I would like to ask you if this thing is good for something or its just “placebo”. I started to work on spider excercise for 4 fingers and its really hard for me to have control and width for my fingers, the pinky one is biggest problem, but I can see all fingers together needs more width.
I 3D printed this finger spreader for me so I can use it when I am on meeting at work and dont have guitar by my side or when I am watching TV, so I can have fingers inside this… do you think or do you have any experiences this works?
Like I saw some articles saying it takes around 9 months to train your fingers independence and width and it looks crazy long to me. I saw some topics with spider exercise but not with this “revolution thing”.
I haven’t used anything like that and never thought I need it. And I don’t think you need it as well.
There are exercises you can do without a guitar, like that one.
As for the time needed to develop fingers dexterity and independence… Well, 9 months is not a long term for guitar learning. I don’t know what are your goals and what level you wanna reach, but becoming a decent rhythm player takes at least a couple of years.
The only advice I can give is to be patient and keep practicing.
@metramaks I take guitar as a life route and not a little part in my life… I just wanna be able to learn my first scale or do some chords that include wider fingers… its like more I know, more I dont know or more I cant. When I was learning C chord it was much easier and it was hard. I am still stucked in Grade 1 and I wanna be able to play music that I like… also being able to do some indie folky fingerstyle and strumming… but you know. Having all days only training fingers width isnt that funny…
But I have to say that yesterday I learned intro from “Wake me up when September ends” and thats what brings me joy, but then there is a chord, that is hard and it is taking it down. You can see chord below and it does not even include pinky.
Put your hands in a prayer position fingertips touching. Now open your palms so just the contact of the fingertips remain. Push your fingers together tip to tip including thumbs. This will open and stretch all fingers.
You can try a gentle pulse followed by a full on press. In the press position the upper finger joint pads will be touching and fingers will widen to their maximum stretch. Wash rinse repeat, simples.
For your first scale you don’t need to stretch fingers 7 frets wide. Weird shaped chords aren’t widely used (because they’re weird shaped, I suppose) and none of the main chords requires wide stretches as well, while giving you everything you need to play thousands of songs. Including “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. Actually, I just tried to play it tonight and it has no weir or stretchy chords. The one on the picture is a part of Cm and I have no idea why this guy is holding it like that.
UPD. I found that short and he’s fretting just the three notes that are played, not the whole chord, and his pinky is off the fretboard.
So don’t worry about it, follow the course and have fun, that’s the most important part.
People ask about those finger expansion / strengthening contraptions from time to time and the answer that comes back is always a resounding no, don’t use it, you don’t need it, it won’t help.
Guitar playing is not about static stretches at a fixed distance which is all a plastic implement like that can provide. It is about movement to and from and the importance of that can not be overstated.
The chord you show from Green Day is three strings taken from an A-shape C minor chord.
Play an Am with fingers 2, 3 & 4.
Slide that along three frets.
Place your index on fret 3 behind the cluster.
That is it.
Yes - the riff does not need all four strings but there is no harm in fingering all four.
You don’t need to barre your index - just place it on the 5th string.
I don’t want to sound too harsh, but dumb things like this always manage to increase my blood pressure and make me think of scam artists instead of real artists. A similar thing in my book is putting stickers with the note names on the fretboard. How many professional players do you think have used “aids” like these? Very, very, very few (i.e. none).
If you are really interested in playing the guitar, you will play almost every day. The practice routines provide ample amount of movement for the muscles in both your fretting and picking hand so that you won’t need external supplements like this fingers stretcher. Muscle memory is key to your improvement, but that’s a flexible muscle memory enabling you to change chords more quickly and accurately. Instead of wasting your time on tools like that, go and practice your chords and scales. That’s the most (and best) you can do.
Also, anyone thinking about spending time or money on some magic tool that could help them with learning an instrument… watch this first:
@Jozsef Hello, thanks for clear answer… I did not want to find any shortcut, I just wanted to use time when I dont have guitar by my side and this looked a little promising - now I know it does not make sense. I am learning new shapes but also I do some rutine. Only thing that does not feel good when I am doing spider exercise or really hard chord (for me) I cant do it properly even when I am doing it really slow and I have to put my finger to the place by second hand, because if I dont do so I would mute another string with my pinky. So this unclear struggle is part of making it better?
Also thanks for video. Gonna jump into it right now.
