Silly me – I forgot to mention that I released a new Youtube video last Friday. You may have found your way to it already, but if not, here's the link:
The Hardest Fingerstyle Exercise Ever?
I know – it's kind of a dumb title. In fact,
after some ongoing flirtation with the sensationalist approach over the past few months, I'm thinking of reverting to my more instinctive angle of just titling these lessons by – imagine! – simply describing what they actually demonstrate.
That said, this exercise, which I learned from my guitar teacher during high school, certainly was the hardest exercise I'd ever wrapped my fingers around. That teacher, Jeff Wyman, was (and presumably still is) a man of unimpeachable
hipness and the person to whom I owe the vast majority of my interest in fingerstyle guitar, whether he really intended that or not, so whatever he suggested, I tended to take seriously, and with generally positive results.
This exercise, which involves not one but two scary things, octaves and chromatic scales, actually teaches you something important about how to arrange your fretting fingers for any kind of contrapuntal playing, which, at the end of the day, is what
fingerstyle blues is largely about, particularly if you are trying to play blues licks over any kind of walking bass line.
Walking bass lines continue to be the name of the game over at the Fingerstyle Five membership. Right now, we're working on a complete 16-bar walking bass blues of mine called "Big Surly," and starting in August I'll be teaching a three-part series on how to start improvising blues licks over a walking bass in E.
Everything I cover in
the membership is archived for on-demand replay, so when you sign up, you can always choose between whatever we're currently working on or go look for a song or a topic you'd like to get started with on your own. At the moment, that means you can go back over almost two dozen traditional blues arrangements in both the alternating-thumb and steady-bass styles, and work on them at either a beginning or more intermediate-to-advanced level.
Of course, it's summer, so maybe you
just want to stick with the hardest fingerstyle guitar exercise ever. It only takes six minutes to watch the Youtube lesson, so if you're like me, you could be in and out in less time than it takes to find your keys and your phone before leaving the house.
Here's the lesson link again:
The Hardest Fingerstyle Exercise
Ever?
And here's where to join the Fingerstyle Five membership:
https://www.fretboardconfidential.com/
More soon,
David