If there was one technical adjustment you could adopt in your fingerstyle guitar playing to take a giant leap forward in the music you're able to make, would you take it? I hope you would, because I'm here to share this fantastic hidden secret to fingerstyle guitar playing! It's called preparing, and it is, in a nutshell, the process of placing your fingers in contact with the guitar strings well before they're needed to play their next note. By becoming incredibly comfortable with--and aware of--preparations, you will be able to control how your fingers move to a much greater degree. Gone will be the days when your fingers floated aimlessly above the strings. Instead, you'll be the master of keeping your fingers close as you play fingerstyle guitar pieces.
Simple arpeggios present the best practice situations for perfecting preparations when you're just starting out with making preparing a new guitar habit. Use a foundational arpeggio like the PIMA arpeggio, in which you simply play from the thumb to the index finger to the middle finger finishing up with the ring finger. The preparation comes in as soon as you complete one full run of the arpeggio. After your ring finger plays, plant all of your fingers and your thumb on their strings. Take care to plant the fingers right on their contact point, which is the exact point on the fingertip where the guitar string slides into place between the fingernail and the flesh of the fingertip.
If you're preparing properly, the strings will be completely silent. Since your fingers are in contact with the strings, there won't be any sound coming from the strings. As you master preparations, you won't have to keep your fingers completely prepared and in contact with the strings at all times. It's much easier to master preparations and then keep your fingers just off the strings but extremely close than it is to just sort of allow your fingers to float above the strings wherever they want and then to try to hold them in tight near the strings. Push through the frustration and master preparations so you'll be able to call on your incredible finger control in every passage of music you encounter.
Once you've worked on preparations within simple arpeggios, you'll be ready to break back into more complex musical challenges. Preparations show their true technical value when you apply strict and careful preparations to very complex pieces. The more varied and intense a passage is, the more preparations will help you.
Preparations will singlehandedly transform your fingerstyle guitar playing if you take the time to master them. They're hard to explain completely in print like this, but more than anything, just the principle of getting your fingers to their notes as early as possible will serve you extremely well in everything you do. Preparations are all about finger control and awareness. If you aren't aware of your fingers and how they currently move, then adopting preparations may feel unbelievably frustrating. Your fingers have been allowed to range all over the place, and now you're suddenly forcing them to obey strict preparations. They will likely rebel for a bit, but if you persist, you will be rewarded with one of the most potent and useful technical skills in fingerstyle guitar.
Simple arpeggios present the best practice situations for perfecting preparations when you're just starting out with making preparing a new guitar habit. Use a foundational arpeggio like the PIMA arpeggio, in which you simply play from the thumb to the index finger to the middle finger finishing up with the ring finger. The preparation comes in as soon as you complete one full run of the arpeggio. After your ring finger plays, plant all of your fingers and your thumb on their strings. Take care to plant the fingers right on their contact point, which is the exact point on the fingertip where the guitar string slides into place between the fingernail and the flesh of the fingertip.
If you're preparing properly, the strings will be completely silent. Since your fingers are in contact with the strings, there won't be any sound coming from the strings. As you master preparations, you won't have to keep your fingers completely prepared and in contact with the strings at all times. It's much easier to master preparations and then keep your fingers just off the strings but extremely close than it is to just sort of allow your fingers to float above the strings wherever they want and then to try to hold them in tight near the strings. Push through the frustration and master preparations so you'll be able to call on your incredible finger control in every passage of music you encounter.
Once you've worked on preparations within simple arpeggios, you'll be ready to break back into more complex musical challenges. Preparations show their true technical value when you apply strict and careful preparations to very complex pieces. The more varied and intense a passage is, the more preparations will help you.
Preparations will singlehandedly transform your fingerstyle guitar playing if you take the time to master them. They're hard to explain completely in print like this, but more than anything, just the principle of getting your fingers to their notes as early as possible will serve you extremely well in everything you do. Preparations are all about finger control and awareness. If you aren't aware of your fingers and how they currently move, then adopting preparations may feel unbelievably frustrating. Your fingers have been allowed to range all over the place, and now you're suddenly forcing them to obey strict preparations. They will likely rebel for a bit, but if you persist, you will be rewarded with one of the most potent and useful technical skills in fingerstyle guitar.
About the Author:
This is just one of many Nashville guitar lessons available at String Love Guitar. Come on by and stay a while!. Unique version for reprint here: Fingerstyle Guitar Finger Preparations.
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