Check out this free lesson from Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman on three Classic Riffs For Remarkable Fretting Hand Improvement. Be sure to get the free tabs for this killer guitar lesson.
Introduction
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson. Today I want to show you three riffs Riffs For Remarkable Fretting Hand Improvement. I’m kind of doing a series on this and a lot of it’s been on stuff for alternate picking, but this one is not so much alternate picking as it is for your fretting hand to really kind of help it to get better reach. One of the things that I hear a lot from beginner students and stuff is they all say “oh my hands are too small”, “my fingers are too short”, I can’t reach these things. Well I’ve got very small hands, I don’t have fingers like Paul Gilbert or Steve Vai, you know big crazy hands. So anyhow these exercises are really good for just kind of helping getting your fingers to want to stretch and stuff and it’s a little bit more entertaining to do this than it is to just sit and stretch your hand out and you should you know kind of do that anyway just to kind of work yourself into it; but they’re fun little riffs. Anyway be sure to click on the link in description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at Riffs For Remarkable Fretting Hand Improvement.
Riffs For Remarkable Fretting Hand Improvement
Everlong
All right so the first Riffs For Remarkable Fretting Hand Improvement we’re going to look at is Everlong by Foo Fighters. Now I did this one just like a couple of weeks ago the original way that it’s done in drop D, but I’m going to show you how to do it in standard tuning which makes it more difficult to play, it’s got some bigger stretches and stuff, so like I said it’s just a really good exercise. So we’re going to start off, you’re going to put your second finger on the ninth fret of the A string and your fourth finger onto the 11th fret of the D string and then take your third finger put it on the 10th fret of the low E and your first finger on the seventh fret of the low E… So the strumming for this isn’t like really super important, it’s just like how the song is, when you look on the tabs it’ll make more sense… Then just remove your third finger so now we’re going to take that shape that we’re doing right there with one, five and then nine which this shape right here… it’s kind of the center of all of these riffs. We’re going to move that down so now your first finger is on the third fret, your second’s on the fifth and your fourth is on the seventh and then move it all the way back up to the seven again. So then you just put your third finger back on and start over.
Message In A Bottle
All right, so the next Riffs For Remarkable Fretting Hand Improvement we’re going to look at is Message In A Bottle by The Police. So this one uses that same shape that we were doing here on the last one, it uses that all over, so we’re going to start off here on the fourth fret of the A string and then it’s going to go to the sixth fret of the D and eighth of the G strings. So you don’t want the notes to be separate. Then from there we go to the low E five and then seven on the A and then nine on the D strings… Then from there we go down to the second fret of the A string and then the fourth fret of the D and sixth of G, so, so far… Now from there we’re going to move that straight down so now we’re on the second fret of the low E, fourth fret of the A and sixth fret of the D strings and when we do that we slide up a half step. So the whole thing slowly… So that’s a really good exercise for stretching out those fingers and stuff, you’ll feel it right away especially if this is new to you and you haven’t done this kind of stuff before you’re going to really feel it right away. So with these you don’t want to overdo it especially if you’re really new to this, I’ve only been playing for a short amount of time and I can feel it, don’t overdo it, don’t play them to the point that you give yourself tendonitis or something, listen to your body, if you start playing it and after 30 seconds it’s really kind of hurting then give it a rest, work yourself up to being able to play these with some endurance.
Every Breath You Take
Okay so then the last Riffs For Remarkable Fretting Hand Improvement we want to look at is another Police song and this is the riff for Every Breath You Take. Now these chords are difficult to do, they’re just such big stretches and it’s like I really have a hard time playing it myself, so you’ll probably hear little mistakes here and there but you know work at it, it’s a really good exercise. All right so for the first chord we’re on the third fret of the low E with your first finger and then I’m on the fourth fret of the G string with my second finger, I’m on the fifth fret of the A string with my third finger and the seventh fret of the D string with my fourth finger. So the picking pattern for it… I’m going six, five, four, five, three, four, five, six, five… the last one actually is five four, not six five. You do that twice and then the next chord is a little bit easier; open low E, second fret of the A string with my first finger, fourth fret of the fourth string with my third finger and fourth string open, same picking pattern… Then from there we’re just going to move our first finger up a half step so we’re on the third fret of the A string with your first finger, fifth fret of the D string with your second finger, fifth fret of the B string with your third finger and seventh fret of the G string with your fourth finger, same picking pattern. Then we just move that shape up a whole step so now our first finger is at the five, second fingers at seven, third fingers at seven and fourth finger is at nine… and then it just starts over again. Just from playing all of these things just demonstrating I can already feel that here in my wrist in my hand, It’s a lot of stretching. So like I said these are cool riffs, I would just take them one at a time, I’m doing them in the order of easiest to most difficult, so that Foo fighters one is the easiest and this Every Breath You Take is by far the hardest one.
Conclusion
All right so I hope you enjoyed Riffs For Remarkable Fretting Hand Improvement and got something out of it. If you like this lesson give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below. Let me know if there’s something you’d like to see covered in a future lesson. If you have not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss out any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I’ve got for you today. Thanks for watching Riffs For Remarkable Fretting Hand Improvement and have a great day.
