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Stuck pinky
Does anyone else have trouble with their left pinky locking up while trying to traverse the fretboard? It doesn’t seem to matter whether I’m playing scales or improvising – every time I need to move it its knuckles get locked into a straight position and requires a distracting amount of effort to loosen it and curve instead. Any tips on how to train it? Many thanks! 🙂
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5 Replies
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@CaryneAg I’ve had that same issue at times, with my fretting fingers. I think if you learn to play more relaxed it might help.
Try really doing those warm up exercises for both hands, before you start your practice session. Also if you’ve heard of “The Spider Exercise”, that is a really good one to use on a daily basis for about 5 minutes either after or as part of your warm up. Do the exercise very slowly, multiple times. For one pass, experiment with lighter fretting pressure on every note. Practice decreasing the pressure until you hear the strings buzz and/or deaden. Then increase it just slightly to get your clean notes. You’ve just learned the minimal fretting pressure. Giving it any more, is just a waste of muscle capacity and contributes to higher tension as you play. Another variation of “Spider” is to try it without touching your fretting hand thumb to the back of the neck. This will also help take the tension out of your fretting hand. Any time you are struggling to play/practice anything, just throw a capo on the 3rd or 4th fret. The shorter frets and lower action that results will also help you to play more relaxed.
Hope this makes sense to you and hope it helps!! C
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Every thing Stillhand says here is spot on. I have trigger fingers on both pinkies (too many years on pneumatic hammers) but as long as I stretch and pay attention to the tension manager, in our cases the locking of the joint (among others) is my hint to relax, address the source of tension and keep that neutral arch of my fingers ready to go. Practicing this mindset in my playing opened a whole new world. Did I mention stretching? Yes, good. The best hand finger stretching is what I call silly putty stretching. Too fast too hard and snap but go slowly, and the ensuing flexibility is a welcome surprise.
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Hey, thanks! Yes, I found Carol’s tips very helpful and yours as well. I didn’t have a clue about the tension thing or that getting my finger unstuck was even possible (I’ve been told I’m double jointed). But It would make sense that I’m too tense of a player – I have death grip fret fingers touch on my Strat as well. Working on relaxing and stretching as we speak! Om-m-m-m… 😌🙃
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Great advice in the above posts. It is important to do a few things in this part of your journey:
1. Define tangibly what relaxed means to you (eg, a smile on your face, not tension in the shoulders, picking and fretting hand are applying “least effort” to still play good solid tone, your posture is promoting a good guitar playing position)
2. Without picking up the guitar close your eyes and breath and visualize yourself doing this things while holding and playing a guitar
3. As you are playing @check in with your body and see how you are doing as per the items you outlined above. I put a post it not in a prominent place to see it. If you fell you have tension somewhere, close your eyes and visualize this area in a relaxed mode.
Rinse and repeat! 😎
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Food for the guitar playing soul @Kitman . 👍
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