Chords for The Guitar Exercise that Changed My Life
Tempo:
143.3 bpm
Chords used:
A
B
Bb
Eb
F
Tuning:Standard Tuning (EADGBE)Capo:+0fret
Start Jamming...
Hello everyone, Andrea here, welcome back.
Today I'm going to share with you maybe the most important exercise that I've ever done with the guitar.
I started doing this very early on in my musical adventure and it's still with me today, so it's been very useful.
I've also taught it to a lot of students throughout the years and they've benefited greatly from it, so I'm going to share it with you right now.
When I started out playing the guitar, I was living in the suburbs of Milan, in a small town, and there was no internet and very few guitar books out there.
So a lot of information we just passed along to one another, maybe a friend of ours would play the electric guitar, maybe one went to guitar lessons, maybe somebody else didn't.
But we talked to each other and figured stuff out.
One of the things that stuck with me is one of my friends telling me that he used to do these chromatic things.
I didn't know what chromatic meant, of course, but I figured out that on classical guitar, one of the most common exercises was something [E] like this.
[G] [N]
With the open string.
And so that sounded interesting to me, I thought, well, that makes sense, you know, move all your fingers.
And so what I used to do was during my lessons in class in high school, so I hope my parents are not watching this, I would just tap the fingers on the desk.
After a few days of doing that, I figured, you know, there's so many ways we can move our fingers.
So I kind of calculated, there was 24 different permutations and combinations of fingers and I started to tap those out.
So it was very annoying for a lot of my classmates because [A] you would hear this all the time.
And so I realized that, OK, well, this is very useful because I really was obsessed with the guitar so I can practice without my guitar.
But eventually when I applied it to the instrument, I realized that it was very beneficial in many ways.
So I'm going to analyze just a few of these combinations just to get you in the ballpark.
And then, of course, I will leave you the list of all 24.
So the first combination, of course, is one, two, three, four, [Bb] [B] which I play up here just so it's [A] more convenient.
[N]
And when I started doing it, and if you're starting out, you'll notice it.
It's really hard to get these two fingers, the third and fourth fingers, to behave as well as the first two fingers.
There's a lot of strength in these first two fingers and a lot less in these two.
And as a matter of fact, a lot of students and guitar players kind of collapse their hands.
You see that when they play chords and when they play scales, some people don't even use four fingers.
You know, some blues players, but also other people who just simply haven't gotten around to it.
To me, it always sounded very strange to lose 25 percent of your hand.
So I always want to make sure that all my fingers were there.
And so this [G] really [B] drove the point home that I wasn't in full control of half [A] of my hand.
OK, so that's one of the [Bm] things that I think [Em] this first [G] combination would [D] really help [C] you [D] [Ab] focus on.
If you [A] notice [Bm] [E] [G] [Fm] like a [A] stumbling rhythm [B] or maybe.
[Eb] [F]
[Em] A bad sound, you know, that's probably because these two fingers are not working as well as the first one, so this will really help you out.
If you practice it like any [A] combination, you can play [B] [Cm] once [Dm] per string.
[D] Of [E] course, [Gb] much [C] slower than this [Eb] starting out and you work your way back.
If you want to spend a little more [Db] time with each combination, you [B] could play four times like this.
[Am] [Bm]
[N] And change.
I want to focus on the sound, the tempo, everything, you know, the attack of [Am] the string.
But that's a great exercise.
Right.
But it's only one of them.
So the next one up and the word I'm not going to talk about all 24 of them.
But the next one up is one, two, four, three.
And what you will notice with this one is that not only these two fingers are weaker, but they also kind of work together.
So when you do one, two, three, four, you're [G] using the momentum of the hand to get [A] these two fingers moving.
Now, we're going to take that away because you do [Bb] one, [Cm] two, [Abm] four, three.
So you [F] you're going back to where the three and the four has to move all by itself.
[B] Can't count on the third one.
And so you'll notice that you'll notice a bit of a struggle with rhythm, which is something a lot of students play and don't hear.
So I'm here to tell you, [A] [Cm] focus on your rhythm, [Am] maybe even record [D] yourself [F] [E] if you have [Am] trouble [Eb] [G] spotting it.
[Gb] [Eb]
[Gm] [F] [B] [E] On this very even sound, even tempo and all that.
Then we move on to one, three, two, four.
Of course, by the end of the video, I'll give you a table with all the possible combinations so you don't have to worry too much about it right now.
[B] It's one, three, two, [Cm]
four.
So what happens now is [A] that we're scrambling the fingers.
There's no order now.