It is very easy to underestimate how difficult simple things like finger control are. It seems so simple that we feel we should just be able to do it after a few tries.
But we can’t. Patience is the best approach. I would venture that after 3 years (at my pace) my little finger control is almost halfway where I would like it. My 2nd and 3rd fingers are still very hard to keep the tips separate as well ( hands are naturally inclined to be this way).
Looking at some professional players with 50-60 years or more experience, and they still have the 2nd and 3rd finger tips preferring to be close.
The experience lets you work with these things better.
I think you should look at the spider exercise somewhat like going to the gym. You do it for a set amount of time every day. You don’t go around with a ball and chain tied to your ankles so that you can work out during the day between your gym sessions.
Especially as a beginner, 30-60 mins per day is just fine, you can do a lot in that time frame. When you don’t have your guitar with you, you can focus on music theory, notes on the fretboard, etc.
A similar device was the topic of a discussion here a while ago. It did not get favorable comments.
You are going to need to be patient AND work at the stretch almost daily for a long time. It takes that long for the body to adapt.
Here is a link to a topic where I listed a few items I had commented on related stretch topics. This is a link t my stuff, but each thread will have comments from the community to read through.
I’m firmly in the build strength and dexterity through practicing with the instrument, ie playing! Plenty of practical exercises are around with minimal searching and will be far more beneficial imo. Justin talks about muscle memory building so much and this is all a part of it.
I’m 3 months in, but I consistently practiced almost every day for at least 30 minutes, and I can definitely reach more. Never used a device, the C was a stretch, at first, but now it’s almost comfy.
Also don’t forget to give your fingers a good warmup before you start playing.
I’ve been doing a few minutes of finger/wrist exercises to get warmed up and the tendons moving before playing. Even if it’s simply opening and closing extended finger against my palms, then making a fist, then making claws and giving the hands a good shake out really helps. Instead of my chords getting better and more comfortable over the first dozen changes or so, doing a warmup first everything just seems to land so much better from the get go.
I’ve also started trying to lead my chords, if that’s the right term, with different fingers as was suggested up there somewhere ^^^. Felt really weird at first and I need to be so deliberate, but although its currently slower, I think it’s also helping with reach. Which sounds strange and maybe it’s a placebo effect, but I’ll take it
I would be concerned that a device like that might injure or at least inflame the joints and tendons of your fingers. Also notice that the fingertips are aligned when spread out. If you are a beginner (grade 1 to 3) then slowly working with the grade 1 stretching exercise everyday along with other chord shape exercises and scales will eventually get you good results. As everyone above has said, please be patient.
I just wanted to put here update about “finger expansion” and spider exercise. Its really about putting time and effort to do this, there is no shortcut like I was looking for - that hell plastic thing.
You can check my progress for 30 days since day 1 with spider exercise. Its like… it took me years first day and now I dont even need to look at that and I can alternate pick that. Just wanted to put it here so it can maybe motivates someone one day.
Great little video! It really does showcase how your fingers and whole comfort level improved after a month!
I recall working on the spider and similar exercises in my first months of playing. I definite did not put in the dedication or consistency they deserved, at the time.
Now I find, nearly 4 years in, that I am motivated to revisit them. For the past several weeks, I have again been adding the spider exercise, but also the finger independence exercise and some exercises in finger strength and spread because I am having reach, speed and accuracy problems that are noticeably affecting my ability to play songs I am trying to learn.
It is never too late to go back and work on these skills, but it is also wise to put some meaningful effort into them early in.
Honestly though, I think people should be more open minded about finding new ways to more efficiently learn / develop. Yes, there is no lack of touts promising quick fixes on youtube, but going to the extreme opposite of saying “it’s not going to work unless it is as difficult as / takes more time than / requires as much effort as the way I learnt it myself” is completely unhelpful.
It really reminds me of all the hand wringing over how letting students use calculators instead of having to memorise multiplication tables is going to produce a generation of idiots who are unable to do arithmetic because they never develop that “skill”. People come up post hoc with almost seemingly infinite variations of reasons of why doing things the painful way, as they themselves had done in the past, was absolutely key to whatever skill or expertise they have today.
What is helpful is if you have tried a similar thing before (which did or did not work out), or if you’re a teacher like Richard and have seen generations of students try different things (which again did or did not work out), and then share how what you’ve experienced lead you to your conclusions.
For what its worth, kudos for attempting the novel approach.
