If you play or want to play fingerpicking guitar, you're in the right place.
I'm going to show you six fingerpicking warm up exercises that will revolutionize. Revolution,
that's a big word. Revolutionize your practice sessions. Let's do this.
Hi I'm Tomas from Real Guitar Success. A good warm up routine not only limbers up your hands
but it also can help you progress faster because it helps prepare your fingers for the correct
movements. It also makes practicing more fun because everything just works better. I have
six warm ups for you. When you watch the video it looks like it might take a while to get through
them but you'll see if you actually learn them, memorize them, you can do them all within about
five minutes. I'll start by explaining the warm up and tell you a little about its purpose then I'll
go ahead and play it for you. By the way, we're on the same page, I'll often be referring to the
string numbers and that means the low sixth string is the lowest E string and the first string is the
highest E string. We're talking pitch high as in high pitch. Okay, let's get started with warm up.
Number one, the fingerpicker developer. We're going to start off working mostly with your left
hand. Now this exercise is designed to help you prepare your fingers to get just in the
right place on the fretboard. What we're going to do is go up one fret at a time starting on
the first fret sixth string and then second fret, third fret, fourth fret with the pinky
and when you get there you go onto the fifth string and do the same thing.
Keep doing that until you get all the way up to the first string so that's what it
looks like when you're there. Now you move the whole thing up one fret and come back down.
Keep doing that until you get to the sixth string then you move up one fret and repeat the process.
Now in the right hand, we are going to do something. You're going to use your thumb
and your first finger so it's a kind of a picking motion thumb finger, thumb finger.
This will go ahead and get your right hand warmed up slightly but the focus is more
on your left hand. It's important that you go slow and get it right.
Keep your hand in the right position while balancing that with staying relaxed.
Here's what the whole thing looks like starting with the first fret, first finger,
fifth string, fourth string.
Now I move the whole thing up one fret and come back down.
One more fret up and the same thing.
Now slide up a fret and coming back.
You get the idea. Now I usually do that to stop somewhere in the middle of the fretboard. You
could go all the way up but it's up to you. It depends on where you're at. You could just start
doing a few frets up here and then keep expanding it up and down. You'll see as you get used to it,
it goes a little faster in the exercise, all in all won't take that long.
If you find yourself getting tense, stop, shake out your hands and get back to it.
The important point here is to warm up and do it right so if you just go fast and go
through the exercise sloppily you're not doing anywhere near as much good.
Let's go on to number two now, the triple bass thumb warm up. The thumb is mostly responsible
for the bass notes and often hangs out on the lowest three strings. This exercise will help you
practice playing accurate bass notes. We're going to keep the chording simple. We're going to use
an E chord. We're going to use an A minor chord which is the same as the E chord and move over one
string and then we're going to use a form of the B7 chord without the pinky just to keep it simple.
So it's the three finger B7 chord. The main action for this exercise is in the right hand.
You're gonna play the bass note and then the first string and then the fifth string and
then the first string and then the fourth string. Now keep in mind as you do this try not to yank
your hand away. Aim for a good solid base note. To do that, you want to make the motion go more
down then out, a little bit out but aim for more down and you'll naturally kind of go out.
And with the high string you want to pull your finger into your palm without yanking
your whole hand down. When you yank out like this, it tends to make tinny sounding notes both
in the base and the high end so here's what the exercise looks like. We'll start with the E chord.
Move it up a fret and then back, same thing and now over to A minor
back to E, B7 and back to E. Repeat that whole part.
Now upper fret just like the beginning, back down.
On to number three, the chord pluck exercise. The chord pluck exercise is a great way to practice
planting your fingers which will help you with many of the fingerpicking patterns.
It also doubles as a good warm up for something like a bossa nova rhythm pattern. We're going
to use the same chords as an exercise number 2, the E A minor and B7 without the pinky and you're
going to start by planting your thumb on the sixth string and your first, second and third fingers on
the right hand on the fourth string, third string and second string. The basic right hand pattern
is pluck all the strings together then alternate chord and bass and look like this
then you're going to move up one fret.
Now over to the A minor and there's a little base lick that goes here
that'll help you work on your pinky a little bit and then back to the E,
A minor
and back to E upper fret, up two frets, back down two frets
and on E. So let me show you that basic one more time. You're going to pluck all the strings,
chord, thumb on the fifth string, pinky down on the third fret fifth string.
Now second finger over to the second fret on the fifth string and pluck all together
chord and then on to A minor open fifth string, pluck the A minor chord and then
goes to the E with a full pluck. So all together it looks like this ---
Once you learn the basic rhythm pattern and you get that little bass lick, you'll find this whole
exercise kind of hypnotic which will help you relax both your hands.
Let's head on to number four, the rolling arpeggio warmup. This is probably my favorite warmup
exercise and I recommend. If you do know other one you do this one. I developed this exercise for
myself and it was deliberately to help me relax my right hand as I start my practice session. I found
that without a warmup like this that I would immediately start tensing from
the very first technique that I was working on. I call it the rolling arpeggio pattern because
well it's an arpeggio of course but it has a kind of a meditative effect after a while and
the idea is to just relax and let your hand flow and roll with it. It's built completely
on the E chord so all the stuff going on is in your right hand and it's very repetitive,
deliberately. Now that string pattern is 6 3 2 1 then to 5 3 2 1 and to 4. Now there's something
going on in the left hand I'll show you in a minute but that's the heart of this exercise.
I know it's simple but it really works. Now watch the left hand for a minute
and I'm going to call out the strings that I'm hitting with my thumb 6
5 4 now we're going back to 5, watch the left hand, it moves up a fret and then back
nice and even. It keeps the hands relaxed. Now I'm going to go up 2 more frets
back two frets
and then repeat.
I'm going to play it once all the way through for
you so you get a sense of that rolling feel that we're after.
Here we go,
next comes the pinch and pluck warm up. Now this warm-up might take a little longer to learn
but it's well worth it and it's a lot of fun once you get it. It uses a very common
technique and you'll notice it sounds a little like songs like Blackbird by
the Beatles and it's also the starting of like a travis picking
pattern. I'll go ahead and play the warm-up nice and slow so you can see how it goes.
And finally we have the triple pinch exercise.
We're going to take the pinching technique one step farther. We're using the E chord,
the A minor chord and the B7 chord without that pinky and we're gonna pluck every other string
starting with a six and four. It sounds like this --- so that was the whole pattern. We're
gonna do that over and over on each of the chords. You'll start with six and four, five and three,
four and two back to five and three, four and two and then five and three,
six and four ending on five and three and that was the pattern. Again.
Now we'll go up a step with the left hand and back down.
I'm going to play that one once all the way through starting with the E. Here we go.
So that's it for my fingerpicking warm ups. I hope it helped you out. If you did,
give me a thumbs up and if you'd like more help with this check out my Real Guitar Success
membership. There you'll find six in-depth lessons on each of these fingerpicking warm
ups along with tablature and play along tracks for you to practice. You also
get access to me for advice. Check out the link below or visit my website directly at
realguitarsuccess.com I'll show you how much fun learning guitar really can be.
Bye for now.