They're [Cm] all in [A] between each other.
[C] And what this [Cm] does, at least that I've seen the students, seems to really make this part of the hand tight.
The third finger doesn't have, we'll talk about anatomy another time, but certainly the tendons in the hand, they don't favor this finger.
You can check it out if you want to study some [A] anatomy.
[B] But [C] putting it right there [A] on the [Bm] [C] second note [Eb] makes this a bit of a struggle.
So my advice here is to go very [A] slowly.
[B] And as soon as you play this finger, you can try it right now if you want, if you want to pick up your guitar.
You'll notice that there's a lot of tension when you play this finger instead of the first one.
So the [A] first one is relaxed.
[G] And as soon as you put this down, your hand tenses up.
So at [Am] this point, [B] I would just relax the hand before [Am] continuing.
So I play one note, [B] the next note, relax, [Bb] and then [A] continue with two and four.
[B] [Bb]
[E] Eventually, [Cm] you'll be able to prevent [D] the tension from even [Gb] occurring.
[Bbm] [Am] [Cm]
Like [E] [F] [Cm] that.
[A] Yeah, stay relaxed.
Well, this is harder to do than it seems.
And then you mix them up again.
One, three, four, two.
So [C] we descend.
[Bb]
[F] [Eb] This [A] is actually worse [G]
for the same reasons as before.
These two fingers are weaker and you get a lot more tension [C] than the previous one.
So, again, focus on relaxing the hand after each note.
OK, so let's continue just a little bit more.
We do one, four now as the first two fingers and then two, three.
What happens now?
We were working the external fingers and the internal fingers.
So it's different.
We play the extremities [Bb] and then [B] the center of the [Am] hand.
[Bm] [N] This is very curious, but I find a lot of students love this, find it extremely easy and some of them find it impossible.
And I haven't figured out after 25 years of teaching guitar exactly why that is.
But to me, actually, this is pretty easy.
It's always [E] been.
And there's not much more to say [Am] about it.
Just [Bb] remember [B] that [Ebm] you're kind of dividing the hand between exterior and interior.
But actually you want to be in full control, 25 [F] percent, so to speak, for each finger.
So eventually you want to even it all out.
[Cm] Basically, you shouldn't even care [Db] what combination you're playing.
That's the ultimate goal.
And then the final one for the first finger is one, [Am] four, three, two.
[Bm] [F] [Eb] [Ab] [D] [Db]
Which introduces another thing you see throughout the 24 combinations, which is this seems like a regular ascending, I mean, descending, sorry, pattern.
Right.
So [Am] we do one, four, [Bb] three, two, one, [Eb] four, three, two, one, four, three, [Ab] two.
By the time you play a few strings, it's four, three, two, [Am] one.
Right.
But [Bm] each [Bb] cycle [F] begins [Eb] on [Ab] the, so to [Bm] speak, [Db] wrong string.
[F] [C] [Eb] [D] [Cm]
[Bb] And this is very useful for improvising so you don't get stuck in a pattern.
I find this extremely useful.
Now, the next 18 combinations, we won't go over them, but make sure you always focus on these things.
Right.
Perfect [A] tempo.
[Bb] You [Abm] always [Cm] want to be right on [D] time.
[Eb] So [F] play with the metronome.
Perfect sound.
Always play at the edge of the fret.
Press down as little as possible to [Bb] get a good [C] round tone.
Always use alternate picking and always pick with the same intensity.
Don't [A] do this.
[Bb] [B] [D]
[Eb] [A] Right.
We want [Bb] the [B] [D] same [Eb] [E]
[F] [Ab] tone [Eb] [Bb] and the same [N] volume for each note.
And try to slowly bring your hand to basically love each finger.
Yeah.
Don't give preference to any one of them.
So these are all 24 combinations.
I think you might have heard about this exercise before if you've been playing for a while, but maybe you haven't gone so deep with it.
And it's certainly worth it.
You know, I would never suggest you do stuff just to make a video.
So you can trust me on this.
It's extremely useful.
And don't do it in a rush.
You know, be thoughtful about it.
Take your time.
Maybe do just a few combinations each day or each week.
And you'll see some great results.
And if you'd like this video, please do like, comment.
Maybe consider subscribing.
We're fast approaching 10,000 subscribers, which is really cool.
And I look forward to seeing you on the next video.
And don't forget to check out the shorts.
I do a bunch of those and I don't think they show up in your subscription feed.
All right.
Thank you very much again for being there.
Let me know in the comments if you have any more
Today I'm going to share with you maybe the most important exercise that I've ever done with the guitar.
