Ask Brendan is a monthly column where Guitar Educator, Brendan Burns, answers questions about music and the pursuit of Understanding and Mastering the guitar.

Fingerstyle Playing

July 03

Q: Brendan, I am an intermediate guitarist and I’ve been playing fingerstyle for a little while. Do you have any pointers for strengthening my picking fingers or possibly some warm-up exercises?

B: Finger-strength is important for the left and right hand. With our right hand, strength contributes to our accuracy and stamina - it gives us the ability to hit one string, and avoid 5 others, as well as the endurance to playing a repeating pattern for a long period of time.

Sometimes just spending time on the instrument can increase your finger-strength. If you’ve been away from the instrument, or are looking for a quicker fix there are products like the Gripmaster that help build strength and endurance for your fingers.

I’ve added a PDF file (click here) to the Quickview page of the site that shows my warm up exercises for fingerstyle playing. This is based off my studies of Mauro Guiliani’s 120 Right Hand Exercises (I may get to that on another lesson). The idea is to work through each one bar phrase at a time. The first example is just four notes. Try playing through the example very slowly (If you have a metronome: 50 -60 bpm). The slower you play, the more control and awareness you can have over your fingers. Once you can play this exercise slowly and without any mistakes, gradually increase the tempo (in increments 10bpm). Continue to play through the phrase until the tempo gets too fast for you to play, you get bored, or your feel fingers want to move on.

Using these exercises can condition your fingers to play fingerstyle in a variety of musical settings, as well as help develop a balanced strength and accuracy level for each finger (traditionally our middle and ring fingers are weaker than the thumb and index).

For this exercise, and most other Right Hand exercises, the P I M A stand for different fingers on your right hand:

P stands for Pulgar or Thumb
I stands for Indice or Index
M stands for Media or Middle Finger
A stands for Anular or Ring Finger