Working out is not just for athletes. Musicians in general and guitar players in specific have to workout as well to keep their fingers and hands limber and strong.
I’ll show you simple chromatic finger exercises (sometimes also called “spider walk exercises”) that have been used by generations of guitar players. Perhaps it is single best way to warm up and develop dexterity in your fretting hand. It helps to strengthen your fingers and also develops finger independence.
As a nice bonus this is also a great workout for the picking hand (to practice alternate picking), as well as for left and right hand synchronization.
I’ll share with you several different variations of the chromatic exercise that you can use to develop your guitar technique.
What are chromatic spider walk exercises?
As the name suggest chromatic exercises are based on a chromatic scale which is a scale that uses all 12 musical notes. You can play a chromatic scale by playing all the notes fret by fret. For example, you can play an E chromatic scale by playing an open 1st string, followed by playing every note from fret 1 to 12th.
Chromatic exercises that I’ll show you don’t follow chromatic scale exactly as not all the notes are being played. It doesn’t really change their character.
These chromatic exercises are sometimes called “spider walk” as your fingers resemble spider’s legs as they move across the strings in a very systematic and methodical way.
Chromatic exercises are not musical as they don’t sound that great, but so is chromatic scale. Use can still use them for both finger and ear development. Make sure that every note is articulated well, and sounds nice and clear.
Chromatic finger dexterity exercise #1a
The first exercise I’ll show you was literally the first exercise my guitar teacher showed me. It proved to be very useful, and I still use it even now, 25 years after I picked up the guitar for the first time.
Here is the basic form of the exercise:
This chromatic finger exercise is very straightforward. In fact, you can do it without thinking at all (although, I wouldn’t recommend it).
As you can see, each finger is responsible for one fret only. The pattern doesn’t change, but you move it to the next string until you reach the 1st string. Then shift down by one fret, and make your way back up to the 6th string. Then shift by one more fret and walk down the strings, then shift, and walk back up… repeat as much as you’d like, just don’t over do it.
Start slow and make sure you can hold consistent tempo all the way (play with metronome will help). Make sure each note is crisp and clear. You can practice this exercise using palm muting technique as well if you wish.
This is not a particularly musical exercise thus you don’t need to practice it for a long time. Just do enough until you feel your fingers are moving well.
In the example above I am starting the exercise on the 1st fret, but you can start anywhere on the neck. In fact, it might be easier for you to start somewhere in the middle (say 7th or 9th fret). If you start there, you don’t have to move down the neck. Feel free to shift up a fret and go toward the 1st fret.
Chromatic finger dexterity exercise #1b
Another form of the same exercise would be to play the 1234 pattern twice before moving to the next string. This might prove to be slightly more challenging. You might want to build up some stamina before attempting this variation.
Chromatic finger dexterity exercise #2
Running up and down the neck gets boring pretty quickly. To counteract that you can introduce some variation to the exercise.
One idea is to simply reverse the order of the notes and play them from right to left (starting with a pinky and ending with an index finger).
Chromatic finger dexterity exercise #3
As you feel more confident with the first 2 exercises try this: maintain the same 1234 pattern but this time try skipping strings. So you’d play the pattern on the 6th string, then skip the 5th string and go straight to the 4th, etc.
Chromatic exercise dexterity for guitar #4
Another idea to keep things a bit more challenging is to play notes in different patterns: for example, 1st and 3rd and then 2nd and 4th. It’s a great finger independence exercise.
You can still move this pattern up and down the fretboard. You can also try skipping strings with it too.
Feel free to experiment and come up with your own variations. Let me know which one you like the most!
