To pinky or not to pinky (poll)

Do you use your fretting hand pinky finger while playing leads?

  • Use pinky
  • Don’t use pinky
  • Use occasionally
  • Trying to use it more

0 voters

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Pinkys rule!! They really add a surprising amount of flexibility/mobility to patterns.

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Very good question, although I really expected this (temporary) result of 100% use pinky in a highly guitar technique oriented community :wink:

Or did you mean the picking hand pinky?

Tom

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I’ve clarified the question. I was surprised to discover how many famous rock players don’t or rarely use it. I understand it for blues/pentatonic playing but guys like Michael Schenker and Reb Beach rarely use it and that really surprised me.

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Hmm, ok. Did know about Schenker, but Beach? Damn, I wouldn’t have thought.

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It shocked me but it probably explains all the tapping.

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Up higher on the neck where the frets are much closer together I’ll often switch to nit using the pinky. But otherwise I absolutely use the pinky.

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My thoughts have always been, and this is what I tell my students, you have four fingers, might as well use them!

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For certain types of playing, it’s pretty much essential. It definitely takes longer to get it up to the strength of the others though but when you do…totally worth it

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I try my best to use it all the time even high on the neck. That said, compared to my other fingers my pinky is really short and positioned deeper into my hand if that makes any sense: my pinky is 7cm long (2.75 in), my middle two fingers 9cm (3.54in), but the difference in height is a good 3cm (1.20in).

As such, I can very well see why some other players don’t even bother unless they have to use it, but that’s not my style to do something like that. Also, since the separation between the middle and ring finger isn’t that good for most humans, you have to use the pinky anyway for higher dexterity.

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I actually shattered my pinky playing basketball, and I was assuming my guitar playing days were over. But I had to adjust a bit… and I don’t have quite the reach I used to, but it’s still very useful.

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I do use my pinky, after many years of really trying to whip it into shape after noticing how infrequently I would use it in melodic playing. However, I feel like there’s a slight delay or slower speed with it that causes synchronization issues with the pick, and I often find myself largely falling back into 3 finger playing when improvising at high speeds. This would be fine if it all came out the same musically, but I feel like the 3 finger stuff winds up being a bit different in terms of vocabulary, and I don’t like to think that I’m limiting myself in that way. It’s very frustrating

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My thoughts exactly although having said that I’ve not really focused on it. I’ve just naturallly used my fretting hand pinky without really thinking about it from the beginning. I also use my picking hand pinky when tapping - especially scalar lines on a single string. Again it feels natural to use it for certain lines so I just do it.

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Do you mean your pinky on your fretting hand, or your picking hand? I think it’s unusual to use your pinky for tapping, although I don’t doubt it can be done. I always found my pinky a bit useless for 8 finger tapping, I think Guthrie Govan has said something along the same lines as well

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Sorry for the belated reply…

Yes I was referring to my picking hand pinky. I thought I’d create a quick clip of an example not fully realising the effort it would take to create a simple video - first time I’ve ever tried. In any case the audio is poor and there’s a couple of slip ups but the angle is about right.

First part is a descending run. I found it surpising that while I’m using my pinky it barely looks like it in the video. The lick starts with me tapping middle finger, hammering on pinky and then pulling off with the pinky and that is repeated every second string to cater for the tapped parts that are 3 frets apart. The taps that are 2 frets apart are middle and ring.

I’m holding and where necessary using my pick throughout so the index finger is not being used however I do occasionally tap using my index finger by holding the pick with my thumb on the side of the index finger near the first index finger knuckle.

The second part is a Govan Seven-ish style ascending lick playing a major seven shape. All the 3rd/7th note pairs are middle/pinky and there’s a little turnaround with my pinky finger around the 9sec mark.

I should note this feels completely natural to me. When working out these style of licks I don’t set out to delibrately try and involve my pinky finger though I could see why some might prefer using middle/ring for all of these parts.

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I use it a lot. I’ve heard some interesting (and passionate) arguments about phrasing and tone being better by not using it. You can find some on the jazzguitar.be forum. It’s not a subject I’ve done any real deep research and soul searching on, but the arguments for not using it always struck me as pretty weak.

I respect that some people, like Andy James, just start out not using it and so they stay in that habit, and it works for them. There are obviously some situations where you get backed into a corner if you’re not using it, but it’s not too crazy to get by without it. I mean, Django…

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I think this would only be the case if someone never developed their pinky strength/dexterity.

Maybe there are anatomy differences from person to person… but for me… .the pinky has a lot more freedom of movement than the middle and ring finger. For example… I can spread out to a 1 1/2 step difference between my ring and pinky without interfering with the other fingers. That kinda flexibility is really useful when improvising.

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