First of all, we’re gonna zero in on your fretting hand and whip it into shape. No excuses. No more weaknesses, agreed? Let’s do this!
This first exercise from Legato Gym is going to get all four fingers feeling stronger and more in control. You need control over these little piggies if you wanna tear it up on the fretboard and it all starts here. You may feel like your ring finger and little finger don’t want to operate independently. Welcome to the club. All of us guitarists have to deal with this problem and overcome it. It doesn’t take as long as you think. This is going to make your hammer-ons and pull-offs sound and feel better. It’ll make your fingers have more stamina so they won’t get tired as quickly. You’ll notice the improvements after only a few days but it’s the things you’re gonna be doing in a few weeks that will blow your mind. Just you wait and see
This is going to introduce you to the Patterns of Power! These shapes are used by all guitarists, all over the neck, to play fast runs. If you can’t do this, you can’t play guitar. Every guitarist on Earth should be able to play these shapes with control – no matter what genre you’re into and no matter how technical you want to be. This is a crucial part of guitar language. Getting control over these shapes is going to give you the chops to play your favourite solos
We’re continuing your baptism into The Patterns of Power by reversing the direction of the exercises. Just like EX 2, this sequence of shapes is non-negotiable for guitar mastery. If you don’t learn how to do these properly, you may as well find a new hobby. This is NOT rocket science. Just follow these exercises and you WILL gain control and gain speed with your fretting hand. These are the keys to the kingdom
Taking things further, we’re now involving a crucial movement in legato – the ability to use hammer-ons to move onto a new string. You may find this unusual to start with but don’t worry – you will soon be doing this naturally and easily. This is what allows you to string legato runs together and make them flow onto other strings
By the end of these four weeks you can have your fretting hand rescued from whatever slump it's been in for years and actually get a reliable fretting hand once and for all. Four little weeks! Four weeks goes by in no time at all. Think about it. You could waste that time getting sofa-ass, watching Netflix. OR you could be making mega guitar gains doing this. What do YOU want, player?
Now we’re bringing your picking hand into the action but also keeping your fretting hand moving forward. The key to progress is what the science nerds call ‘Non-Linear Periodization’ which means to vary your practice regimen regularly so that your body and mind don’t just get used to doing the same shit all the time. Basically, keep it fresh. Always make your body and mind adapt to what you’re asking of it. That’s how you keep yourself progressing
With that in mind, you’re gonna work on a picking lick that makes you get good at picking onto a new string in a way that doesn’t get your pick caught between the strings
You’re going to keep your fretting hand in shape by working on EX 2 from Legato Gym. This should feel a whole lot easier to you by now. The better that fretting hand gets, the easier it will be to make your picking hand synchronize to it
Okay, homie – now we’re starting to cook. You’re going to take that picking shape from the previous week and run it onto the other strings. Notice how the string crossing motion is the same every time you pick onto a new string? This is to keep your brain from overloading, thinking about where to point the pick. To hell with thinking about pick slants and angles and shit. You'll suffer from the 'bottleneck' effect if you have to constantly be thinking about which pick slants you need for certain licks. Anything that slows you down, slows you down. You want to get results, not be bogged down in a mire of indecision. So FIG 2 from Badass Alternate Picking is going to get you on the gains train
Meanwhile, we’re continuing to oil the gears of your fretting hand. No messing around. Let’s keep this forward momentum. You’ve got this!
Now we’re getting you onto something that guitarists love doing. Triplets! Hell yeah, duder. Being able to pick these 3-note-per-string patterns (3nps) with speed and precision is an obsession of many. Unfortunately, many get stuck at speeds well below 100 bpm and get frustrated and angry, and then they start blaming genetics. Not today, mofo! Not today. We’re gonna hit this and nail this properly. As I said in the previous week, making the string crossing motion the same every time allows you to build momentum and not get your pick caught up in the strings. Simplicity solves problems, not complexity
And to keep the fires burning in your fingers, you’re gonna work on EX 4 from Legato Gym. Getting your fingers even better at moving onto other strings is going to make all your fretting hand movements easier. And you know what that means, don’t you? It means that your hand sync is gonna get better which means your overall playing gets faster and cleaner. Win win
Okay so now you’re gonna push things even further yet again. Remember I got you practicing string crossing runs using one string crossing motion? Now, we’re gonna mix up ‘inside picking’ and ‘outside picking’ together. Don’t worry – you can do this. It’s all about pick manipulation. But don’t get hung up on ‘which way do I slant my pick?’ Obsessing too much over that shit just makes people even more confused than ever. If you can pick fast, you can pick across strings. Don’t obsess about slant. Forget slant. Think about hand angles instead. Your hand is what makes the pick point in a particular direction. You need to manipulate your wrist and thumb when you cross strings in a way that gets your pick where you want it to go. That’s it. Any more thinking than that is gonna get you stuck and confused. Your brain doesn’t have enough time and space to be planning which slant you need to approach each new lick you encounter. Once you have a hand position that works and you understand the difference between ‘inside picking’ and ‘outside picking’ you’ve got the tools you need. It's just down to practicing properly and using your mindset to focus on the string you want to hit. Anything else is just picking the fly shit out of the pepper
As always, we continue our domination of the fretting hand by working on the string crossing exercise of EX 5. Keep going, you’re making more progress than you ever have!
