Lauren Bateman and Sam teach a finger-independence exercise using alternate picking and string-skipping on frets 5-8. The four-note pattern moves up the strings at an angle until your pinky leads, then reverses back down with your first finger finishing. Tab is available to download.
Sam.
Hey, everyone. How's it going? It's Lauren here, and we're going to talk about a slightly more advanced.
Hand technique and finger independence exercise. This works both on your alternate picking, which is picking in an up, down, down, up. So you watch my down, up, down, up.
So you'll be using alternate picking for this exercise. And what we're doing here is we're basically working on a bunch of different strings, skipping strings. So it's kind of really coordinating both of your hands together.
As well as working on your finger independence. So how it starts is we're going to start on the fifth fret.
And there's going to be a pattern. And if you look on the tab and download that at the website, you'll see there's a pattern. We're going to start off at five with our first finger, and we're going to use five, six, seven, eight. So whenever you see a five, use your first finger. Six, use your second finger. Seven, use your third. Eight, use your fourth finger. So what we're going to do here is we'll start at 5.
And then we're going to go 6 on the same first string. 5. Now moving up to the second string. Then we're going to go 7, 6, 5. Climbing up the strings.
Now we're going to go 8, 7, 6, 5.
So basically, every time I play, I'm moving the pattern up a string. So we're starting 5, first string, 6, 5. Now I'm on the second string.
7, 6, 5.
Now I'M on the third string.
8, 6.
Sorry.
8, 7, 6, 5.
Sorry. I should have been on the fourth string for that one. Let me do that one again.
8, 7, 6, 5.
On the fourth string. Now we got the complete pattern. Now we're going to move our pinky up one. Eight is going to start in the second string.
Eight, seven, six, five.
Now I'm on the fifth string again. Move your pinky up one.
Eight, seven, six, five.
Now I'm on the first string. Move your pinky up again.
Eight, seven, six.
Move your pinky up again.
Eight, seven.
Move your pinky up eight. So that's how we're going to end. Now we're going to go backwards with the pattern.
So we're going to go 8, 7, 8.
Move the pinky down a string.
6, 7, 8.
Now the first finger comes back in.
5, 6, 7, 8. Move your finger down 5, 6, 7, 8. Again, 5, 6, 7, 8 dot Move.
The first finger down. Just keep moving it down.
5, 6, 7, 5, 5, 6, 5.
So basically, throughout the whole exercise, my hand is slowly moving up to the top of the neck of the guitar here, and then it comes back down. So it's going to have this kind of weird sounding pattern.
So each time you move, slowly moving your hand up until you get just your pinky at the top, and then you slowly come back down until you end with just your first finger. So this is part one of this kind of spider exercise. And I would just practice getting that pattern. And like I said, go look at the tab. You'll see the pattern that you're basically just going 8, 7, 6, 5, 8, 7, 6, five, except it's at an angle. And then when you come down, you're gonna go, 5, 6, 7, 8, 5, 6, 7, eight. So you'll see the pattern maybe a little better in the tab. So let's go through it right now one more time. We'll go real slow. Going to start first finger on the fifth string.
With the down pick. Then we're going to do second finger on the sixth fret of the first string, up pick. First finger is going to move up to the second string down pick. Then we're going to put our third finger on the seventh fret of the first string.
7, 6, 5.
So see how my fingers are angled? Now we're going to add the pinky on the eighth fret.
Good. Now we're going to move our pinky up one string. On the second string, eighth fret.
Move that pinky up again.
Keep moving the pinky up.
And now we should end with just our pinky on the eighth fret. Now we're going to go back down eight.
Sorry, third finger is going to come on. Seventh fret.
Eight. Put that the sixth finger.
Fifth finger now on the sixth string.
Now move that first finger down.
And you should end on that first string on the fifth fret. So that's the spider exercise. So take your time, work through that, and then we'll get you, blah, blah, blah. Then we'll move on to part two, which is a little bit more advanced. You'll be moving up and down the neck doing the exercise. So sit down with this for a little bit. Practice it. Get your fingers used to doing that. Get the muscle memory going. And then we'll see you in part two. Have a good one. See you guys soon.
