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The Workout... Part 1
(13 Nov 03)
Picking, continued and Legato
Let's work on two notes per string (useful for arps and pentatonic scales):
And check this out:
Above the first of these bars, it says "try different finger combinations". This refers to the first and second bar… halftone steps and wholetone steps. Try playing them with i.e. finger 1-2, 2-3, 3-4
Make sure you don't hurt yourself. If the stretches are too big, move the whole thing up, say, a perfect 5th, starting at the 8th fret. If that works, move it up to, say the 20th position gradually. And every day, try to gradually move it DOWN the neck, thereby increasing the stretches, until you eventually can do it in the lowest positions.
Here are two scalar exercises… 1st, the pentatonic scale:
and a 3NPS major scale:
Also, work on single-string and 2 (or 3) adjacent string exercises. Once again, I'd like to refer to the "Art Of Picking, part III". Include exercises from that "exercise compendium" to the workout as well, to cover the most important aspects of picking. (Don't forget about the PG-Lick!!!)
I didn't see the sense in reprinting those same exercises once again, so build your own "Picking"-block for your workout from the exercises above and from the ones in the aforementioned article.
Let's move on to the next block of our segment… actually, it's up to you to decide what to work on next. You could do music theory, scalar stuff or whatever... let's work on some legato now...
LEGATO
I'm not going to include many legato-exercises here. First of all, there are several sources for those, like i.e. my "Good Morning, Left Hand" article which deals with legato entirely. You can also just play the exercises from the picking-block legato-style, utilizing hammer-on's / pull-offs… Chromatic exercises, utilizing different finger-combinations, scalar runs, arps etc. Depending on the level you're on and the legato-exercises you have done already, you can customize your own legato-block from all those sources.
Take a few small breaks in between to give your hands some rest... legato-playing in combination with wide stretches actually are risky cuz you might hurt your left hand.
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