I started doing this very early on in my musical adventure and it's still with me today, so it's been very useful.
I've also taught it to a lot of students throughout the years and they've benefited greatly from it, so I'm going to share it with you right now.
When I started out playing the guitar, I was living in the suburbs of Milan, in a small town, and there was no internet and very few guitar books out there.
So a lot of information we just passed along to one another, maybe a friend of ours would play the electric guitar, maybe one went to guitar lessons, maybe somebody else didn't.
But we talked to each other and figured stuff out.
One of the things that stuck with me is one of my friends telling me that he used to do these chromatic things.
I didn't know what chromatic meant, of course, but I figured out that on classical guitar, one of the most common exercises was something [E] like this.
[G] [N]
With the open string.
And so that sounded interesting to me, I thought, well, that makes sense, you know, move all your fingers.
And so what I used to do was during my lessons in class in high school, so I hope my parents are not watching this, I would just tap the fingers on the desk.
After a few days of doing that, I figured, you know, there's so many ways we can move our fingers.
So I kind of calculated, there was 24 different permutations and combinations of fingers and I started to tap those out.
So it was very annoying for a lot of my classmates because [A] you would hear this all the time.
And so I realized that, OK, well, this is very useful because I really was obsessed with the guitar so I can practice without my guitar.
But eventually when I applied it to the instrument, I realized that it was very beneficial in many ways.
So I'm going to analyze just a few of these combinations just to get you in the ballpark.
And then, of course, I will leave you the list of all 24.
So the first combination, of course, is one, two, three, four, [Bb] [B] which I play up here just so it's [A] more convenient.
[N]
And when I started doing it, and if you're starting out, you'll notice it.
It's really hard to get these two fingers, the third and fourth fingers, to behave as well as the first two fingers.
There's a lot of strength in these first two fingers and a lot less in these two.
And as a matter of fact, a lot of students and guitar players kind of collapse their hands.
You see that when they play chords and when they play scales, some people don't even use four fingers.
You know, some blues players, but also other people who just simply haven't gotten around to it.
To me, it always sounded very strange to lose 25 percent of your hand.
So I always want to make sure that all my fingers were there.
And so this [G] really [B] drove the point home that I wasn't in full control of half [A] of my hand.
OK, so that's one of the [Bm] things that I think [Em] this first [G] combination would [D] really help [C] you [D] [Ab] focus on.
If you [A] notice [Bm] [E] [G] [Fm] like a [A] stumbling rhythm [B] or maybe.
[Eb] [F]
[Em] A bad sound, you know, that's probably because these two fingers are not working as well as the first one, so this will really help you out.
If you practice it like any [A] combination, you can play [B] [Cm] once [Dm] per string.
[D] Of [E] course, [Gb] much [C] slower than this [Eb] starting out and you work your way back.
If you want to spend a little more [Db] time with each combination, you [B] could play four times like this.
[Am] [Bm]
[N] And change.
I want to focus on the sound, the tempo, everything, you know, the attack of [Am] the string.
But that's a great exercise.
Right.
But it's only one of them.
So the next one up and the word I'm not going to talk about all 24 of them.
But the next one up is one, two, four, three.
And what you will notice with this one is that not only these two fingers are weaker, but they also kind of work together.
So when you do one, two, three, four, you're [G] using the momentum of the hand to get [A] these two fingers moving.
Now, we're going to take that away because you do [Bb] one, [Cm] two, [Abm] four, three.
So you [F] you're going back to where the three and the four has to move all by itself.
[B] Can't count on the third one.
And so you'll notice that you'll notice a bit of a struggle with rhythm, which is something a lot of students play and don't hear.
So I'm here to tell you, [A] [Cm] focus on your rhythm, [Am] maybe even record [D] yourself [F] [E] if you have [Am] trouble [Eb] [G] spotting it.
[Gb] [Eb]
[Gm] [F] [B] [E] On this very even sound, even tempo and all that.
Then we move on to one, three, two, four.
Of course, by the end of the video, I'll give you a table with all the possible combinations so you don't have to worry too much about it right now.
[B] It's one, three, two, [Cm]
four.
So what happens now is [A] that we're scrambling the fingers.
There's no order now.
They're [Cm] all in [A] between each other.
[C] And what this [Cm] does, at least that I've seen the students, seems to really make this part of the hand tight.
The third finger doesn't have, we'll talk about anatomy another time, but certainly the tendons in the hand, they don't favor this finger.
You can check it out if you want to study some [A] anatomy.
[B] But [C] putting it right there [A] on the [Bm] [C] second note [Eb] makes this a bit of a struggle.
