Is your left hand 4th finger giving you problems in your guitar playing? Have no fear, this guitar pinky exercise will help whip that weakling into shape.
Your 4th finger will always be your weakest finger as a guitar player, but there are guitar finger exercises that you can do to help stop it from slowing you down.
One of the best pinky exercises you can do is to practice guitar scales on a regular basis. Scale practice is an essential part of building guitar technique.
But in addition to your regular guitar scale practice, there is a guitar pinky exercise that specifically works on building strength and independence in your 4th finger.
You will need to keep your left hand thumb in about the middle of the back of the neck to help all 4 of your fingers easily reach the notes. You will also want to keep your left hand fingers curved and press down on the string with the tip of each finger. Don’t let your fingers fly out away from the neck of the guitar as you play, especially your pinky. Keep your fingers as close to the fretboard as possible at all times.
For the guitar exercise below I start by picking up on the first note, and then alternate down and up picks after that.
Guitar Pinky Exercise Tablature
Besides playing this guitar finger exercise on the 1st string as indicated in the tablature, try playing this on all 6 string of the guitar.
Another way you could practice this guitar pinky exercise would be to slur all of the notes. So to use hammer-ons and pull-offs instead of picking all of the notes.
As with all finger exercises for guitar, take it slow. Don’t over do it. The idea is the strengthen your pinky, not put it in a cast 🙂
