The 1234 Exercise on Guitar
In this video we're learning the 1234 exercise on guitar to help our speed and accuracy with playing!
We’re going to walk through this simple, but effective, exercise to improve your playing that every guitar player should know!
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Transcription
Today we're gonna go over an easy, but super effective, exercise on guitar! I call it the 1234 exercise, but I've heard it go by a bunch of other different names. So what we wanna do here is we wanna get good control of our fingers and rhythm both with our fingers and with the guitar pick. So the way we wanna start this exercise is we wanna start it on like the 7th fret. I've seen some people start it over on like the 1st fret area, but the frets are fatter there, so it makes a little bit harder, especially for beginners. But if we start more at like the 7th fret area, maybe a little higher if you can, frets are a little close together, it's a little more comfortable. And we wanna start with just the bottom string. As you can see in the TAB here, we're gonna do the fret numbers 7, 8, 9, 10 and then repeat 7, 8, 9, 10. And below, you can see in the red, are gonna be our finger numbers. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. So the secret to this is to keep our fingers down as we go. 7, 8, 9, 10 and then repeat 7, 8, 9, 10 Notice I'm not lifting my fingers as I go. I keep them down because I don't want kind of a roll like this or anything. And what I'm doing with my pick is I'm going down, up, down, up. So it's down, up, down, up. When you can get that nice smoothness to it, that’s when you know you’ve got it. You don't want a staccato-y bump, bump, bump, like… We want smooth, we want smooth… And trying to keep your rhythm as you go. One, two, three, four. You don’t want like, on, two, three, four. Speed is not what we're looking for here. We're looking for consistency and we're looking for nice connected notes. When you get that bottom string sounding really good, then we change strings while keeping our rhythm. 7, 8, 9, 10 to the B string, 7, 8, 9, 10. And again, with our finger numbers one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. So I'm going to demonstrate that for you here. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. And you want to try to go back and forth. So you can go E string… B string… back to the E string… Keep my pick going down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. And when you have that one smooth, you guessed it, you can add another string. Up to the G string, then back down… And you can go back up and you'll go up and down, up and down, up and down. Every time you get another string sounding good, you add another, add another, add another. And you keep doing that process until you can get from the bottom, to the top, back to the bottom. So there I did it a little faster, just to demonstrate. If you're a beginner, you still want to take your time. Make sure you keep it to that one, two, three, four. Going up all the strings, down, maintaining that rhythm. Because that's an important thing, maintaining the rhythm. Playing fast doesn't necessarily mean good. Because if you’re sloppy playing fast, you're just teaching your fingers to be sloppy and that's harder to fix later than if you just did it right the first time slow and everything sounds nice and smooth. Speed will come with time and practice, just be persistent. Once you can handle going up and down, up and down, that 7, 8, 9, 10 area, that's when we want to travel down the fretboard. So let’s say I started from the bottom, working my way up, 7, 8… And when I get to the top, I'm going to go backwards one fret. 7, 8, 9, 10, 6, 7, 8, 9 6, 7, 8, 9 And continue to work my way down. Let’s fast forward, I get to the bottom. 6, 7, 8, 9, 6, 7, 8, 9 5, 6, 7, 8, 5, 6, 7, 8 5, 6, 7, 8 and so on. When I get up there, I’m going to go back to the 4, go down, go back to the 3, go up until I can do it all the the way at the 1st fret 1, 2, 3, 4 and then work my way back up to where I started. Going 1 to 2 to 3 to 4. That gets pretty hard because every time you move back, the fret's get a little further. So you may want to take your time instead of just traveling. Say you're having trouble at the 4th fret. Instead of trying to travel from there to there and going back to the beginning, just hang out the 4th fret and do your 1, 2, 3, 4s at the 4th fret area. Until you have them nice and smooth. And then the 3rd fret area. Until it's nice and comfortable and then you try that traveling. Just remember, if this is your first time doing an exercise like this, it might take more than a couple of days to get it down. It might take a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months. Just remember that practice is key. Stay consistent, keep it sounding good, and it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when it'll sound good. If you enjoyed the video, give it a like! If you want to learn more guitar subscribe! Just have a good time and Happy Practicing!