Using the little finger

Voxman

I trained my little finger from when I first started playing. I use it for bottle neck slide too and can even barre with it and play little runs with it.  'How come' you might ask?  Cos I didn't know no better and just assumed that as I had 4 fingers, I was supposed to use them all!!  

Teflon

DeeTee said:

I broke my hand a little while ago, and had to build up the finger strength again. I would suggest an actual guitar grip exerciser like D'Addario/Planet Waves do. The reason I say this is there's an independent "piston" for each. With a stress ball or similar, the weakest finger can get away with not exerting much pressure, so it doesn't.

Thanks for that - I must admit I didn't know such a thing existed! Iv'e now ordered one from Amazon and even if it doesn't solve  solve the issue, it must help in some way . 

Snags said:

..............This may have something to do with me doing no exercises whatsoever. It did start to improve when I forced myself to do two things:

a) play scales every day
b) do a "Justin Guitar" exercise from his Captain's Privates series. In essence you start on the high E at the 7th fret with the index finger, then keep that fretted and fret the 9th fret with 2nd or 3rd finger, then keep both fretted and fret 11th fret with little finger. So at the end of three notes all three fingers are fretting on the same string. Then repeat on the B string, then the G string, etc. down to the low E.

When you can do that cleanly (and slowly) move the index finger back a fret to the 6th and go again (6,9,11).

When you can do that cleanly, move the little finger up a fret to the 12th (6, 9, 12) and repeat.

Keep extending it as each stretch eases.

It's quite important only to do it a little bit each day though, otherwise it hurts like hell and you can bugger your hand up if you push to hard too soon.

Just tried that and I can just about, sort of reach the beginning of the 11th fret, though my index finger tends to slide from the 7th to the 8th fret and it hurts like crazy. I shall keep trying though - practice must help  .

HAL9000 said:

When I was learning a friend of mine was showing me how to play Chuck Berry songs.This meant that from the beginning I was using my pinky to play sixths and sevenths on the fifth string, and it has always felt normal and natural.

Not sure if it would help, but maybe playing some of Chuck Berry type chunka-chunka riffs could help.

Funnily enough, it was trying just that many years ago that led me to discover my little finger wasn't my friend. I can do the "sixth" part after a fashion, but there is no way on earth I can reach across for the 7th ( I think I've said that right). Even in I use my right hand to pull the finger across, it just won't reach. Grrr.

Lots of ideas to try though, and that was the idea of posting, so many thanks. From the sound of things, even if I don't succeed with the little finger, there's still plenty of stuff that's playable.   Oh, and I've also ordered a UB Hank CD (volume 1).  Come to think of it, this posting is now costing me money LOL.

thegummy

Those of us who started dating at a young age tend to have good pinky dexterity.

On a serious note, I think playing bass has been the most helpful in keeping my pink as strong and dexterous as the other fingers. With bass, my pinky and index finger are jointly the most used fingers so when I go back to guitar (where the strings are lighter and the frets are closer together) the pinky finds it easy. Kind of like the bass is a workout for it.

Revolting1

Try the tips above but if they dont work bear in mind that John Martyn nearly always played with three of his fingers

    Just make the sound your own.                        

Teflon

Edit: duplicate post. only typed it once, but seems to be appearing multiple times. Sorry!

Teflon

Edit: post deleted - multiple posting. Not sure why that happened.

Cliff

Blaendulais

i used to use mine but i watched a Gary Moore video.  He seemed to do pretty good hardly using it

steveledzep

My little finger is great, it's the other three I have trouble with. 

Roland

Teflon said:

Edit: duplicate post. only typed it once, but seems to be appearing multiple times. Sorry!

It probably got caught in the spam filter. This happens some times when items are released from the filter

skunkwerx

I use mine more than my third for power chords. 

So like, first finger on fret 1 E string, pinky on fret 3 A string. 

To play it with my third just feels weird, unless I'm doing a 'full' 3 string power chord.. 

Neil

skunkwerx said:

I use mine more than my third for power chords. 

So like, first finger on fret 1 E string, pinky on fret 3 A string. 

To play it with my third just feels weird, unless I'm doing a 'full' 3 string power chord.. 

Same here.

Unfortunately arthritis over time has stopped my fingers from stretching as they should so I'm using the pinky instead of the third finger mostly. 

You can always find a way around most stuff. 

BahHumbug

The really difficult thing about the little finger is developing it’s independence from the ring (3rd) and middle (2nd) finger.  There are lots of scales, exercises and musical cliches on guitar that require this independence, and they can be painful to play if you don’t have it.  Reading back through this thread I wonder if this is the main problem that the OP has......

Anyway here’s a simple exercise which doesn’t use the 2nd or 3rd fingers, but will build a bit of strength, dexterity and confidence in the little finger (...which I have nicked from David Meads Guitar Gym).  And it shouldn’t hurt.

Choose any pair of adjacent strings.  D and G strings is good - the middle two strings.
With your index finger fret the 7th fret on the D string.  With your pinky, fret the 10th fret on the D string.
Next fret the 7th on the G string (index), then the 10th on the G string (pinky), then the 7th on the G string.
The cycle then finishes with the pinky on the 10th fret of the D string.

In rough tab:

G.   ————-7——10——-7——
D    7—10—————————-10

repeat this cycle for 2 minutes, then give yourself a pat on the back and go and do something else.  Ideally, Play against a metronome and gradually (over many days) build up the tempo.