Left hand guitar exercises. How to learn to write with your left hand
If you are serious about music and plan to play complex compositions in the future, you need to take the time to practice. Mastery always requires a lot of time and effort. Therefore, it is necessary to approach classes with all responsibility. In this article, we will look at various exercises for developing speed and clarity of playing the guitar, training a sense of rhythm. Let's start with warming up your hands.
Warming up before the game
Make it a rule to warm up your hands before playing. Warming up should be an integral part of your workouts and public performances. And the more time you spend on it, the better.
First, by straining unheated muscles, you risk injuring them. Tendinitis (inflammation of the tendons) and arthritis (inflammation of the joint) are occupational diseases of guitarists. A banal warm-up greatly reduces the risk of injury.
Secondly, hand gymnastics greatly increases the effectiveness of training. Try to warm up before the game - and you will feel how much faster and more accurately your fingers began to run along the neck. Personal observation: without warming up, the maximum speed of performing passages drops by 25-30%.
Gymnastics consists of 2 parts: with a guitar and without it. First you need to put the tool aside and prepare your hands. Start with the forearms and hands - do a few dozen circular rotations in both directions, as in physical education.
Then comes the stretching of the fingers. Try to spread the fingers of your left hand to the sides as far as possible. First stretch without the help of the right hand, then with it. Watch your feelings - you should not bring to pain. It will also be a good idea to bend your fingers one at a time, holding all the others. If you have an expander, you can work out a little with it.
By devoting just a few minutes a day to this, you will protect your hands from injury, as well as increase the effectiveness of your workouts. Pay special attention to the left hand - it is she who is loaded the most. But you should not forget about the right one either - a fast game also tires her.
Warming up with the guitar - developing a sense of rhythm
When you do a simple exercise, you can safely take up the guitar. Immediately playing at the limit of possibilities is fraught with trouble. You need to start slowly, gradually increasing the pace. Exercise for at least 10-15 minutes - and your hands will thank you.
Now is the time to pay attention to the rhythm. Rhythm is the basis of any music (except, perhaps, ambient). In whatever direction, and whatever instrument you play, you should not forget about the rhythm.
Start with a slow game. Perhaps you think that playing slowly is very easy and boring? Try to accurately hit the beats of the metronome with 4 notes at a tempo of 40-50 beats per minute. Most beginner guitarists won't be able to do this. You need to train at all speeds and without fail with a metronome. The metronome is a musician's best friend and teacher.
Set the metronome speed to 60 bpm (beats per minute). Play the passage shown in the picture. After a few minutes, increase the speed to 70 bpm, then to 80, 90, and so on.
Walk around it a few times. First play 4 notes, then 8, then 16. You can combine them to get the simplest rhythmic patterns, such as a gallop (8-8-4 or 16-16-8), or use triplets.
Then run through the scales. Build a scale from any note on the 6th string - and play it in the same way. It is important not to "stay" in one place on the neck. Pay equal attention to both the first frets and the very last ones. Your fingers should always run confidently.
If you play as a mediator, try different ways of attacking. Play the passage first with an alternating stroke, then with a downstroke. Owners of electric guitars are advised to practice both on a clean sound and with an overload. Their playing technique is slightly different, and it also needs to be worked on daily.
If you are in a hurry, work out for at least 10 minutes. This is much better than nothing.
Exercises for speed play
Learning to play fast is only half the battle. Many musicians can give out even 20 notes per second, but it is very difficult to make out at least some melody in this. The point here is the correct setting of the sound and the purity of the game. Sound is a very large topic and deserves a whole series of separate articles. But on a clean game you need to work.
First, determine the maximum comfortable speed for yourself. Choose your favorite riff or simple scale, turn on the metronome and play it. Then increase the speed and repeat. Turn it up until "dirt" starts to appear in the melody. Minor rhythmic inaccuracies, the screeching of the plectrum over the braid of the strings, the grazing of extra strings - all this greatly spoils the melody. Especially if you use overdrive or distortion in your music.
