The Spider
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 hardest spider
This variation of the spider is played very similar to the harder spider except that instead of playing the 1-2-3-4 pattern you play 1-3-2-4. It is again played on pairs of strings so that the jumps for the fingers are longer than in the regular spider. Remember, only one finger may be moved at a time, the non-moving fingers should rest on the strings.
The fingerboard pattern shows the positions of the fingers.
In the tabs you can see that the order of the notes played really is 1-3-2-4.
As you can see the pattern can be repeated indefinitely.
- This is not a speed exercise - the slower you play this, the better! Micro-movements will get into your muscle memory and it will really pay off when playing other stuff at higher speeds.
- If the spider is too fast for you, play quarter notes instead of 8ths.