left hand
Lateral wrist exercise I
This exercise aims to help in two key areas
- Develop a clean position shifting technique that rolls a relaxed wrist from one position to another.
- Allow you to build left hand positioning into your muscle memory. This will reduce the need for you to be looking at your guitar all of the time.
Lateral wrist exercise II
The second of the lateral wrist movement exercise builds on the basic position shift that we learned previously and helps us to locate positions on the fretboard purely through proprioception, that is knowing where your hands are in space without having to look at them.
Lateral wrist movement II
The first exercise developed a clean relaxed position shift, this one takes advantage of that to get you comfortably changing position up and down the neck. In addition you'll build some muscle memory that will help you find the note with your left hand simply by referencing it proprioceptively. That is you're motor and sensory systems will remember the distances between notes so that you are less reliant on looking down at the fretboard.
Basic left hand technique exercise
Lateral wrist movement I
Play the D on the 7th fret third string with your first finger and then the C two semitones down on the same string with your second finger, moving from the 7th position to the 4th. There are a number of things to note here:
Parallel wrist
Do this exercise slowly at first and gradually increase it until you notice any tension in your hand, arm or shoulder. Slow down just enough so that you can stay relaxed and do the exercise there.
Technique exercises for the left hand
The left hand exercises aim to:
Positioning
Play a simple progression, I'm playing a 12 bar in E in the 5th and 7th positions, and at the end of every bar or 2 bars reorient your left hand by taking it right away from the neck or at least from that position. Don't look at your guitar, start with chords you're comfortable with and then try more challenging ones, different tunes etc.
Lateral wrist movement IV
This exercise involves playing firstly an A major and then an A Lydian dominant scale in the 9th and 14th positions. Again we're working on smooth position shifts that start with gentle rotation of a neutral shoulder and progress to very slight lateral deviation, or rolling, of the wrist.