When you understand the limit of your capabilities, you can begin to expand it. Again: forget about playing without a metronome! Start with the exercise above. Choose any mode, build a similar passage from it and play. Keep clean. If you play dirty, you should slow down a bit or take a break.
Don't focus on one exercise. Tired of playing this passage - switch to other frets, to scales. Playing your favorite works is no worse. Choose an interesting quick song or an excerpt from it, learn it - and into battle! The most important thing is to play as accurately as possible. Never lose the rhythm. Never hit an extra string.
When it does, increase the speed a little. Just 2-3 beats per minute. You will almost not feel the difference, and you will play with warm hands without any problems. Even if you shift the threshold by 1 bpm per day, you will get a stunning result in a month.
Don't forget about different playing techniques. If you are interested in the sweep, be sure to practice it. Like tapping - add new notes to your exercises. Try, for example, to play a passage from the picture with both hands.
The letter T in tablature shows what sounds are played with the finger of the right hand. When tapping, pay attention to the volume of the note. Beginning guitarists are very lame in extracting sound with their little and ring fingers - watch this. Mute any extra strings to keep your playing as clear as possible. Your task is to bring your performance at the current speed to the ideal. Only then can you move on to the next level.
Summarize
Let's recap how your workout should go:
- Hand warm-up and stretching;
- Slow playing of scales under a metronome;
- Determination of comfortable speed for today;
- A game of exercises for speed play also under a metronome.
You may find this approach boring. Dozens of times to play the same boring riff, besides, keep track of hundreds of little things. But remember the proverb: "Repetition is the mother of learning." Rapid play is a very complex technique. Not every guitarist can boast of a clean performance of high-speed passages. To reach the heights of mastery, years of hard training are needed. Spend just 40 minutes a day on these exercises - and the result will not be long in coming.
Maybe you know or have heard out of the corner of your ear that the right hemisphere of the human brain is responsible for the left side of the body, and the left hemisphere controls the right side. For example, the right hemisphere receives most of the information from the left eye or ear, from the left arm or leg. It follows that the physical development of each side of the human body leads to the development of the hemisphere that is responsible for it. Thus, the right side of the brain is more developed, while the left side is more developed in the right-hander.
Now briefly about what the right and left parts of the human brain are responsible for.
The left hemisphere is responsible for logical and analytical thinking, linguistic and mathematical abilities, it remembers numbers, mathematical symbols, names, dates, facts, controls the movements of the right half of the body. The left hemisphere takes information literally and processes it step by step, following the sequence.
Unlike the left, the main specialization of the right hemisphere is intuition. It specializes in the processing of non-verbal information, that is, information that is expressed not in words, but in symbols and images. Unlike the left hemisphere, which perceives the literal meaning of words, the right one understands metaphors, the figurative meaning of words. With the help of the right hemisphere, a person dreams and fantasizes. It is responsible for mysticism and religiosity, for abilities in music and the visual arts. Thanks to the right hemisphere, a person can navigate the terrain. Emotions are more associated with the right hemisphere. It is able to process a lot of different information in parallel, to consider the problem as a whole, without breaking it into parts.
How can you check which of the hemispheres you have is better developed?
Look at the picture.
If you have the feeling that the girl is spinning clockwise, it means that your left hemisphere is more active at the moment. If, in your opinion, it rotates counterclockwise, then you have an active right hemisphere. By the way, if you try to look at the picture with a defocused look, you can “force” the girl to rotate in the other direction.
In a person who writes equally well with both his right and left hand, both halves of the gray matter are equally well developed. Synchronization of the work of both hemispheres of the brain is a great way for the right-handed person to develop creativity and intuition. A person who has learned to write with his left hand can discover in himself talents that were not characteristic of him until now. In addition, both hands contribute to the development of coordination of movements.
Hello, dear friends!
Sometimes we wish our body was universal and could do amazing things! But have you ever thought that almost the whole world is designed for right-handers?
Comfortable cups, scissors, writing and many other aspects in most races With read exactly to class With ical approach to using hands. Ambidexterity is an innate or acquired skill through systematic training.
That is, the individual equally distributes the load to fully perform the functional tasks of the hands. Think about what you could do if your left hand was similar to your right? Perhaps you could learn to cut hair or draw? Or would you train others in similar practices?