So my advice here is to go very [A] slowly.
[B] And as soon as you play this finger, you can try it right now if you want, if you want to pick up your guitar.
You'll notice that there's a lot of tension when you play this finger instead of the first one.
So the [A] first one is relaxed.
[G] And as soon as you put this down, your hand tenses up.
So at [Am] this point, [B] I would just relax the hand before [Am] continuing.
So I play one note, [B] the next note, relax, [Bb] and then [A] continue with two and four.
[B] [Bb]
[E] Eventually, [Cm] you'll be able to prevent [D] the tension from even [Gb] occurring.
[Bbm] [Am] [Cm]
Like [E] [F] [Cm] that.
[A] Yeah, stay relaxed.
Well, this is harder to do than it seems.
And then you mix them up again.
One, three, four, two.
So [C] we descend.
[Bb]
[F] [Eb] This [A] is actually worse [G]
for the same reasons as before.
These two fingers are weaker and you get a lot more tension [C] than the previous one.
So, again, focus on relaxing the hand after each note.
OK, so let's continue just a little bit more.
We do one, four now as the first two fingers and then two, three.
What happens now?
We were working the external fingers and the internal fingers.
So it's different.
We play the extremities [Bb] and then [B] the center of the [Am] hand.
[Bm] [N] This is very curious, but I find a lot of students love this, find it extremely easy and some of them find it impossible.
And I haven't figured out after 25 years of teaching guitar exactly why that is.
But to me, actually, this is pretty easy.
It's always [E] been.
And there's not much more to say [Am] about it.
Just [Bb] remember [B] that [Ebm] you're kind of dividing the hand between exterior and interior.
But actually you want to be in full control, 25 [F] percent, so to speak, for each finger.
So eventually you want to even it all out.
[Cm] Basically, you shouldn't even care [Db] what combination you're playing.
That's the ultimate goal.
And then the final one for the first finger is one, [Am] four, three, two.
[Bm] [F] [Eb] [Ab] [D] [Db]
Which introduces another thing you see throughout the 24 combinations, which is this seems like a regular ascending, I mean, descending, sorry, pattern.
Right.
So [Am] we do one, four, [Bb] three, two, one, [Eb] four, three, two, one, four, three, [Ab] two.
By the time you play a few strings, it's four, three, two, [Am] one.
Right.
But [Bm] each [Bb] cycle [F] begins [Eb] on [Ab] the, so to [Bm] speak, [Db] wrong string.
[F] [C] [Eb] [D] [Cm]
[Bb] And this is very useful for improvising so you don't get stuck in a pattern.
I find this extremely useful.
Now, the next 18 combinations, we won't go over them, but make sure you always focus on these things.
Right.
Perfect [A] tempo.
[Bb] You [Abm] always [Cm] want to be right on [D] time.
[Eb] So [F] play with the metronome.
Perfect sound.
Always play at the edge of the fret.
Press down as little as possible to [Bb] get a good [C] round tone.
Always use alternate picking and always pick with the same intensity.
Don't [A] do this.
[Bb] [B] [D]
[Eb] [A] Right.
We want [Bb] the [B] [D] same [Eb] [E]
[F] [Ab] tone [Eb] [Bb] and the same [N] volume for each note.
And try to slowly bring your hand to basically love each finger.
Yeah.
Don't give preference to any one of them.
So these are all 24 combinations.
I think you might have heard about this exercise before if you've been playing for a while, but maybe you haven't gone so deep with it.
And it's certainly worth it.
You know, I would never suggest you do stuff just to make a video.
So you can trust me on this.
It's extremely useful.
And don't do it in a rush.
You know, be thoughtful about it.
Take your time.
Maybe do just a few combinations each day or each week.
And you'll see some great results.
And if you'd like this video, please do like, comment.
Maybe consider subscribing.
We're fast approaching 10,000 subscribers, which is really cool.
And I look forward to seeing you on the next video.
And don't forget to check out the shorts.
I do a bunch of those and I don't think they show up in your subscription feed.
All right.
Thank you very much again for being there.
Let me know in the comments if you have any more
Key:
A
B
Bb
Eb
F
A
B
Bb
Hello everyone, Andrea here, welcome back.
Today I'm going to share with you maybe the most important exercise that I've ever done with the guitar.
I started doing this very early on in my musical adventure and it's still with me today, so it's been very useful.
I've also taught it to a lot of students throughout the years and they've benefited greatly from it, so I'm going to share it with you right now.
