Hey, how ya doing? Justin here today.
I'm gonna share with you an awesome little exercise
called "Minimum Movement".
It's a small idea with big consequences, this one.
Uh, we're gonna be using the G major scale.
Doesn't really matter what scale you use.
This is just a good one because it's using all of your fingers.
Um, but you could use another scale if you like.
Um, and the idea here really, it's all just about learning to control your fingers.
I'm gonna talk about it a little bit more after I've given you the close up
and the proper example of it.
But, uh, let's get to our close up
and, uh, check out actually how to do this exercise.
Let me start by playing you the G major scale
the one way I most commonly see it if I ask a student to play me the scale.
So, it might look something like this.
'playing'
Okay? Now let me play it another way
and see if you can spot the difference
'playing'
Looks pretty different, doesn't it?
'playing'
So the difference is that my fingers are under control.
I call it "Flying Fingers" when people's fingers, you know
particularly little fingers, for a lot of people they really
want to fly right off the neck as soon as they finish playing the note.
Whee! Off goes little finger.
So, what you want to do with this exercise is
play the G major scale really slowly and try not to let any finger move more than a millimeter or two from the fingerboard.
Right? Doesn't sound like that difficult a thing but when you try it you're gonna find it is.
So, first note. Now, let's just put the little finger down.
There we go, now first finger's actually already kind of in place.
Now second finger has just got to move over there, there we go.
Little finger, now don't let it move up, there we go.
First finger over now, and it's just really
slowly trying to get the fingers
cause you are gonna find I'm almost certain that
some of the fingers want to lift right up off the fingerboard.
Particularly like here, moving that third finger over.
Little finger wants to go "Hey!"
But you gotta try and keep it under control there.
The whole way, especially here agian, that- th-
could really feel my little finger wanting to lift up there.
Wo- wait- actually, I let them all have a bit of a run there.
So we're just really trying to get those fingers
so they're hardly moving at all, and you really want to go slow with this.
There's absolutely no point in trying to do it fast.
And you're gonna find when you try and do this exercise yourself
it's actually a lot more difficult than it looks.
Oh, little finger just had a little bit of a wander as well.
It's difficult! You know, especially there as well.
When you're changing fingers behind little finger when it's already off.
Like now, it wants to lift up, and you have to really
concentrate to make sure
oh, there it goes again
You stay down, you little rumin.
Again, it was jumping a little bit.
But that's the exercise.
So this exercise is all about controlling your fingers.
The speed thing is really-really not important here
It's not at all
So doing it fast will just spoil the excercise
And there'd be no point in doing it
You really wanna be doing slow, careful, controlled movements
And making sure that you're in control of all of your fingers
All the time. Most people struggle with the little finger particularly
The fact is that it'll just play and as soon as I finish playing the note
it jumps right off the fingerboard
and that's really normal but you'll just have to do it
slowly enough to get it right. Okay, now I'm gonna move over
to my 1st finger now, little finger you'll just stay there and just concentrate
on that little finger, making sure it doesn't lift off.
Concentrate 'n' concentrate and try, and you will find
that you can control it! You can do it!
Even if it feels like you can't originally,
you can definitely control your fingers properly.
You just have to practice doing it and learn how to make sure that
there's no kinda instinctive muscle reactions thrown out
by your brain while you're playing. You wanna be in control of
every little movement that they make. Now, what you gonna find, it's really
interesting is this has a big effect on your playing all over.
Without having to practice individual things, so if you'd work on this
using the G major scale, as I'm suggesting, you'll find that
it's just naturally kind of infects your blues scale and the licks
that you're playing and songs that you're working on.
Your fingers will naturally be a lot more under control and
you'll find them flying off a little bit more, if you do find it,
particularly, for a, you know, well, a particular tune or
a riff that you're learning when your fingers are flying about a bit,
then, you might wanna spend little bit of time with that
one riff, or that one lick, or whatever it is, that you're
struggling with, but generally you're gonna find that this
one exercise, 5 minutes a day this one, is a really big deal.
It's a great thing to have in your practice routine.
Good little warm-up thing as well, because it's not very strenous and
not very fast, so you can just really get you know, get your brain
into the zone there, so really, unbelievably great
exercise is it. It was a real game-changer for me
to, made a huge impact on my technique generally, so
I hope it does the same for you.
See you for plenty more lessons and songs very soon,
You take care of yourselves! Bye-bye!