Electric Guitar: Developing Finger Strength

Strengthening your fingers will help you play the electric guitar with more precision, speed, and dexterity. Having stronger muscles in your hands and fingers and continuously working to build more power in your tendons will make a considerable difference in your overall playing ability. There are actually a couple of non-playing exercises you can do for strengthening your fretting hand, which I will tell you about below. When I reveal some of these exercises, you are probably going to think something similar to, "Oh, that is simple, anyone can do that; why is he giving us this exercise when it's so easy? That won't build much hand strength." But when you finally curl those digits around your well-worn fretboard and try the chordal set of exercises, you are going to realize they aren't nearly as easy as they seem, and you just might find yourself confessing: "Oh, now I see, this exercise is pretty difficult after all."

Before we begin the challenging stuff, so that we do not strain any muscles, we need to start off easy, so try this:

1. With your hand in the fifth position, place all four fingers on the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th frets of the neck.

2. While holding your third and fourth (ring and pinky) fingers down, raise the other two fingers off the fretboard, holding them for a count of two, then set them down again. Repeat this ten times.

3. Do the same with the opposite fingers. That is, while holding your first and second (index and middle) fingers down, raise the other two up off the fretboard and hold them for a two count, then set them down again. Repeat this variation ten times. You can think of this as trying to do hammer-ons and pull-offs if you want, with the fingers being set down with enough force to "hammer-on" and sound a note.

That is the easy warm-up. Now it will get more difficult. So get prepared. Basically we are going to be doing the same exercise as above, except now we will use opposite fingers.

1. With your hand in fifth position, place all four fingers on the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th frets of the guitar.

2. While holding your first and third (index and ring) fingers down, raise the other two off the fretboard, hold them there for a second, then set them down again. Repeat this raising and setting down of opposite fingers ten times.

3. Do the same with your other fingers now. That is, while holding down your second and fourth (middle and pinky) fingers, raise the other two off the fretboard and set them down again. Repeat this ten times. Again you can imitate doing hammer-ons and pull-offs with the raised fingers.

It's harder than you thought, isn't it?

Now it will get even more difficult. We will move on to a chordal type of exercise, using the same finger strengthing idea above, although the chords performed will be somewhat atonal, and not great for your ears - but if they are played cleanly enough, they actually don't sound too bad. This exercise will be played exactly as the procedure outlined above, except now your fingers will span the first four strings of the guitar, and open strings will be played when certain fingers are raised. Instead of describing this exercise in algorithmic form as I did above, I will list it in "tablature" form. Play it in eighth notes with a half note at the end of each bar:

{3 4 5 6 x x} {3 4 0 0 x x} {3 4 5 6 x x} {3 4 0 0 x x}

The system of "tablature" above is usually reserved for chords; i.e. here is how a D chord and an E minor chord, respectively, would be displayed:

{x x 0 2 3 2} { 0 2 2 0 0 x }

So you can see the "diagram" is simply following the normal order of the guitar strings:

{ E A D G B E }

Do you see how this chordal version corresponds with our first warm-up strengthening exercise above? Now we will move on to the more difficult version.

{ 3 4 5 6 x x} {3 0 5 0 x x} {3 4 5 6 x x} {3 0 5 0 x x}

Getting the open strings to ring out cleanly will be quite challenging and will require some extensive practice, but work at it industriously and you'll soon find that this chordal version will strengthen your hands even more than the single string version. I am confident that one exercise or the other will build up the muscles and tendons of your fretting hand until you can rip off solos better than Master Blaster can rip off a pig's head in Barter Town (from the movie Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome). Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Once you have the above versions down fairly well, reverse the fingering so that your pinky is on the 6th fret of the low E string and then play it in that fashion. Also, try it on other strings and in different positions.

If you practice these exercises enough, soon your digits will be crawling and wailing over the fretboard so furiously and passionately that during gigs the opposite sex will probably not be able to keep their hands off you. But remember that your hands and forearms will be much stronger than theirs from performing these exercises, and you will be able to fight them off with ease, if that is what you desire.

Source:
"Developing Finger Strength," How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Jason Earls, Pleroma Publications, 2007.