Welcome! Developing muscle memory, building strong hands and fingers! Strengthening your hands and wrists! And developing left hand to right hand coordination! THAT'S what this workshop is about! Below you'll find the exercises, WITH audio backing tracks! You can download them all at once in a zip file, or work them online here. Your choice! I promise you, this is going to be worth it! And within a few short weeks, you will see much improvement in your playing! NOTE: Next time you come here, click on the link on the very TOP of the page, and you'll jump down TO THE EXERCISES! No more reading! NOTE: Before you begin this, you will need to make a commitment! You need to do the routine DAILY for 4 weeks! And any days possible, you need to do it 2 or 3 times! It takes very little time! You’re setting up the ground work for something that is going to change your life! You’re going to see dramatic improvements, IF you take the 4 weeks required to prepare you for greatness! Seriously! If you cannot do this daily, but can only do it at your regular practice time, less than daily, IT WILL STILL YIELD RESUILTS! But instead of taking 4 weeks, it will take some months. The 4 weeks time is needed because you'll be building different muscles than you have built right now. And you will be stretching your hand and fingers a bit. It will be much more beneficial if you can do this "routinely" for 4 weeks! After that, use it as your warm up before starting to practice. If you doubt the importance of these exercises, let me remind you of this one detail! ALL pro players run over these same exercises, or a variation of them, before EVERY gig! Before every performance! You're going to quickly develope a ton of hand and finger strength! Consistancy is the key element! Just give this one month, 30 days! Daily, 1, 2 or 3 times a day! Building Muscle Memory and Hand/Finger Strength The following finger exercises should be done daily, if possible. They only take a few minutes. On days when you spend time practicing, do these FIRST as a warm up. On days when you don’t have a practice session, do these anyway! At least for WEEK 1 at the very minimum! You need to give this a solid week’s work to get it all started! 4 fingers, 1 2 3 4. 4 frets, 1 2 3 4. Put them together in every possible combination. When you can play these simple 12 combinations, and play them WELL, there is no scale, riff, solo, or chord you can’t play! NOTE: There are some scales and a handful of chord shapes that require more of a stretch! You generally use 4 fingers to cover 4 frets. And that covers most of the gamut. This Routine covers the “norm”. We’ll save the stretches for another series. Most of you won’t be playing chords or scales that require more than a 4 fret spread. For those of you who want to make a serious effort to increase your SPAN, maximize your reach . . . check out this SIMPLE, quick exercise! You can do this before the following warm ups! Takes all of a minute! And trust me, it's a KILLER! The Spider S T R E T C H ! The whole set of exercises is all done the same way. So, here is the first one to work on. There are only so many combinations of 4. We’re going to play a BUNCH of the combos, systematically. The combos are . . . 2 finger combos: 12, 13, 14, 23, 24, 34 3 finger combos: 123, 124, 234 Then there is 1 2 3 4. We can break up 1 2 3 4 in a variety of ways! 1 3 2 4, 1 4 2 3, etc. Every possible scale is made up of the above combinations! So if you can play them all well, you simply need to know what finger combos are played in a particular scale to know how to play the scale. For example, the Minor Pentatonic scale is simply ONE of these combos, played on each string! Starting from the low E string, you play . . . E 14 A 13 D 13 G 13 B 14 E 14 We’ll start by playing the Chromatic Scale. That simply means, we’ll play a scale that contains ALL of the notes! For those not doing the "Spider Stretch" exercise, this is our first warm up! Play these every day for a week! Ideally 2 to 3 times a day! Trust me. As Monk used to say . . . You’ll thank me later! You’re going to play each string, starting from the low E. Place your fingers above the 1st 4 frets. One finger over one fret. ~*~ For all of these exercises, it’s critically important to use fingers 1 2 3 4 to play frets 1 2 3 4! Do not play fret 3 with finger 4, etc! ~*~ Each finger plays "its" fret! And the finger tips should press the strings close to the forward fret bar, NOT in the middle of the fret "space". You’re simply going to pick the low E string OPEN, then play fret 1, then fret 2, then 3 then 4. One note at a time. And count Open 1 2 3 4 as you play each note. Go SLOWLY! Each note needs to be clear, clean. Don’t press too hard. Just hard enough to get the note to sound clearly. Pick up and down, alternately. D U D U D Each time you play finger/fret 4, you move to the next string. Play open A 1 2 3 4. Then open D 1 2 3 4 Open G 1 2 3 4 Open B 1 2 3 4 Open high E 1 2 3 4 Then play it in reverse. Just come back down. Play 4 3 2 1 open, then move back to the B string, 4 3 2 1 open, and continue until you play low E 4 3 2 1 open. Do this THREE TIMES! Slowly. THEN . . . move on to the combos as follows. This was your warm up! The count is 1 2 3 4 5 because there are 5 notes played per string. The audio uses a 5 count before you start playing. Also, the audio playes 5 times, not 3. Up to you! Each time it plays, it gets slightly faster. You can listen online, or click the 3 vertical dots on the audio player, right side, then select download. You can also slow the track down if it's too fast.