When I started out playing the guitar, I was living in the suburbs of Milan, in a small town, and there was no internet and very few guitar books out there.
So a lot of information we just passed along to one another, maybe a friend of ours would play the electric guitar, maybe one went to guitar lessons, maybe somebody else didn't.
But we talked to each other and figured stuff out.
One of the things that stuck with me is one of my friends telling me that he used to do these chromatic things.
I didn't know what chromatic meant, of course, but I figured out that on classical guitar, one of the most common exercises was something [E] like this.
[G] _ [N] _ _ _
_ _ _ With the open string.
And so that sounded interesting to me, I thought, well, that makes sense, you know, move all your fingers.
And so what I used to do was during my lessons in class in high school, so I hope my parents are not watching this, I would just tap the fingers on the desk.
After a few days of doing that, I figured, you know, there's so many ways we can move our fingers.
So I kind of calculated, there was 24 different permutations and combinations of fingers and I started to tap those out.
So it was very annoying for a lot of my _ classmates because _ [A] you _ _ would hear this all the time.
And so I realized that, OK, well, this is very useful because I really was obsessed with the guitar so I can practice without my guitar.
But eventually when I applied it to the instrument, I realized that it was very beneficial in many ways.
So I'm going to analyze just a few of these combinations just to get you in the ballpark.
And then, of course, I will leave you the list of all 24.
So the first combination, of course, is one, two, three, four, [Bb] [B] which I play up here just so it's [A] more convenient.
[N] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
And when I started doing it, and if you're starting out, you'll notice it.
It's really hard to get these two fingers, the third and fourth fingers, to behave as well as the first two fingers.
There's a lot of strength in these first two fingers and a lot less in these two.
And as a matter of fact, a lot of students and guitar players kind of collapse their hands.
You see that when they play chords and when they play scales, some people don't even use four fingers.
You know, some blues players, but also other people who just simply haven't gotten around to it.
To me, it always sounded very strange to lose 25 percent of your hand.
So I always want to make sure that all my fingers were there.
And so this [G] really [B] drove the point home that I wasn't in full control of half [A] of my hand.
OK, so that's one of the [Bm] things that I think [Em] this first [G] combination would [D] really help [C] you _ [D] [Ab] focus on.
If you [A] notice [Bm] _ _ [E] _ [G] _ [Fm] like a [A] stumbling rhythm [B] or maybe.
[Eb] _ _ [F] _
[Em] _ A bad sound, you know, that's probably because these two fingers are not working as well as the first one, so this will really help you out.
If you practice it like any [A] combination, you can play [B] _ [Cm] once [Dm] per string.
_ [D] Of [E] course, [Gb] much [C] slower than this _ _ [Eb] _ _ starting out and you work your way back.
If you want to spend a little more [Db] time with each combination, you [B] could play four times like this.
[Am] _ _ _ [Bm] _
_ _ [N] And change. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ I want to focus on the sound, the tempo, everything, you know, the attack of [Am] the string.
But that's a great exercise.
Right.
But it's only one of them.
So the next one up and the word I'm not going to talk about all 24 of them.
But the next one up is one, two, four, three.
And what you will notice with this one is that not only these two fingers are weaker, but they also kind of work together.
So when you do one, two, three, four, you're [G] using the momentum of the hand to get [A] these two fingers moving.
Now, we're going to take that away because you do [Bb] one, [Cm] two, [Abm] four, three.
So you [F] you're going back to where the three and the four has to move all by itself.
_ [B] Can't count on the third one.
And so you'll notice that you'll notice a bit of a struggle with rhythm, which is something a lot of students play and don't hear.
So I'm here to tell you, [A] [Cm] focus on your rhythm, [Am] maybe even record [D] yourself [F] _ [E] if you have [Am] trouble [Eb] [G] spotting it.
[Gb] _ _ _ _ [Eb] _
[Gm] _ _ _ [F] _ _ [B] _ [E] On this very even sound, even tempo and all that.
Then we move on to one, three, two, four.
Of course, by the end of the video, I'll give you a table with all the possible combinations so you don't have to worry too much about it right now.
[B] It's one, three, two, [Cm]
four.
So what happens now is [A] that we're scrambling the fingers.
There's no order now.
They're [Cm] all in [A] between each other.
[C] And what this [Cm] does, at least that I've seen the students, seems to really make this part of the hand _ tight.
The third finger doesn't have, we'll talk about anatomy another time, but certainly the tendons in the hand, they don't favor this finger.
You can check it out if you want to study some [A] anatomy.
[B] But [C] putting it right there [A] on the [Bm] [C] second note [Eb] makes this a bit of a struggle.