CONTENT:
Left hand development cannot do without a long journey of training. Most people always rely on the right hand, and the role of the left is additional: to hold, help and just be nearby
But if we take into account the fact that the limbs are arranged equally, then why shouldn’t you try to learn how to do familiar things with your left hand? Here a question emerges, the main message of which may be the phrase: “Why do I need this? And it will do!”
Reason for working on yourself
In fact, the whole meaning and mystery of the task is aimed at the particular work and functioning of His Majesty’s brain! As you know, the left part of it is responsible and has strict control over the logical part of the thought process. In addition, he does not forget about writing, speech function and, importantly, controls the right side of the body.
But the right hemisphere serves a completely different purpose. So his responsibilities include generating creative messages, perceiving reality and accumulating intuition. TIt is also necessary to note the coordination of the left half of the human body.
Numerous studies, conclusions of psychologists and even art therapists convince us to believe that banal drawings on paper made with the left hand are categorically different from the usual works of the “favorite” hand.
This observation is used by famous artists in their canvases in order to add sensuality, emotionality and inexplicable energy to the canvas.
I want to note that individuals who have taken the risk of increasing the skill of their left hand identically to their right, without exception, all repeat how interesting their lives have changed!
Perception on a different level was activated in her, details became more noticeable, she wanted to create more and more openly listen to the call of her heart.
New abilities They reveal a person from an unusual side. Classical psychology, at one time, put forward an interesting hypothesis about personality images. The essence of the theory is the idea of an individual through the prism of three hypostases, namely the Adult, the Parent and, of course, the Child.
If the first two are marked by a judicious approach to events and rational thinking, living in the left side of the brain, then the third image is the uncontrollable childish creativity, resourcefulness and spontaneity, living in the right hemisphere of the gray matter.
If you want to get in touch with your “creative, spontaneous and vibrant self”, then you need to familiarize yourself with tips to help develop your left hand. So that she doesn't hang around without an important mission.
Exercises for development
1. Learning to write with your left hand
Brain rewiring happens gradually, so you should systematically adhere to the rules and conduct classes in a structured manner. The most common I can easily call writing an exercise with an unusual hand.
I think each of us, in childhood or adulthood, tried ourselves as a left-hander. Handwriting becomes funny, the brain fails to print letters, but from this process its neural connections expand their everyday boundaries.
To make your classes comfortable, you need to modify your desk to suit the needs of your left hand, not your right. Therefore, move the table lamp from its usual place to the right side of the table, freeing up space on the left, where a notepad and elbow will be placed.
Stock up on an interesting pen and a stylish notebook or sketchbook to add interest to the process. After all, all success and completing a full course of mastering a new skill depend on motivation.
It is important that the process be filled with joy and pleasure. Otherwise, he risks getting bored very quickly and going to the table as an unnecessary waste of time. Involve the whole family in the training, especially the kids! You can write a dictation or choose your favorite piece of prose to write.
At the first stage, it is better to try to write printed letters in a lined notebook, this way the handwriting will gradually align, acquiring beauty.
To prevent your hands from getting tired, I recommend that you place the upper left corner of the notebook slightly higher, and place your elbow on the table, eliminating sagging. In the future, practice writing down information with your left hand: this could be phone numbers or cookbook recipes.
2. Let's draw with pleasure!
Drawing - always a reason for joy! This is the most effective part of training, because in this process you communicate using the right hemisphere. This is where the treasure is hidden creative perception and colossal potential!
Moreover, by drawing, you develop hand motor skills necessary at all ages. For the lesson to be successful, at first I will advise you to put dots on paper, and then connect them together, naturally, fulfilling the conditions with your left hand.
I will also mention the incredible power of synchronized drawing. You need to paint a picture with both hands at the same time, gradually removing the right one. Otherwise, the area for experimentation is completely open!
3. Labor
Train yourself to perform mechanical tasks with your left hand. Everyday situations can become an excellent platform for increasing the level of competence in using an unusual limb at work.