Here we go!... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Warm Up! Click the play button below to play a sample O1234 MP3. ~ 2 Finger Combos: 1&2 Play frets 1 & 2 using fingers 1 & 2 on each string, starting on low E. Count 12 A string 12 D 12 G 12 B 12 high E 12. Then come back down. High E 21 B 21 G 21 D 21 A 21 low E 21 Do this 3 times! Then move to combo 2. 2&3. ~ Shake out your left hand. Get it loose again! Now play 1 & 3! Same way! From low E, play fingers/frets 13 on each string going up. Then revere it and play 31 on each string. ~ Shake out your left hand. Get it loose again! Now do the same with 1 & 4. Play 14 on each string going up, and 41 playing back down! ~ Shake out your left hand. Get it loose again! Now we do the finger 2 combos! We already did 1 & 2. So . . . Play fingers 2 & 3 on frets 2 & 3. E 23 A 23 D 23 G 23 B 23 high E 23 Then play it in reverse as above. High E 32 B 32 G 32 D 32 A 32 low E 32 ~ Shake out your left hand. Get it loose again! Play fingers 2 & 4, same way! ~ Shake out your left hand. Get it loose again! Last, play 3 & 4 the same way! DO ALL OF THESE 3 TIMES! ~ Now we’ll do the 3 finger combos! Starting with 123. Play 1 2 3 on each string going up, then 3 2 1 coming back down. Play 1 2 4 the same way. Play 1 3 4 Then 2 3 4. Shake out your left hand. Get it loose again! Now the last one. This is similar to the warm up Chromatic Scale exercise. But this time, no open strings! Just play 1234 on each string going up, then 4321 coming back down! DONE
Phew! Lots of stuff here! But a chunk at a time, a day at a time, and within only a few months, I absolutely guarantee, I promise! In 90 days, give or take, your playing will be so significantly, dynamically better, not only YOU will notice! But . . . EVERYONE WHO HEARS YOU WILL NOTICE! The Workshop! OK, that’s it for Part 1. The Warm Up! Now some magic starts! Because not only have your fingers toughened up, and gotten stronger, your picking has improved! Your fingers find each fret more easily! AND your pick is hitting the sweet spot more often! This will improve EVERYTHING you do on guitar. But once you do the following exercises, . . . HOLY SMOKES! Wait until you’ve done them for just ONE WEEK! OK, It's time to WORK! Do the following exercises the same way as the ones above. Each one is a permutation of 4 notes. THIS . . . is the Workshop! Give it 30 days! If you're happy with the results, you're HOOKED! This is going to be your warm up routine FOR THE REST OF YOUR PLAYING LIFE! 4 finger combos with Open Strings: THE WORKOUT! Group 1, the 1's! O1234 ~ O1243 ~ O1324 ~ O1342 ~ O1423 ~ O1432 O1234 O1243 O1324 O1342 O1423 O1432 Group 2, the 2's! O2341 ~ O2431 ~ O2413 ~ O2134 ~ O2314 ~ O2143 O2341 O2431 O2413 O2134 O2314 O2143 Group 3, the 3's! O3412 ~ O3124 ~ O3241 ~ O3421 ~ O3142 ~ O3214 O3412 O3124 O3241 O3421 O3142 O3214 Group 4, the 4's! O4123 ~ O4312 ~ O4132 ~ O4213 ~ O4231 ~ O4321 O4123 O4312 O4132 O4213 O4231 O4321 GREAT JOB! THE DOWNLOADS!