Left hand exercises

[Riff Obsessed]

What are some exercises that I can use to develop my left hand's dexterity? My right is very solid, but the left isn't even close.

[BZM]

Firstly - I recommend you get a tab of John Petrucci's Rock Discipline DVD (search 911tabs for it), which contains an exercise in which you're stretching your left hand fingers in all sorts of directions and patterns and playing chords or arpeggios out of them, starting at the top of the neck and gradually moving towards the nut - increasing the stretches and the intensity. It's VERY beneficial - flexibility = strength! Once you have the flexibility and hand strength/endurance, you can start to get those digits moving at a higher velocity - one of my FAVORITE riffs for doing this in a death metal context, low on the nut as to give you a workout, is a special certain riff from the Defeated Sanity song Stoned Then Defiled - here it is, in plain text:

E|--------------------------------|------------------------------
B|--------------------------------|------------------------------
G|--------------------------------|------------------------------
D|--------------------------------|------------------------------
A|-4-3---------3-2---2-1----------|-4-3---------3-2---2-1-------1
E|-----4-3-5-4-----3-----2-1-4-2-0|-----4-3-5-4-----3-----2-3-2-1

E|--------------------------------|------------------|
B|--------------------------------|------------------|
G|--------------------------------|------------------|
D|--------------------------------|8----5---4-3------|
A|-4-3---------3-2---2-1----------|--6----7-----4-3-5|
E|-----4-3-5-4-----3-----2-1-4-2-0|----4-------------|
^-------^^-------^
quintup. quintup.

The benefit of this br00tal riff is that it utilizes all four fingers of your left hand equally, and also incorporates shifting. Start with your ring and middle finger for the first "chunk" of four notes, and then pinky and ring for the 5-4, middle and index for the 3-2, then a subtle position shift as your ring hits the 3 on the low E and your middle and index again hit the 2-1 on the A (ring, middle, index, for both of these groups of 3 notes). The same two fingers, middle and index, hit the 2-1 on the low E, and the pinky hits the 4 on that same string. The same pattern repeats on the second and third measures, with the exception of the ring hitting the final third fret in measure two.

Now for the lightning fast quintuplets (groups of five) I have highlighted, unless your right hand is Spawn Of Possession-like, you may have to utilize downward rakes or "sweeping" motions to hit these notes - I use downward picking motions exclusively for this section and a little bit of legato to get that crazed, "flurry of notes" effect. Remember, start slow, and slowly make your way up to 250 bpm! (or 16th notes at 125).

Hope this helps!

[Ouroboros]

Thanks for that BZM! Even though I have the tab of the song already, that motivated me to start learning it all.

[Ouroboros]

Oh and Rock Discipline FTW

[Subjugate]

ive got some good ideas, ill try tabbing em out when i get the chance

[BZM]

Thanks for that BZM! Even though I have the tab of the song already, that motivated me to start learning it all.

You definitely should... it's Defeated Sanity's "easiest" song by far! (and the only one I can play from start to finish with the recording on Psalms... the rest are too brutal for my weak wrists to handle!)

[Shred The Ganja]

Firstly - I recommend you get a tab of John Petrucci's Rock Discipline DVD (search 911tabs for it), which contains an exercise in which you're stretching your left hand fingers in all sorts of directions and patterns and playing chords or arpeggios out of them, starting at the top of the neck and gradually moving towards the nut - increasing the stretches and the intensity. It's VERY beneficial - flexibility = strength! Once you have the flexibility and hand strength/endurance, you can start to get those digits moving at a higher velocity - one of my FAVORITE riffs for doing this in a death metal context, low on the nut as to give you a workout, is a special certain riff from the Defeated Sanity song Stoned Then Defiled - here it is, in plain text:

E|--------------------------------|------------------------------
B|--------------------------------|------------------------------
G|--------------------------------|------------------------------
D|--------------------------------|------------------------------
A|-4-3---------3-2---2-1----------|-4-3---------3-2---2-1-------1
E|-----4-3-5-4-----3-----2-1-4-2-0|-----4-3-5-4-----3-----2-3-2-1

E|--------------------------------|------------------|
B|--------------------------------|------------------|
G|--------------------------------|------------------|
D|--------------------------------|8----5---4-3------|
A|-4-3---------3-2---2-1----------|--6----7-----4-3-5|
E|-----4-3-5-4-----3-----2-1-4-2-0|----4-------------|
^-------^^-------^
quintup. quintup.

