The Spider

Aim of the exercise: Slowly train your fingers to make economic micro-movements on the fretboard.
Exercise type: Warmup
Starting tempo: 40 beats per minute
Duration: 5 minutes

Holy shit, a spider!

In this exercise you play the 1-2-3-4 pattern on each string. What makes it difficult is that when you change strings the finger should be placed on the string while the others are still resting in a row on the previous string! This exercise should be played very slowly to train your fingers to make tiny movements on the fretboard which really pays off at higher speeds.

Let's say you're playing the regular spider (playing the 1-2-3-4 pattern on each string), these photos show how your fretting hand should look:

The spider gets harder (part 2)

This variation of the spider is played very similar to the regular spider except that it is played on pairs of strings. Each 1-2-3-4 pattern is played on two strings. Again, you are only allowed to move one finger at a time, but this time the finger needs to cross two strings to get to its destination.

And the tabs (note that the strings get inverted when you go up - this is just to add some variety):

As you can see the pattern can be repeated indefinitely.

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