Practice brushing your teeth, washing your face, handling cutlery, and performing many other tasks using your left hand. When your skills are just beginning to strengthen, you don’t need to take risks and try to control sharp or dangerous objects in order to protect yourself from injury.
Bring the movement of the hand, elbow and shoulder joint to automaticity. To make this happen faster, you need to familiarize yourself with O ways to strengthen the muscles of the left hand.
Exercises to build arm strength
1. Ball
Throw the ball into the air and catch it with only your left hand, hit it against the wall, throw it into the basket, hit the racket. Perform at least 20-30 sets to build muscle memory and strength.
2. Cargo
Practice lifting weights with your left hand. To do this, you may need dumbbells, an expander, or a bottle of water. Gradual increase tion load will lead to honing muscle balance in the arms.
3. Juggling
This fun exercise will delight the youngest members of your family, and training together will feel like going to the circus! The exercise helps develop coordination, attentiveness and manual dexterity. Start with two balls, but make it your goal to master at least four.
4. Music
Playing musical instruments, especially strings, increases the chances of becoming ambidextrous, since the main emphasis is on the fingers of the left hand when playing the guitar, you will very quickly train your hand and master the instrument. The drum also recommends itself very well.
5. Swimming
The process of swimming uses two parts of the brain simultaneously to control the coordination of the body in an unfamiliar environment. Therefore, feel free to go to the pool or to the sea to effectively hone your skills!
On this point!
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People write with their right or left hand, type on a computer keyboard, without even thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of one or another method of recording information.
Why is it good to write with the left hand? Why do most people write with their right hand? Which hand is better to write with and how to learn to write with your left hand without taking your hands off the sheet of paper? Reading, learning, learning.
Have lap tops replaced ballpoint pens?
Let's not look at our northern neighbors who have decided to completely abandon handwriting and switch completely to laptops.
So why is it useful to be able to write with both the right and left hand? This skill helps our brain to train. Writing helps the brain manage both thinking and motor functions.
At the same time, we do not thoughtlessly reproduce graphic symbols on paper, but visualize what is born in the head. But when working on a computer, everything is completely different.
Meanwhile, our scientists are all working like bees. And recent research has shown that developing writing skills has a huge impact on cognitive development and fine motor development.
Why write with your left hand if you are right handed?
From birth, in most people, one part of the brain is dominant. Most have the left one, which is responsible for the entire right side of the body.
If you force yourself to develop the skills of the same masterful control of the opposite side, this will lead to more rapid personal development.
That is, a person who can write with both hands is much more intelligent, creative, resourceful and even happy, because he sees the benefits for himself in everything.
By the way! For our readers there is now a 10% discount on any kind of work
Benefits of writing with your left hand
Despite the fact that in many countries they are still actively trying to change left-handedness, more progressive countries have already noted the benefits of writing with the left hand: the right hemisphere of the brain develops, which is responsible for:
- processing of non-verbal information;
- spatial orientation;
- parallel processing of information;
- musicality;
- metaphors;
- emotional intellect;
- imagination;
- sex.
How to learn to write with two hands, and why is it needed?
By training both hands while writing, we strive for the same level of development of both hemispheres of our brain. But for this, one side must still be leading.
Bilateral correction - the so-called alignment of the dominance of the cerebral hemispheres. Thanks to this, frozen one-sidedness is removed.
Because of laziness, people write with only one hand, while you can learn to write with both. If they knew how many advantages the same possession of both hands brings, they would not wonder how to learn to write "with one left." Handwriting is useful because it:
- removes inertial states;
- helps to treat depression and other obsessive conditions;
- increases energy and creativity;
- improves memory.
Even if developing both hands is too difficult for you, try to learn how to write quickly by hand (left, right, or both). Studies have shown a direct relationship between the speed of writing and the intelligence of the subjects.
Well, if you don’t have enough time for such experiments due to constant academic work, entrust the completion of coursework, tests, essays and dissertations to professionals. Experienced specialists will perform work to order, and you will develop evenly in all directions.
Continuing the series of useful video lessons, we are publishing on the website another video from YouTube called 4 basic exercises for a guitarist (the author of the video source of the notes from which the idea was taken is AndyMcFishka - you can go to the video channel and subscribe).