So my advice here is to go very [A] slowly.
_ [B] _ And as soon as you play this finger, you can try it right now if you want, if you want to pick up your guitar.
You'll notice that there's a lot of tension when you play this finger instead of the first one.
So the [A] first one is relaxed.
[G] And as soon as you put this down, your hand tenses up.
So at [Am] this point, _ [B] _ I would just relax the hand before [Am] continuing.
So I play one note, [B] the next note, relax, [Bb] and then [A] _ continue with two and four.
[B] _ [Bb] _
[E] _ Eventually, [Cm] you'll be able to prevent [D] the tension from even [Gb] occurring.
_ [Bbm] _ _ [Am] _ _ [Cm]
Like _ [E] _ [F] _ [Cm] that.
[A] Yeah, stay relaxed.
Well, this is harder to do than it seems.
And then you mix them up again.
One, three, four, two.
So [C] we descend.
[Bb] _
[F] _ [Eb] _ _ This [A] is actually worse [G]
for the same reasons as before.
These two fingers are weaker and you get a lot more tension [C] than the previous one.
So, again, focus on relaxing the hand after each note.
OK, so let's continue just a little bit more.
We do one, four now as the first two fingers and then two, three.
What happens now?
We were working the external fingers and the internal fingers.
So it's different.
We play the extremities [Bb] and then [B] the center of the [Am] hand.
[Bm] _ [N] _ This is very curious, but I find a lot of students love this, find it extremely easy and some of them find it impossible.
And I haven't figured out after _ _ 25 years of teaching guitar exactly why that is.
But to me, actually, this is pretty easy.
It's always [E] been.
And _ there's not much more to say [Am] about it.
Just [Bb] remember [B] that [Ebm] you're _ _ kind of dividing the hand between exterior and interior.
_ But actually you want to be in full control, 25 [F] percent, so to speak, for each finger.
So eventually you want to even it all out.
[Cm] _ _ Basically, you shouldn't even care [Db] what combination you're playing.
That's the ultimate goal.
And then the final one for the first finger is one, [Am] four, three, two.
[Bm] _ [F] _ [Eb] _ [Ab] _ _ [D] _ [Db] _
Which introduces another thing you see throughout the 24 combinations, which is this seems like a regular _ ascending, I mean, descending, sorry, _ _ _ pattern.
Right.
So [Am] we do one, four, [Bb] three, two, one, [Eb] four, three, two, one, four, three, [Ab] two.
By the time you play a few strings, it's four, three, two, [Am] one.
Right.
But [Bm] each [Bb] cycle [F] begins [Eb] _ on [Ab] the, so to [Bm] speak, [Db] wrong string.
[F] _ [C] _ _ [Eb] _ _ [D] _ _ [Cm] _
[Bb] _ And this is very useful for improvising so you don't get stuck in a pattern.
I find this extremely useful.
Now, the next _ 18 combinations, we won't go over them, but make sure you always focus on these things.
Right.
Perfect [A] tempo.
[Bb] You [Abm] always [Cm] want to be right on [D] time.
[Eb] So [F] play with the metronome.
_ Perfect sound.
Always play at the edge of the fret.
Press down as little as possible to [Bb] get a good [C] round tone.
Always use alternate picking and always pick with the same intensity.
Don't [A] do this.
[Bb] _ [B] _ [D] _ _
[Eb] [A] Right.
We want [Bb] the [B] [D] same [Eb] _ [E] _
[F] _ [Ab] tone [Eb] [Bb] and the same [N] volume for each note.
_ And try to slowly bring your hand to basically love each finger.
Yeah.
Don't give preference to any one of them.
So these are all 24 combinations.
I think you might have heard about this exercise before if you've been playing for a while, but maybe you haven't gone so deep with it.
And it's certainly worth it.
You know, I would never suggest you do stuff just to make a video.
So you can trust me on this.
It's extremely useful.
And _ don't do it in a rush.
You know, be thoughtful about it.
Take your time.
Maybe do just a few combinations each day or each week.
And you'll see some great results.
And if you'd like this video, please do like, comment.
Maybe consider subscribing.
We're fast approaching 10,000 subscribers, which is really cool.
And I look forward to seeing you on the next video.
And don't forget to check out the shorts.
I do a bunch of those and I don't think they show up in your subscription feed.
All right.
Thank you very much again for being there.
Let me know in the comments if you have any more
Today I'm going to share with you maybe the most important exercise that I've ever done with the guitar.
I started doing this very early on in my musical adventure and it's still with me today, so it's been very useful.
