Hi everyone,

I thought I would throw this one out there to see how you would do it.

You Make The Call

Any time we have 4ths in a melody line, how to finger it can become an issue, whether you are a 3-finger or 4-finger melody player.

When trying to play the following figure at a fast tempo (like 200 bpm)



What's your strategy?

There's no "correct" answer, and I have what I think is a good solution, (Hint: Hand motion helps), but I wanted to see what you came up with as well.

Just specify which fingers you would use for each note, and what strings they would fall on.

First finger/string 1
Second finger/string 1
Third finger/string 1
Second finger/string 2... and so on for me

For greatest speed,

First finger string 1.
Third finger string 1.
First finger string 2.
Second finger string 2.
First back on string 1.

The second/last time you play the 4 notes, fingering depends of course on where you want to end up.

Mad Monk.

for me it would be 24,13 with shifting. I'd like to hear yours Greg.

Brett

There are still a couple of other options. I'll post my choice tomorrow, and give some more folks time to respond.

Mad Monk's fingering worked best for me. I tried a few others, but I got the best speed out of this one. If I were using 4 fingers, I'd do it like Brett.

I don't really understand the other answers but here's my approach

One pass is easy using 1-3-4 then 1 on the next string

repeating phrase use
1-3-4 then 2 on next string which frees up the first finger for repeat

Rollie Fingers

Thanks for all the responses. Each made sense in it's own way.

Where you play this on the board might influence your choices, too. I left that out of the mix in order not to complicate things.

There are a few other choices I tried,

2 on the 1st string, then 1,2,3 on the next
(useful if you want to play this pattern with the top note on the 23rd or 24th fret)

or 1 and 2 on the 1st string
then 1 and 2 on the next.

The answer I came up with when I first started working on this a while back was the same one Randy came up with:

1 - 3 for the first two notes then up a string for
1 - 2 for the next two.

The 1-3-1-2 answer is based on hand movement along the string. With hand movement, it can be done really fast and with clear attacks, (no hammer-ons needed).

I'm not a 4-finger player, so maybe Steve's or Brett's would be faster if that's what you were used to.

If you're high up on the board, where the frets are close together, how about 1-2-3-4 on one string (hard to do without hammering-on, but if you've got that distortion cranked, who cares...)?

For 4 fingers I really like this pattern:

1-4 on the first string, then 1-2 on the second.

This is basically the 1-3-1-2 solution but with the 4th finger replacing the 3rd.
Give it a try, you 4-finger guys...

Whether you want to hammer-on some of the notes you're playing should always be a "musical choice", not dictated by the fingering you've chosen. The position you're in on the board determines which fingers are available for hammer-ons and pulloffs, so being able to make shifts along the board quickly from one position to the next is a really valuable skill.

My point in asking the question in the first place was that there are often many solutions to a question about fingerings. When you find a tricky fingering, try several different solutions, and practice all of them. You never know when circumstances will put you in the position to need those tricky fingering reflexes.

Not only that, but using the more awkward fingerings definitely improves strength and flexibility of the fingers. That's one of several reasons I believe a beginning student should focus on written pieces of increasing difficulty rather than trying to improvise in scales and modes; you are forced to use the more difficult fingering on occasion (including the fourth finger).


Mad Monk.

It's this kind of stuff that is helpful to me as I am getting started. Greg, and everyone else, thank you.