five finger soloing

[zeppelin]

during soloing do you guys use your pinkies alot, i dont the only time i ever use it is when there is a huge strecth between chords, and when the rest of my fingers are buisy holding down a chord and my pinky needs to put anpther note down to finish the chord, anyway ive been seen people always using there pinky during soloing , anyway.. way more the i use mine, mines kinda like the last resort thing... any advice or statements? are there any advantages or disadvantages?

[phantom]

zeppelin, welcome to ibreathe!

could you please choose bigger letters to write in the forums?
since there are a lot of old and grey haired people on that forum, just like me, who are having a hard time reading that tiny stuff when they forget their glasses in the wheelchair. anyway....

i wonder how many fingers are on your left hand..

anyway.. welcome.

[Unhorizon]

You have 4 fingers other than your thumb and pinky? In that case, you probably don't need to use it. But if it was a typo, you should learn to use your pinky because it will probably useful sometime when you want to play a big interval during improvising. If it isn't strong, though, you won't be able to use it with ease.

[wild_child]

i think it depends on what you're playing, and how fast you want to play it. Obviously if youre playing 3000 bpm arpeggios that span over 30 frets (i'm exaddurating here, in case you didn't guess :D ) then there is no way you're gonna do it without your pinky, but if youre playing a nice laid back blues solo with 2 nps pentatonic boxes then you could get away with it.

however, it's always a good thing to make use of what you got (i.e. 4 fingers) so basically its a case of logic, whenever it is most logic to use a finger, use it! - pinky, ring, whatever. don't go out of your way to stretch 5 frets with your index and ring just cause you don't like using your pinky, it just makes it harder and limits what you can do. This is a real easy habit to get into too, you'll only have to concentrate on doing it for a little while and then it'll come naturally.

one problem with using the pinky though, is that with a lot of people, it tends to flail around when your not using it, which means that you've gotta move it much further to make it touch the fretboard when you do use it. I've had this problem (and still do, to an extent :D ) but months and months of 1-2-3-4 excercises really help to bring it under control.

[Bizarro]

It's a good idea to work on trills with your pinky too. That's going to develop strength and accuracy quickly.

There are 4 main trill exercises to work on:
1. open string, pinky trill
2. index finger & pinky trill
3. middle finger & pinky trill
4. ring finger & pinky trill

I find 1 & 2 to be easier than 3 & 4...

Welcome to ibreathe! :)

[Unhorizon]

Wierd Bizarro, I've been doing those trills fora while now and find 3 and 4 to be easier than 1 and 2! It used to be the other way around, I don't know what happened.

[DOTLover]

What a thought eh! Can you imagine having 5 fingers! You could play some amazing things, or would it be a disadvantage? Well, I wonder if there is someone out there with more than the usual number of digits who plays guitar?

[GtrvVampyre]

during soloing do you guys use your pinkies alot, i dont the only time i ever use it is when there is a huge strecth between chords, and when the rest of my fingers are buisy holding down a chord and my pinky needs to put anpther note down to finish the chord, anyway ive been seen people always using there pinky during soloing , anyway.. way more the i use mine, mines kinda like the last resort thing... any advice or statements? are there any advantages or disadvantages?
Zep, using your pinky alot depends on what type of music you play and the speed you wanna play. For alot of blues (fast or slow) u usually dont have to use your pinky that much at all, theres not many big stretches. On the other hand, you start getting into classical or Yngwie Malmsteen stuff with these 3 notes per string scales, you MUST use your pinky. Well, you dont have to put its gonna be arkward and slow if you dont. I think building up your pinky is very important. Helps with chords, when you do tapping you tend to use your pinky for stretches. Its just somthing to get built up, to know you can do even if you dont need it. At first if you havnt worked on your pinky alot, it can be very arkward but you can build up strength and it gets easier.

[Dommy]

I use my pink all the time, why waste a finger? Playing with only 3 fingers is like driving down a road with a car with a blown out tire, and if you really need to start to make up time, you replace the tire, but if you don't, you just pop the tire again and go on your merry way. Why not use everything at your disposal?

[phantom]

Well, I wonder if there is someone out there with more than the usual number of digits who plays guitar?

dotlover there is at least one! i saw that guy playing in a hotel/bar thing in greece maybe ten years ago. i counted his fingers about 20 times 'cause i couldn't believe my eyes - it just looked wierd in the beginning.
he couldn't use that finger (which was sticking out of his hand after the usual pinky and was about half of it's size) because it was stiff or crippled in a way.

i wanted a sixth finger also really bad :-(....imagine 5 nps!!!!
hmm.. second thought.. i'll stick with the 4 and the useless thump :)