Stretching & Fingering

[superlocrian]

Hi All,

I can't tell you how much I enjoy reading all the different posts here at IBreathe.

I thought I would just post my latest guitar battle: I recently borrowed a book from a friend of mine, and I must admit it's a pretty good book to have (Mastering Rock Guitar: National Guitar Workshop), but in the section of Legato, there was one particular exercise that contained a stretch from hell, basically the fingering was 6th string fret 5, 9 & 10.

Although I have been playing guitar for a few years now and consider myself an average player, I found that stretch very uncomfortable. Although I could manage the stretch, I thought to myself "who would want to execute such an uncomfortable stretch while playing live?"

Another weird thing is how various books differ on scale fingerings, I must say this one really bugs me. Even though I know each person must play the guitar as comfortably as he/she can, surely there must be a standard. Let's look at an example, most Pentatonics (standard 5 box shapes) are fingered either with fingers 1&4 or 1&3 on string 1 to 6. Well the same book mentioned above says the same thing, except when it comes to the section of 1 note per string Pentatonics, suddenly they leave the pinky out even when there is a 4 fret stretch which naturally should be fingers 1 & 4. Any thoughts?

The 3 note per string major scale is also usually fingered 1, 2 & 4, but sometimes it is shown with the fingering of 1,3 & 4.

Sorry for the long winded article, just wanted to get this off my chest after my weekend of practice. Hope my explanation is clear, should have actually uploaded an image.

Cheers

[EricV]

Hi there,

I can understand that confusion. After all, there are a lot of different possibilites. Yes, there IS a standard, some "rule of thumb" ( one finger per fret... so if you i.e. have 5-7-8, U should use fingers 1-3-4, for 5-6-8 1-2-4, for 5-7-9 1-2-4 or 1-3-4 )

But then again, it depends on several factors...

I remember seeing a Paul Gilbert workshop and he was asked whether he uses finger 1-3-4 or 1-2-4 for something like
e---8---10---12----

He said it depends on what he played before. Meaning that whatever you play before you play somehting like the particular example might influence the fingering you choose.
My rule of thumb is: I try not to hurt myself, and I try to make sure it feels comfortable and is efficient ( as opposed to unefficient, i.e. playing 5-7-8 with fingers 2,3 and 4 )

Regarding that 5-9-10 stretch you mentioned... I have rather big hands, and since I like to use the stretch pentatonic a lot, I often do have licks where I have big stretches like that going on.
And since those licks are used in some of my songs, I do have to play them live. When I do, I try to make it easier by a) holding the guitar in a way that the headstock points upwards in a 45 degree angle... this makes stretchings a bit easier, and b) I put the thumb behind the neck.
It takes a while to stretch that far ( if you want to, that is ), but it is possible... when I see vids or pics of Shawn Lane playing, his hands look rather small and kinda chubby ( no offense !!! ), and he was a master of wide stretched licks
Eric

[superlocrian]

Thanks for the quick reply Eric, I really appreciate it. I am going to continue analyzing this aspect of fingering in my practice sessions for the next few weeks, and I will post the outcome here at IBreathe. The player who wrote the book I mentioned is Eric Halbig, maybe he just prefers those scale fingerings.

[Koala]

LOL whats with Erics and superhuman stretches?

Check out petruccis rock discipline, good book with effective stretch exercises.

[chris]

I learned from some method to use 1, 3, 4 when going down from the low E string towards the high E string and then when coming up to use 1, 2, 4 actually it should be 4, 2, 1... somehow this just works better for me.

To better state that... when going from low notes to high notes use 1, 3, 4 and when going from high to low use 4, 2, 1.