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Hey All,
When I’ve had what little formal training I hve, I was always cautioned to use the ‘one finger per fret’ technique. I understand that in the upper portions of the neck, the frets get much closer together so maybe four fingers bunched up together are too much. But I see Brian using the first and third fingers to bridge four frets often and even down low on the neck. Is there a certain fret at which I should switch from using my ‘pinky’ to the ring finger for a four fret stretch?? Should I just ignore the one-finger-per-fret idea and just use whatever seems easiest? What does proper technique look like? How to know when to use what??
radio
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Hi Radio,
There are no real rules to follow. You do what works for you. There are great player out there who rarely use their pinky. There are also great players who do. I think its best to develop both ways. It is difficult to use the pinky much when you move up the neck especially if you have big hands.
Hope that helps, Alan
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I generally practice “one finger per fret” when doing routines such as scales, warmups, etc. It helps strengthen that 4th finger for chords and stuff.
But when playing blues it is often useful to use one’s third finger (with a little help from 1st and 2nd fingers) where a pinky might otherwise be used, especially when bending the b7 a whole tone on the B string in first position, for example. Whatever you do, keep those fingers just behind the fret(s).
Les
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I agree with each of the replies so far on this.
I suggest quite a good but very simple exercise when you are warming up is to play a chromatic (semitone) scale a few times, starting from the low E and going up each string (but staying in the first position) to fret 4 on the first string, using fingers 1,2,3&4 on the corresponding frets and back down again.
This is quite good for helping develop the 4th finger and independence of the fingers, and also if you speed it up more and more, it might be helpful to the right hand. Quite useful too, I believe, for fingerstyle players. The great Segovia used to stress the value of regular scale practice.
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