Left hand - bonus lesson

Left Hand Technique

I'm going to talk about left hand technique now and just to remind you that you do have the angle button function on your DVD player, that you can isolate my left hand so that you can really zero in on the technical stuff that I'm talking about. But don't forget the right hand because I'm going to show you some exercises too.

Basic Left Hand Technique

• Basic left hand technique is such that you really want to have the fingertips perpendicular to the strings.
• This means you want to have a little bit of an angle in the wrist, just enough so that...

You can see where I'm putting my hands, specifically my left hand. As a consequence of this, you will find that your thumb will naturally gravitate to the back of the neck, pretty much behind where the second finger is. This position tends to be a resting position for the left hand.

If you just have a relaxed left hand, the thumb will tend to go to the position of the second finger.

Key Points for Fingering

• You want to make sure that you're picking the string right behind the fret.
• If you leave too much air between the fingertip and the fret, potentially you're going to get buzzing.
• Ensure that the strength of the fingertip is located directly behind the fret.

Simple Exercise

Now, I'm going to give you a very simple exercise:

1. Pick the first fret of the top string (the top E string) with the first finger.
2. Pick the second fret with the second finger.
3. Pick the third fret with the third finger.
4. Pick the fourth fret with the fourth finger.

If you want to add a little spice and variety to this, you might even start with the first string open and then move back.

This is basically what this is, the beginning of a chromatic scale. I'll perform the same thing on the second string.

You might want to just pay attention to the right hand also, just to see how I'm fingering this. But there's no great mystery to it. I'm pretty much just using the thumb and the first finger because that's a simple approach.

• Again, this can be done on the fifth string and the sixth string as well.

You could use this as a warm-up exercise and then continue back down. This will give you a sense of security in where your fingers are connecting with the strings.