I've also taught it to a lot of students throughout the years and they've benefited greatly from it, so I'm going to share it with you right now.
When I started out playing the guitar, I was living in the suburbs of Milan, in a small town, and there was no internet and very few guitar books out there.
So a lot of information we just passed along to one another, maybe a friend of ours would play the electric guitar, maybe one went to guitar lessons, maybe somebody else didn't.
But we talked to each other and figured stuff out.
One of the things that stuck with me is one of my friends telling me that he used to do these chromatic things.
I didn't know what chromatic meant, of course, but I figured out that on classical guitar, one of the most common exercises was something [E] like this.
[G] _ [N] _ _ _
_ _ _ With the open string.
And so that sounded interesting to me, I thought, well, that makes sense, you know, move all your fingers.
And so what I used to do was during my lessons in class in high school, so I hope my parents are not watching this, I would just tap the fingers on the desk.
After a few days of doing that, I figured, you know, there's so many ways we can move our fingers.
So I kind of calculated, there was 24 different permutations and combinations of fingers and I started to tap those out.
So it was very annoying for a lot of my _ classmates because _ [A] you _ _ would hear this all the time.
And so I realized that, OK, well, this is very useful because I really was obsessed with the guitar so I can practice without my guitar.
But eventually when I applied it to the instrument, I realized that it was very beneficial in many ways.
So I'm going to analyze just a few of these combinations just to get you in the ballpark.
And then, of course, I will leave you the list of all 24.
So the first combination, of course, is one, two, three, four, [Bb] [B] which I play up here just so it's [A] more convenient.
[N] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
And when I started doing it, and if you're starting out, you'll notice it.
It's really hard to get these two fingers, the third and fourth fingers, to behave as well as the first two fingers.
There's a lot of strength in these first two fingers and a lot less in these two.
And as a matter of fact, a lot of students and guitar players kind of collapse their hands.
You see that when they play chords and when they play scales, some people don't even use four fingers.
You know, some blues players, but also other people who just simply haven't gotten around to it.
To me, it always sounded very strange to lose 25 percent of your hand.
So I always want to make sure that all my fingers were there.
And so this [G] really [B] drove the point home that I wasn't in full control of half [A] of my hand.
OK, so that's one of the [Bm] things that I think [Em] this first [G] combination would [D] really help [C] you _ [D] [Ab] focus on.
If you [A] notice [Bm] _ _ [E] _ [G] _ [Fm] like a [A] stumbling rhythm [B] or maybe.
[Eb] _ _ [F] _
[Em] _ A bad sound, you know, that's probably because these two fingers are not working as well as the first one, so this will really help you out.
If you practice it like any [A] combination, you can play [B] _ [Cm] once [Dm] per string.
_ [D] Of [E] course, [Gb] much [C] slower than this _ _ [Eb] _ _ starting out and you work your way back.
If you want to spend a little more [Db] time with each combination, you [B] could play four times like this.
[Am] _ _ _ [Bm] _
_ _ [N] And change. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ I want to focus on the sound, the tempo, everything, you know, the attack of [Am] the string.
But that's a great exercise.
Right.
But it's only one of them.
So the next one up and the word I'm not going to talk about all 24 of them.
But the next one up is one, two, four, three.
And what you will notice with this one is that not only these two fingers are weaker, but they also kind of work together.
So when you do one, two, three, four, you're [G] using the momentum of the hand to get [A] these two fingers moving.
Now, we're going to take that away because you do [Bb] one, [Cm] two, [Abm] four, three.
So you [F] you're going back to where the three and the four has to move all by itself.
_ [B] Can't count on the third one.
And so you'll notice that you'll notice a bit of a struggle with rhythm, which is something a lot of students play and don't hear.
So I'm here to tell you, [A] [Cm] focus on your rhythm, [Am] maybe even record [D] yourself [F] _ [E] if you have [Am] trouble [Eb] [G] spotting it.
[Gb] _ _ _ _ [Eb] _
[Gm] _ _ _ [F] _ _ [B] _ [E] On this very even sound, even tempo and all that.
Then we move on to one, three, two, four.
Of course, by the end of the video, I'll give you a table with all the possible combinations so you don't have to worry too much about it right now.
[B] It's one, three, two, [Cm]
four.
So what happens now is [A] that we're scrambling the fingers.
There's no order now.
They're [Cm] all in [A] between each other.
[C] And what this [Cm] does, at least that I've seen the students, seems to really make this part of the hand _ tight.
The third finger doesn't have, we'll talk about anatomy another time, but certainly the tendons in the hand, they don't favor this finger.