The benefit of this br00tal riff is that it utilizes all four fingers of your left hand equally, and also incorporates shifting. Start with your ring and middle finger for the first "chunk" of four notes, and then pinky and ring for the 5-4, middle and index for the 3-2, then a subtle position shift as your ring hits the 3 on the low E and your middle and index again hit the 2-1 on the A (ring, middle, index, for both of these groups of 3 notes). The same two fingers, middle and index, hit the 2-1 on the low E, and the pinky hits the 4 on that same string. The same pattern repeats on the second and third measures, with the exception of the ring hitting the final third fret in measure two.

Now for the lightning fast quintuplets (groups of five) I have highlighted, unless your right hand is Spawn Of Possession-like, you may have to utilize downward rakes or "sweeping" motions to hit these notes - I use downward picking motions exclusively for this section and a little bit of legato to get that crazed, "flurry of notes" effect. Remember, start slow, and slowly make your way up to 250 bpm! (or 16th notes at 125).

Hope this helps!

Yea that is a pretty cool lick.....my wrist is sore as fuck, thanks.

[InertialGrind]

Rock Discipline has awesome warm up sections. I don`t play without doing them first anymore. The rest of the book is kind of meh. or DVD

[GrindYourMind]

I usually play a chromatic scale ascending, move down a half step and play it descending...rinse and repeat for 15 minutes.

[InertialGrind]

I do 4 different chromatic exercises and the petrucci workout.

[Dr. B1LL]

masturbate with your left hand. I'm not joking. If your left hand is retarded, learn to beat off with it. Your wrist will come more adapt to flexing when you need it to and your fingers will get used to being bent.

[Goaters]

i don't work on my left hand. i spend quite alot of time working on my right hand though.. holding the pick working on writs movement and attack of the pick angels of the pick wrist etc..
BUT if i think there is something i need to work on such as.. strengthening my pinky... i do 99% of writing for my main band so i just try to come up with a riff where i'd use alot of pinky.. or make an effort to use my pinky in an existing riff so that when i jam i'm also kinda working on right hand skillz.

[Ouroboros]

Try this slowly, until you get to 240 (shred speed):

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/138/01ec3.gif

Then, work on these variations:

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/3840/02rd4.gif

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/4628/03ec5.gif

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/2579/04tt5.gif

These are all in the Lydian mode, so try them in every mode and scale you can think of, sequencing them as I've shown, or in other non-standard sequences to get your left hand used to as many formations as possible. The harmonic minor scale is quite tricky to do this with:

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/4750/05id6.gif

Also, it might be a good idea to forget about scales, and just do the sequenced patterns with some difficult stretches:

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/4936/06wz8.gif

Try using only your index, pinky and middle fingers, until the highest strings, then switch to index, pinky and ring. Those last two are near impossible to play fast, so just try them slow, and you still get the benefit of the massive stretch.

After working through these legato, try getting them up to speed alternate picking each note. Quite the right hand workout!

[Ouroboros]

Anyone find these useful?

[Axlaf]

yes! thanks alot bro!

[BZM]

Yeah, shit Ouro, that's a great exercise - it's kicking my ass!

[Ouroboros]

Thanks guys.

That last one is tough. It still hurts my fingers to play it.

[Ouroboros]

Quick!

What's my tuning for those tabs?

(It involves reading the notation)

[Abu Monaar]

e standard?

[Ouroboros]

Nope.

[BZM]

all of the notation points to E standard. If it's not, then what is it?

[Abu Monaar]

heres a purely technique focused, non musical one that my old jazz teacher gave me to develop finger independence, its a bit tricky to put into words but il try nevertheless, the tab would b way too long to write out but if you get the idea you can play it by logic.

1.choose a position on the neck, so that each of the 4 fretting fingers has a specific fret assigned to it. for the sake of simplicity il use 1234 position for the examples.

2. place one finger per string, obviously were only using 4 strings here, you can pick any ones you like. you have somethinglike this:

1---
2---
3---
4---

3.Heres where the actual exercise starts, start switching finger positions in pairs eg: 1st and 2nd finger, then 1&3, 1&4, 2&1 2&3 2&4 3&1 etc.
so that each finger still remains on it´s respective fret but changes string. Make sure that you ONLY lift the two fingers whose strings you are switching.
Now im quite sure that the above explanation was pretty unclear so il write the next few steps of the exrcise so youll hopefully get a better idea of the concept

First finger pairs:
1---2---2---2---
2---1---3---3---
3---3---1---4---
4---4---4---1---

Second finger pairs continuing from the above position:
1---1---1
3---2---4
4---4---2
2---3---3 continuing onto third and fourth finger pairs until eventually reaching the initial fingering.

I hope that wasnt too unclear, its a great exercise, hope it helps.

[Ouroboros]

all of the notation points to E standard. If it's not, then what is it?

It's B standard. But yeah, I didn't realize that the staff in Guitar Pro stays the same regardless of the tuning. Check it out, it's really quite gay.