Pinky trouble

[David_Leo]

You are not alone. The pinky stretch is hard. One thing I’ve noticed. Tony seems able to finger across four frets without lifting his index finger. That doesn’t work for me. I have to lift my index as I finger the fourth fret with my pinky. Maybe try some stretching exercises. And of course, practice, practice, practice.

[Fly]

I’m with you on this one and will be watching this thread for any golden nuggets(picks) of Information or techniques . Yet I suspect the answer will practice and patience.

[Bill_Brown]

Yes @LukeCipers , I definitely got a pinkie workout with today’s challenge. For me it wasn’t about the stretch, but the pull-offs were a killer (especially on the lower – wound – strings). The pad on my pinkie finger is really sore at the moment.

There are exercises you can do for ‘stretch’ for instance you could just keep doing today’s basic scale – the pinkie was involved with every string. Or you could do the warm up (WU) exercise that was in Monday’s lesson. Anything where the index is assigned to the 1st fret, middle to the 2nd fret, ring to the 3rd and pinkie to the 4th and starting at the low E string, play each fret, then move up to the next string (A). Continue the pattern up to the high E string, then reverse the pattern, starting with the pinkie on the 4th fret of the high E string and continue back to the low E string. You could start an exercise like that further up the neck (3rd or 5th frets) if the stretch is too hard to start with.

It will be the repetition of exercises like those above that will get the pinkie used to the stretch to a point where you won’t even think about it! 😎