You can watch the video right now and then return to our comments, as you inevitably want to make a few comments.
Useful finger development exercises for guitarists
First, let's list those mega-useful tips that apply to all of these exercises at once:
1. When performing each of the exercises, you should use a metronome.
The importance of such advice is difficult to overestimate. Where can I get a metronome?
You can purchase a stationary mechanical or electronic metronome at a music store, you can download a metronome program to your computer, or you can install a metronome application on your own phone.
In addition, the metronome can be easily replaced with a drum machine, for example, on your newfangled gadget or with a drum part recorded in some music program.
2. Always start your exercise at a slow pace.
Speed is good, but all the notes in your playing must sound clear and equal (in terms of volume and quality of sound production). No ringing, no rattling.
3. Once you have mastered the exercise so that you can easily repeat it 5 times in a row (at a given tempo), you can increase the speed of the metronome by 4 units.
This way your speed will constantly increase.
4. When playing notes on the guitar neck, it is extremely important to pay attention to the position of your hands.
Each finger of the left hand should occupy its own separate fret and produce sounds on this very fret.
When you move up/down the neck of the guitar, all your fingers move at the same time, that is, your entire hand moves.
This is how you will learn positional play and develop proper finger articulation.
5. When performing any exercises on the guitar, generally try to copy (repeat) the “teacher’s” playing.
This is exactly how notes should be played. The fingers should not jump around the guitar, and they should only be moved when the entire position changes.
6. Large and long exercises that cover almost the entire guitar fretboard (like the first 2 in this video) should be started from the first frets, gradually moving up the fretboard, and then in reverse order.
7. To master guitar playing technique, prepare to practice a lot and for a long time.
In this case, classes should be regular, daily. It is better to study one hour a day for a week than 7 hours on one day of the week.
The more you study and practice, the better your picking technique is, and the clearer and faster you play as a result.
8. In our personal opinion, playing the guitar is more useful than computer games. Set your priorities right!
9. For your simplicity, we decided to write down these exercises in Guitar Pro notes and tabs, and you can simply download a ready-made file with these exercises in order to practice them and develop the work of your left hand.
10. If you download the archive with tablatures and run it, you will see that the initial tempo in them is 200 beats per minute, but here with the help of Guitar Pro you can lower the speed yourself.
You set such a high tempo not by chance, but so that you yourself learn to change the tempo and set the one that suits you!
If you have no idea how to change the tempo and speed of a composition in Guitar Pro, Google it (to change the tempo, click on the number 200 on the toolbar and set the initial value to 40)!
You should definitely learn how to change the tempo of your beats in Guitar Pro, as this skill will help you many, many times.
And you don’t have to buy a metronome, since you can run it in the same program!
1. 1-2-3-4 frets on different strings.
Then shift up the fingerboard (2-3-4-5). IMPORTANT: Do not remove your fingers from the bar. those. when you place the 4th finger the previous 3 should lie on the string.
2. 1-3-2-4 and in reverse order 4-2-3-1 on different strings.
3. 1-2-3-4 (all fingers are on the string) then shift the hand 1 position and 5-4-3-2. then finger shift and 3-4-5-6 then hand shift and 7-6-5-4. Same in reverse order.
4. A very useful exercise (and difficult for beginners.
The point is that the finger presses only 1 string at a time, and muffles the rest.
To begin with, to make it easier, we make a bar with the index finger on the 5th fret (3, 2, 1 strings).
We take out string 3, then we bend our finger so that the 3rd one is dead and we sound the second one, then we bend our finger so that the 2nd one is dead and we take out the first one.
The point is that the sounds do not overlap (they are separated as much as possible), and the finger only changes its bend, and does not jerk down/up.
And the most important thing is to start playing SLOWLY.
Set the metronome (don't even try to play without a metronome) to 40 and slowly increase the speed up by 4 if you play the exercise across the entire fretboard without errors 5 times.
Download the notes and tabs for these exercises in Guitar Pro:
Do it for your own pleasure, and what is unclear - write to us in the comments!