Okay, now you’re really seeing some killer results and now you finally see that this stuff IS possible for every mere mortal who plays guitar. It’s not effing magic. It’s just movements. When you kick the excuses to the kerb and actually use the right no-nonsense approach with the right exercises, you can make more progress than you ever realised. It’s possible. I can do it. My students can do it. You can do it. With that said, let’s look at what we’re doing in these last four weeks
We’re bringing in the exercises from Badass Inside Picking. This is going to enhance your control over your ability to pick ‘between’ the strings. You’ll see how you can manipulate your wrist and thumb to make this work. Again, it’s not magic. It’s just subtle movements that you didn’t realise the guitar legends were making. But I break this down for you in a way that is so damn easy, you cannot fail. Not unless you’re deliberately being a ‘tard. And I don’t think you are. So it’s all good, innit?
As I mentioned earlier about ‘Non-Linear Periodization’ (man that needs a better name, especially something that doesn’t have the word ‘period’ in it) we’re constantly mixing things up. You don’t do the same thing every week. You hit different angles of attack. That’s why you keep getting better, you see?
Notice that now we’re introducing exercises from Badass Hand Synchronisation. (yes I spell it with an S because I’m British. Look it up. It’s legit)
Now that you’ve been building some decent foundations with your fretting and picking hand, synchronization is something that is now possible. (I’ll write it with a Z now to make you feel better, but the course title is staying the same.) Remember, hand synchronization is not a technique. It’s a side effect of having control over your fretting and picking hands
Getting full control over those 3nps shapes is crucial if you want to play fast scalar runs across the neck and be able to shred at will. And that’s gonna make it easier for you to apply those skills to FIG 3 from Badass Alternate Picking. If you can pick those shapes on one string, you can pick them on licks that cross strings. YES YOU CAN. If you’ve made it this far you’re clearly not a whiny bitch. So do it and enjoy that feeling of pride from knowing you didn’t give up in the first week like many people will. But not you
You absolute badass
We’re continuing our domination of both your fretting hand and picking hand this week. Notice how we’re mixing up rhythms here. We’ve got that easy 8th note count of FIG 1 from Badass Hand Sync
But we’re also going back into triplets with FIG 4 from Badass Hand Synchronisation and EX 2 from Legato Gym. EX 2 from Legato Gym is really going to help you cement your power over ascending hammer-on shapes. But don’t forget that pull-off back to the index finger. This is what trips people up. But not you because you listened to instructions, didn’t you? Good
Things will really be coming together by this point!
You feel that control and extra speed that you didn’t have twelve weeks ago?
EXACTLY. You feel it
And that’s what’s possible when you have the right plan, the right exercises and the right mindset. The holy trinity of guitar progress
We’re finishing strong with a week of focus on synchronizing your hands together with the string crossing picking licks of FIG 5 from Badass Hand Sync. And we’re adding to that by re-visiting the picking run of FIG 2 from Badass Alternate Picking. Notice how the ‘outside picking’ flows so much easier now?
And you couldn’t imagine doing EX 5 from Legato Gym when you first tried it, right? Now your fingers are moving in ways that they never did before. Those hammer-ons are much more consistent and the sound is way better than ever. Best of all, your fretting hand doesn’t feel like it gets tired after only a few seconds. Now it feels like it can keep up with your picking hand. Now you can enjoy better hand sync and start ramping the speed up on those longer picking runs
My courses get the job done and they're called BADASS because they make your guitar playing badass
All you need to do is follow this plan and enjoy the guitar gains
The only opponent is within
Ben Higgins
Aka Lord Higgy
P.S. I look forward to hearing from you about your technique transformation at the end of these twelve weeks because I know I'm going to be getting a ton of emails about it, as I always do!