You can check it out if you want to study some [A] anatomy.
[B] But [C] putting it right there [A] on the [Bm] [C] second note [Eb] makes this a bit of a struggle.
So my advice here is to go very [A] slowly.
_ [B] _ And as soon as you play this finger, you can try it right now if you want, if you want to pick up your guitar.
You'll notice that there's a lot of tension when you play this finger instead of the first one.
So the [A] first one is relaxed.
[G] And as soon as you put this down, your hand tenses up.
So at [Am] this point, _ [B] _ I would just relax the hand before [Am] continuing.
So I play one note, [B] the next note, relax, [Bb] and then [A] _ continue with two and four.
[B] _ [Bb] _
[E] _ Eventually, [Cm] you'll be able to prevent [D] the tension from even [Gb] occurring.
_ [Bbm] _ _ [Am] _ _ [Cm]
Like _ [E] _ [F] _ [Cm] that.
[A] Yeah, stay relaxed.
Well, this is harder to do than it seems.
And then you mix them up again.
One, three, four, two.
So [C] we descend.
[Bb] _
[F] _ [Eb] _ _ This [A] is actually worse [G]
for the same reasons as before.
These two fingers are weaker and you get a lot more tension [C] than the previous one.
So, again, focus on relaxing the hand after each note.
OK, so let's continue just a little bit more.
We do one, four now as the first two fingers and then two, three.
What happens now?
We were working the external fingers and the internal fingers.
So it's different.
We play the extremities [Bb] and then [B] the center of the [Am] hand.
[Bm] _ [N] _ This is very curious, but I find a lot of students love this, find it extremely easy and some of them find it impossible.
And I haven't figured out after _ _ 25 years of teaching guitar exactly why that is.
But to me, actually, this is pretty easy.
It's always [E] been.
And _ there's not much more to say [Am] about it.
Just [Bb] remember [B] that [Ebm] you're _ _ kind of dividing the hand between exterior and interior.
_ But actually you want to be in full control, 25 [F] percent, so to speak, for each finger.
So eventually you want to even it all out.
[Cm] _ _ Basically, you shouldn't even care [Db] what combination you're playing.
That's the ultimate goal.
And then the final one for the first finger is one, [Am] four, three, two.
[Bm] _ [F] _ [Eb] _ [Ab] _ _ [D] _ [Db] _
Which introduces another thing you see throughout the 24 combinations, which is this seems like a regular _ ascending, I mean, descending, sorry, _ _ _ pattern.
Right.
So [Am] we do one, four, [Bb] three, two, one, [Eb] four, three, two, one, four, three, [Ab] two.
By the time you play a few strings, it's four, three, two, [Am] one.
Right.
But [Bm] each [Bb] cycle [F] begins [Eb] _ on [Ab] the, so to [Bm] speak, [Db] wrong string.
[F] _ [C] _ _ [Eb] _ _ [D] _ _ [Cm] _
[Bb] _ And this is very useful for improvising so you don't get stuck in a pattern.
I find this extremely useful.
Now, the next _ 18 combinations, we won't go over them, but make sure you always focus on these things.
Right.
Perfect [A] tempo.
[Bb] You [Abm] always [Cm] want to be right on [D] time.
[Eb] So [F] play with the metronome.
_ Perfect sound.
Always play at the edge of the fret.
Press down as little as possible to [Bb] get a good [C] round tone.
Always use alternate picking and always pick with the same intensity.
Don't [A] do this.
[Bb] _ [B] _ [D] _ _
[Eb] [A] Right.
We want [Bb] the [B] [D] same [Eb] _ [E] _
[F] _ [Ab] tone [Eb] [Bb] and the same [N] volume for each note.
_ And try to slowly bring your hand to basically love each finger.
Yeah.
Don't give preference to any one of them.
So these are all 24 combinations.
I think you might have heard about this exercise before if you've been playing for a while, but maybe you haven't gone so deep with it.
And it's certainly worth it.
You know, I would never suggest you do stuff just to make a video.
So you can trust me on this.
It's extremely useful.
And _ don't do it in a rush.
You know, be thoughtful about it.
Take your time.
Maybe do just a few combinations each day or each week.
And you'll see some great results.
And if you'd like this video, please do like, comment.
Maybe consider subscribing.
We're fast approaching 10,000 subscribers, which is really cool.
And I look forward to seeing you on the next video.
And don't forget to check out the shorts.
I do a bunch of those and I don't think they show up in your subscription feed.
All right.
Thank you very much again for being there.
Let me know in the comments if you have any more