So you've practiced all your scales and all your arpeggios.
And you've become really good at both of them.
And in practicing all of your scales, you
know what interval you became really good at.
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Seconds.
One second after another, after another, after another, after another.
Scales are built on seconds.
So if you practice every scale in every key
in every position in all of the scales of the world,
you've practiced a whole bunch of seconds.
An occasional third shows up, like in harmonic minor,
but it's mostly seconds.
If you've practiced all your arpeggios of every chord type--
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--you've gotten very good at thirds.
So between all the scales and all the arpeggios,
you've become a very good seconds and thirds player.
Is there more?
Yes, there's more.
What comes after seconds and thirds?
Fourths, yes, and more.
But let's focus on fourths.
So when we're playing fourths, we now have to deal with the fact
that the guitar is pitched in fourths, except for the second and third string,
which is pitched in thirds.
And what we're going to do is understand how
physically we can get across the neck playing fourths
using independent fingers for each set of fourths.
So what we're doing is playing the first note in whatever note.
It doesn't matter what key we're doing this in.
This is a physical exercise, not a musical exercise.
And then you're taking that first finger and rolling it
to the next adjacent note.
And you notice the way that my finger is moving there.
I'm getting my knuckle to buckle under to get me to the next note.
And the goal is to create a smooth connection between those two notes
without the two notes actually ringing into each other.
We don't want this.
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And we don't want separation, like two staccato notes.
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We want the two notes to ring into each other very smoothly.
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Right?
So we just went across the neck playing all the physical interval
of the fourths.
And as we said, once you get to the third and second string,
they were no longer fourths.
They were actually thirds.
But we're being consistent, because we're
doing this as a physical fingering element, not just a musical element.
So if I'm going up, each of my fingers has
to be very good at being able to do this.
And sometimes people have a little bit more difficulty
with the pinky than the other ones, because that's
our weakest of the four fingers.
So this is just something to practice to get this very comfortable--
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--across the neck.
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So now I've reached the top.
And the problem that I have now is that if I
use the tip of my finger to play this note, how do I go backwards?
I can't with this finger, because I would be on my fingernail.
And who wants to play the guitar with their fingernails?
So what you have to do is actually know in advance
that you are going to play a fourth in return
so that you can start on the fat part of your finger
and roll to the tip of your finger.
See what I'm doing there?
So my goal is to get to the tip of my finger on the second note.
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And there you have two-note rolling fingers.
Well, suppose we take the second line that's listed.
And let's try up one, down the other.
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And in reverse.
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And that can be a fun little game to play.
Well, if you can do it with two notes, it
would make sense that see if you can do it with three.
And this is not going to get easier.
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And coming backwards, you need to plan that much more in advance,
because you're going to need more finger skin to get you to the three notes.
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Up one, down the other.
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Et cetera, et cetera.
Four notes.
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Coming backwards, this really takes some thought.
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Not easy.
And if you're really crazy, you might go to five.
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And you can see that this gets really ridiculous after a while.
But basically if you can get two notes and three notes and maybe even
up to four notes, you can get some very interesting fourths quality melodic
ideas.
And again, this is talking about melodic content, not so much harmonic content
at the moment.
And at this point it's just an exercise.
And that's why we call this the physical,
just getting used to your fingers moving in this direction.