Best Coordination Exercise

[j-birrd]

If you had to recommend one single exercise for improving pick hand/fret hand coordination, what would it be?

 

[Sinisnuthear]

Octaves. Put a fifth in the middle and go back and forth. Hold your pick differently, like use the claw one or your middle finger helps a lot. Bridging your pinky helps with coordination. Can be addictive tho. Also when doing the octave thing use a 3 step system like DAD the. Maybe ADD to ADA back to D

 

[TrentNWM]

I improve it mainly by using scales (you’ve gotta keep up practice to make sure coordination doesn’t get sloppy). It’s important for your hand to know exactly where each string is and, trust me, in time it will be as normal as brushing your teeth. What I do for my daily routine when warming up and adjusting my technique is, as I’ve said already, running scales. For beginners I suggest the major scale (Ionian) since this spans across what I consider to be a very large % of theory. I also really like the blues scale but use whatever you want. Try to use abstract picking techniques going across each string (and skipping some when comfortable with it) and play the whole scale slow and build up to where you’re going faster. Never give up on this, before you know it you’ll be able to do all sorts of cool stuff. Great question!

 

[William B.]

Some form of Chromatics goes far
making tri tones too

 

[j-birrd]

Terrific feedback, thank you all. I notice the common thread in these recommendations is scales. Admittedly, I neglected scales for years. I shortcutted a lot of fundamentals earlier on. I put the guitar down for years after hitting a ceiling.

I picked it back up seriously recently, and am having a blast breaking old habits and enjoying the results. Those results shed extra light on the coordination/synchronization problem.

Thank you again for taking the time to lend your thoughts. This was my first post, and I’ll bring more as I continue my dive back in.

 

[TrentNWM]

Terrific feedback, thank you all. I notice the common thread in these recommendations is scales. Admittedly, I neglected scales for years. I shortcutted a lot of fundamentals earlier on. I put the guitar down for years after hitting a ceiling.

I picked it back up seriously recently, and am having a blast breaking old habits and enjoying the results. Those results shed extra light on the coordination/synchronization problem.

Thank you again for taking the time to lend your thoughts. This was my first post, and I’ll bring more as I continue my dive back in.

My pleasure, I'm so glad I could be of any help! I love online communities like this where we can all discuss and share such diverse ways of thinking. Admittedly, I also until recently had the same habits and have broke them over the course of the last 2-3 years. I have to say, the results speak for themselves and it's all about connecting the dots towards a better understanding. Keep rocking bro!