Can anyone point me to some decent exercises that will help me gain a bit more fluency when doing certain bizarre/unconventional finger positionings? Something that isn't hard to learn at first preferably, just something relatively simple(but challenging) that gets tougher to suppress mistakes as you speed up. Mind you I'm not looking for stretching exercises like those in Petrucci's rock discipline dvd, I do those regularly I just want my fingers to have a lot more liberty and just be able to do stuff independently rather than get stuck when playing stuff outside of all the usual chord shapes and scale shapes(i have no problem with positioning with all the scales I know well).

I've just been learning some spawn of possession recently and I realized how badly coordinated some of my fingers are. For example doing a hammer on and pull off with the 2nd and 3rd fingers feels pretty awkward, because I feel like I lose total strength with my 3rd(ring finger) when I go try and fret a string. And I can only do it very slowly. Doing that also throws me off too if I need to shift my hand elsewhere on the fretboard cause I feel the habit of using my index finger for everything, even though it might not be necessary in a certain part.

It's just probably something that will come with time as I'm learning stuff now that's very different from what I used to play, but I just kinda want to speed up the learning process with some exercises instead of tackling songs I can't pick up on the first few tries.

Any suggestions?

__________________

Two in the pink in one in the stink, ever heard of that one?

__________________

Hahaha yeah.

__________________

Steve Vai's 10-hour guitar workout has a ton of great exercises for this type of thing. It reprinted in the latest issue of Guitar World, you should go check it out...

Hmm I can't really find many foreign magazines over here, do you know if he's discussed the same kind of thing in one of his videos maybe?

__________________

Haha, I wish Vai had some instructional vids.
This is actually a subject that I'm obsessed about - finger independence (usually involving cross picking).

Here's a link to a tabbed out version of Vai's 10 Hour Workout.

However the only practice routine I do for this goes as following:

1. Assign all four of your fingers a specific fret each in any pattern. It helps if you imitate this pattern off a riff/lick or whatever you can't nail down.

2. Start slow and comfortable like any exercise, and with a metronome assign each click to be one note. Go through each of the following patterns 8 times each, moving on to the next one as you finish the last.

1. 1-2-3-4
2. 1-2-4-3
3. 1-3-2-4
4. 1-3-4-2
5. 1-4-3-2
6. 1-4-2-3

7. 2-1-3-4
8. 2-4-3-1
9. 2-3-1-4
10. 2-3-4-1
11. 2-1-4-3
12. 2-4-1-3

13. 3-1-2-4
14. 3-1-4-2
15. 3-2-1-4
16. 3-2-4-1
17. 3-4-1-2
18. 3-4-2-1

19. 4-1-2-3
20. 4-1-3-2
21. 4-2-1-3
22. 4-2-3-1
23. 4-3-1-2
24. 4-3-2-1

For added challenge you could practice the whole thing with all down picks, then all up picks, then alternate picking starting down, then alternate starting up.

Remember if any finger not being played moves in sympathetic tension on any movement it must be practiced slower until that finger totally becomes independant... tiny mistakes at 120 BPM become train-wrecks at 230 BPM.

__________________

A pretty nice exercise I found in Guthrie Govan's book Creative Guitar 1:

You start out with the F#maj7 chord to the left and all the numbers in the tab represent a finger, 1 is index, 2 is middle, 3 is ring and 4 is teh pinky (pretty obvious).

|-1---2---2---2---3---3---3---4---4---4---1---1----|
|-2---1---3---3---2---4---4---3---1---1---4---2---0|
|-3---3---1---4---4---2---1---1---3---2---2---4----|
|-4---4---4---1---1---1---2---2---2---3---3---3----|
|---------------------------------------------------0|
|----------------------------------------------------|

Only the fingers that change strings can leave the fretboard, the others have to stay put.

Just play every step like a chord or an arpeggio at whatever speed you find yourself most comfortable to begin with.
You can permutate this exercise as much as you want, include string-skipping or bigger stretches etc.

__________________

These are good! I am gonna start using these regularly. Steve Vai posted some in a magazine once, but they were boring and linear and won't actually do much or you.

I find it amazing when you see a virtuoso throw his pinky upto 12 when the index is on 6, rather than reach with it.

__________________

1234, 1234, 1234, 1234, 1234, 1234
4321, 4321, 4321, 4321, 4321, 4321
1234, 4321, 1234, 4321, 1234, 4321

Any combination, this will help with your alt picking and sweeping skills later down the road. I personally use this combo to improve my dexterity and speed. Modify as needed

__________________

you could try learning some defeated sanity...

__________________

Yeah I was considering that.

Thanks guys I'm giving these a whirl now.

__________________

------------
------------
--------------
-------------
--------4-------
1-2TR3------------------

Hold fingers 1 & 2 & 4 down and do trill between 2 and 3 by holding the other fingers fretted it so it isolates the muscles u are developing and creates finger interdependence. U can adapt the exercise to different areas on the neck and trill between different fingers just remember that all fretting hand fingers must fretting some note. to isolate the muscles u are working on