Finger Exercises and Unison Notes

Great News! I have my teacher back! I am so happy that I'm longer self-directed. lol. Even though I love my fiddle, I freely admit that I am not particularly disciplined at forcing myself to work on trouble spots, practicing with regularity, etc. Having regular lessons pushes the envelope for me as I am suddenly accountable for my progress (or lack thereof). It's really a welcome relief to be under someone's watchful eye and tutelage again.

So, this past week, my teacher gave me a little exercise to get my pinkie back into shape as well as to release my leading fingers from their death grip on the fingerboard. With regard to leading fingers - in my classical lessons, I was taught to keep all leading fingers down as an economy of movement. For example, more than likely you will return to a B or C# if you are playing a D on the A string so (with that in mind) keep your index and middle fingers down on the B and C# when you play the D. I realize this rule isn't set in stone (and is still good general practice in old-time too), but you wouldn't believe how quickly your leading fingers get used to this and literally, don't want to lift off the fingerboard before their latter siblings.

The following exercise is just the remedy and I still haven't got it perfect. (My teacher tells me that these four measures are actually from the seldom played third part of Sally Ann. Hopefully, I'll learn the rest of the tune soon.) This exercise is played in standard GDAE tuning. Your pinkie spends most of its time playing a unison D on the G string (check your intonation and don't let your pinkie flatten the D as mine tends to do), while the leading fingers play mostly on the D string. The only time you lift your pinkie, of course, is to play the lower B and A on the G string.

It might be me, but this isn't as simple as it appears! Give it a try!