A short guitar lesson by Lauren Bateman teaching a finger-dexterity lick based on the Peter Gunn theme. The exercise uses only the high E (top) string, covering open, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th frets, and emphasizes one-finger-per-fret and alternate picking; the lick speeds up slightly as it progresses.
Questions this video answers
High E (top) string: open, 2nd fret, 3rd fret, 4th fret, 5th fret.
Alternate picking (down, up); the first two open-string notes are played with down, up.
Hey, guitar enthusiasts, welcome back. Lauren Bateman here. And we're going to go over our first little guitar lick here in this finger dexterity exercise. The guitar lick we're going to be doing is the Peter Gunn theme. I'll play it briefly for you in the beginning so that you can hear what it sounds like, and then we're going to go over how to play it step by step.
So now that you've heard it, let's talk about how do you play it. So for this lick, what we're doing is we're using the open E string. This all takes place on this top E string. Very, very simple lick, which is why I like starting with it. And we get to use each of the four fingers. So we're using the open E string. We're using the second fret, the third fret, the fourth fret, and the fifth fret on the top string. So if we go to apply our one finger per fret rule here, what we're going to do is we're going to use the first finger on the second fret, the second second finger on the third fret, the fourth finger on the, I'm sorry, the third finger on the fourth fret, and then the pinky finger is going to be here on the fifth fret. So basically we're going to be playing the open string, second fret, third fret, fourth fret, fifth fret, all on the top string. So there's only one string we need for this lick. Alright, so how we're going to start the first two notes is really simple. It's going to be two downs and we're going to be using alternate picking here. Down, up. So we want down, up. That's two opens on the top string. The two notes after that, we're going to press the first finger into the second fret and then lift it. So so far, the first four notes we have are open, open, second fret, open, picking, down, down or sorry, down, up, down, up, alternate picking. All right, so that's our first four notes. Open, open, two open. And then what we're going to do, the next notes after that are three open. So it's open, open, two open, three open. And then the last two notes is going to be five, four. So it's open, open, two, open, three, open, five, four. Open, open two.
Open, open two, open, three, open,. Five, four. Da da da da, da da da da. You can see this lick picks up in speed a little bit. So in the beginning, don't focus on going.
The goal is always to get things fast or up to speed eventually. But in the beginning, just go very, very slow on this. Focus on the relaxing the fingers. Don't forget to breathe while you're doing this. This is a great exercise. Like I said, four fingers, four frets. So that's your first lick in this series. Click to the next video to get into our second lick.
