Jon Chappell - Guitar Exercises For Dummies

Figure 1-3 shows a neck diagram with the notes of a two-octave major scale pattern in 4th position (meaning that your 1st finger is located at the 4th fret). Note that the roots appear in black circles and are found on the 6th, 4th, and 1st strings. To play the scale from Figure 1-3 in its ascending form, start with the lowest-sounding note (6th string, 5th fret) and proceed note by note to the highest (1st string, 5th fret).

FIGURE 1-3:The anatomy of a neck diagram.

Rhythm slashes ( /) make up a shorthand system that tells musicians what chords to play and how long to play them. However, rhythm slashes don’t indicate specifically what to play the way notes on a staff do. Say, for example, you see the staff shown in Figure 1-4. The chord symbol tells you to finger a D chord with your left hand. The four slashes tell you to play four strums, four quarter notes, or four beats in the style of the music that you’re playing. You don’t literally have to stick to four strums, one per beat, just because you see four slashes, however. You just have to be sure to play four beats’ worth of music in the appropriate style. But when in doubt, four strums will be fine.

FIGURE 1-4:Rhythm slashes.

Chapter 2

IN THIS CHAPTER

Loosening your fingers and your mind

Practicing some single-note and chord exercises

You can pick up the guitar pretty much any time day or night, and you’ll be able to play it fairly well. But you get the best results with just a little bit of prep work (rather than picking up the guitar stone cold and trying to wail at top speed). That preparation, which is also well-known to athletes and physical fitness buffs, is the warm-up.

A warm-up is essential for many physical activities, such as sports and playing music, because you can’t play at the height of your abilities if you’ve recently woken from a sound sleep or have just come in from shoveling snow without gloves. You just know that you’ll be playing better after you’ve had the guitar in your hands in front of the fireplace for about an hour. And no wonder. That’s what warm-up routines do! They reduce the time between those states of guitar-readiness by giving your fingers the time they need to adjust to the activity at hand and play with optimum results.

In this chapter, we explore warm-up concepts for both the mind and the body (well, we limit the “body” part to pretty much the hands and fingers), and we suggest activities to try on and off the guitar. By performing just a couple of simple tasks — and sometimes just thinking about them — you can make your practice sessions a little more productive a little earlier on.

A lot of athletes will tell you that sports involve the mental game as much as the physical one. We like to think that you won’t get psyched out or intimidated by your guitar, but playing music does require both physical and mental involvement. So, we consider the brawn and the brain when talking about warming up.

Before you even pick up the guitar to practice, you may want to open and close your hands a couple of times to stretch the muscles and tendons. Make a tight fist and then open your hands wide, splaying your straightened fingers. Then make a fist with both hands and rotate them from the wrist in a circular motion. These simple exercises help stretch out the back of the hand where a lot of tension can develop, especially when reaching out of position with your fingers or playing barre chords (chords where a finger covers more than one string).

If you feel like doing some more stretching, we have a few more activities for you to try. However, proceed carefully with the first two activities because overdoing any type of stretching can cause injury.

Try placing the tips of your extended fingers against your opposite forearm and press down gently to arch the fingers backward slightly. You can do this with individual fingers by simply placing one finger against your forearm and letting the others fall forward naturally. This backward-bending of the fingers, either as a group or individually, helps counteract all that opposite-motion curling of the fingers that you do in normal playing. It’s kind of like the way you might stand up tall and stretch your spine backward after stooping over for a while in the yard or garden.

Give your hands a workout by squeezing and releasing a tennis ball. This type of ball is just the right size and springiness for guitar playing! But, if you prefer, you can grab an exercise device like a Gripmaster, which is designed specifically for working the finger muscles.

Warm up your hands by washing them in warm water. Yup, that’s right. Doing so literally warms up the hands (heat facilitates blood flow). Plus washing obviously cleans your hands, which is always a good thing to do before touching your guitar.

Just because you’re engaged in a physical activity — one that requires exertion, strength, and stamina — doesn’t mean you have to get all stressed out while doing it. Playing music should be fun, after all — even when you’re working really hard. If you correctly approach your breathing, relaxation, and focus, you can increase your enjoyment of practicing on your guitar; plus you’ll be less tired when you’re finished, simply because you’ve successfully managed your physical and mental energies.

You don’t really have to practice the mental skills we introduce in the following sections the same way you do physical ones, but you do have to be aware that breathing, relaxation, and focus are vital to improving your ability to make music.

Breathing (as you might have suspected) is important. If you forget to breathe, you’ll eventually pass out, and that looks very bad onstage. Seriously, though, maintaining regular, even breathing can require some thought, because often the first reaction you have when faced with a difficult challenge (whether in music or in life) is to hold your breath. But if you keep your breathing steady, the rest of your body stays in balance, leaving your other functions free to perform their duties without distraction.

A good test to see if you’re breathing naturally is to check whether you’re out of breath after practicing a challenging piece of music. It’s natural to have some tension when trying to perform perfectly, but you shouldn’t feel winded after doing so. Keep your lips and teeth slightly apart when you play. This way you’ll easily be able to tell when your jaw tightens, which may be a precursor to breath-holding and other signs of tension.