Video:How to Strengthen the Fingers for Fretting

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Transcript:How to Strengthen the Fingers for Fretting

Hi, I’m Nick and today for About.com I’m going to teach you some tips for strengthening your fingers while fretting.

One of the biggest problems beginner guitarists’ face is in their fingers. Let’s take a look at a strengthening exercise. First lets learn the strings. Starting from the thickest, the strings are E, A, D, G, B and E. The frets are on the neck of the guitar. Here we can see frets 1, 2, 3 and 4. Your fingers are also assigned numbers. This makes it easier to know which finger is supposed to go where!

Practice Guitar Scales to Strengthen Your Fingers

It may sound boring, but a great way to increase your finger strength is to play the scales. This is the E Phrigian scale. You can see that all the notes on the first fret require you to use your first finger, the notes on the second fret require you to use your second finger and everything on the third fret requires your third finger. The ‘O’ above each string mean that the string is played open.Let’s take a look at how that translates to the guitar. Play each note individually starting with the open E string, then play the 1st. fret of the E and then the 3rd fret of E. Continue on in this fashion, playing frets O, 2 and 3 of the A and D strings, frets O and 2 of the G string and frets O, 1 and 3 of the B and E strings.

Pay Attention to Accuracy While Fretting

Play slowly at first – remember, the key is accuracy rather than speed! Once you feel a bit more confident, try increasing your pace, until you can comfortably play the scale. For an extra challenge, you might want to try playing the scale backwards as well as forwards. With practice, you’ll begin to find the task much easier. If you want to try something a bit different, why not try playing the blues scale? The concept is the same, but requires the use of the 4th finger, making it just a little bit more difficult.

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