which is a great course in itself) but he makes the same recommendation and I highly recommend it.

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#8

Thanks man. Although, I don’t just mean legato playing when I say left hand technique. I suppose I also need to work on synchronization? I just noticed that when I’m fretting something, say a fast pentatonic run, sometimes my fret fingers are inaccurate, sloppy, etc.

#9

Improving your left hand with legato will help to some extent if they can’t keep up, but yes, they need to be synchronised too. I do Ben Eller’s ‘punisher’ exercise to warm up which is a modified chromatic note thing and I find that helps for synching up the two hands. I do it in triplets, which adds some rhythmic difficulty too.

Always worth trying to combine different things in one exercise to make it more efficient.

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