Guitar Gym “Chordal Exercise”

Intro

Today we’ll be looking at a cool chordal exercise to build strength and dexterity in your fretting hand.

What we’ve got here is four chord shapes with some very specific finger movements.

This is a very cool exercise so let’s break it down nice and slow!

Shape #1

So here’s shape 1:

Shape #2

For the second shape, the two fingers in the middle stay the same and then fingers 1 and 4 will swop strings:

Let’s change between shape 1 and 2:

Shape #3

From there fingers 1 and 4 will remain where they’re at and the 2nd and 3rd fingers are going to swap strings to give us shape 3:

Let’s change between shape 2 and 3:

Shape #4

For the fourth and final shape, fingers 2 and 3 will remain where they are and fingers 1 and 4 are going to swap strings again:

Let’s change between shape 3 and 4:

Then from shape 4 we go back to shape 1 again which is simply swapping the strings between finger 2 and 3:

Alright, you got it! Let’s put all the shapes together and loop it a few times:

Outro

Now if you want to amp things up a bit, you can do any of the following:

1. Use a metronome and gradually increase the tempo.

2. Play the shapes lower down the neck which will require a bit more strength in your fretting.

3. Or move the same shape down to some of the thicker strings which will also require more strength.

Remember to go slow so that you don’t make repeated mistakes!

If you’d like to get a PDF version of this lesson, PLUS more tabbed exercises like these, just click the button below: