Been doing this fingers exercise with the metronome for like an hour. Fml 🙃

Alex Cain said:

I've been playing for 14 years and still do this exercise. After I go down and up once, then I move up one fret and keep going until I reach the 12th fret. Another good tip is try to keep your fingers as close to the fretboard as possible so you don't waste time getting them back to the fretboard. You can also try variations of this. Instead of 1-2-3-4 you can do 1-4-2-3 or 1-3-2-4 or whatever you want. I believe Papa Gates talks about these in the Intro to Alternate Picking and the lessons right after that.

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be4trix said:

great my friend! keep practising, you’re gonna become a badass!
you can try doing 1-3-4 down and up all over the handle. and then 1-2-4. up and down, always all over the handle (doing a little slide to move from key to another key when you finish a series). hope it’s clear <3 and you can even start practising on pentatonic scales!

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Radu-Cristian Perde said:

I see you are doing some sort of permutations which is really great. Believe it or not, I still do those exercise myself. Everyday in fact.

Here is my best advice to you, which is something that I apply myself. Practice this exercise for 5min everyday. No more, no less (for the time being). Go at it slowly and the point is simply to create a habit and to not get you tired of this exercise. Something that is not necessairly fun to do (its not) but that you can go through in 5 min every day.

You say that 80 BPM is where you are at! Good. Perfect! Then do it for the first week, 5 min a day, at 80 BPM.
Then the second week, raise it by 5 BPM. and the following week again!

By doing it in a short daily basis like this, your muscles will have the time to grasp the context of the movement and everyday is gonna get a little bit easier. Thats how I use muscle memory which I apply to everything! Its better to practice those 5 min everyday than an hour of it per week. Creating small and doable habits will give you huge benefits in the long run as your speed increases!

Thats my little suggestion

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ari.mac said:

Thank you so much! Ok I'll create a little daily routine then and I'm sure it will work for me too

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Radu-Cristian Perde said:

A daily routine is the best way to make you improve in an efficient consistant way!

Now, the first thing I will say is to start by making your routine small and easy to do! Dont make the mistake that most do of making it too big and where you wont be able to follow! Make it small and basic at first for the first 3 weeks. The point of it is to create a habit so strong that you will feel guilty if you dont do it.

Once that basic habit has strong roots, now you can build upon it and develop it. It will actually do so by itself naturally as your skills evolve.

The other thing is that its not about only doing your routine! Your routine is the first thing you should do! If you make it last 15 min, then do those 15 min first! And then after if you feel like doing more, than thats all just bonus! And the next day if you dont feel like playing guitar, well you know you just have to do your 15min or so and thats it! You wont feel guilty about not playing guitar but you wont feel like you are forcing yourself too much either because 15 min is easy and goes on fast!

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ari.mac said:

Grazie Bea! Totally doing this,

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