Mandolin Blues 1 - Finger Gym

Using the 'right' fingers

As with many things in music, what I am about to tell you is more of a guideline than a rule, but use this as a basis for all of your playing and it will help your fingers to not get in a tangle and trip over each other.

In theory, your 1st finger should play anything that happens on the 1st and 2nd fret. Your 2nd finger should cover anything that is played on your 3rd and 4th frets. The 3rd finger will cover the 5th and 6th frets. Then your 4th finger should be used when playing the 7th and 8th frets.

As you will see in this course, we break this rule almost immediately. But whatever you are playing, this is a good premise with which to start, check to see if you can play a piece of music using these fingers. If you can, then do.

Finger Gym

Finger Gyms are a great way to get your fingers moving and stretching. These are particularly important when you are sitting down to play for any extended period of time, say over 20min. The exercise here is going to get your fingers stretching over 7 frets.

Start by placing your 1st finger on the 1st fret of your low G string. Pick the note, trying to make sure it is ringing as clear as your mandolin and fingers will allow.

Next, place your 2nd finger on 3rd fret of the same string. Ideally, we would like the 1st finger to stay in position on the 1st fret at this point, but do not worry if your hand isn’t quite ready to do that yet, this exercise will get them there, but it may take a couple of months for your hand to stretch out that far.

Repeat this idea with your 3rd finger at 5th fret, then your 4th finger at 7th fret. Again, hopefully we will eventually have all four fingers down at the same time stretching from 1st to 7th fret, but this may take time if you haven’t done this before.

Repeat the whole sequence on the D, A and E strings, concentrating on clear and concise notes rather than speed. Do not force the stretch, just let your hand take its time.