34 exercises with diatonic chords

[NormanKliman]

Hi everyone,

I’ve updated the guitar exercises on my website. I’ve deleted some of the older stuff to add 34 new exercises that apply different right-hand techniques and patterns to a single diatonic chord progression.

I’ve been playing these new exercises for about a month, and they seem to be making my hands stronger.

I developed the material from my most recent warm-up exercise, but it all goes back to a very basic idea in thirds that Ramón Montoya and others played a lot. Extending that idea up and down the neck, I worked out 13 chords, from E minor in first position to C major where the neck joins the body. Thirteen is an odd number that works well for forming a loop with 12 chords up and 12 down.

The six techniques applied to this progression are (1) arpeggios, (2) horquilla, (3) thumb and index, (4) thumb and index + single-note lines, (5) single-note lines and (6) tremolo. I’ve worked out ascending and descending patterns in triplets, sixteenths and other time values, trying to cover all the possible variations that are useful.

The result is a lot of new material, some of which will probably be too easy or too hard, and some that should be juuuust right for you.

Here’s the link to these exercises on the updated exercises page:
http://canteytoque.es/pmiexc.htm#diatonic

[NormanKliman]

No replies so far, but here's a little update: This morning I changed the order of some of the patterns on the web page. Last night, it occurred to me that it’s harder (for me, at least) to start with index than with ring finger, especially in some of the final patterns, and what I want is to show the easier exercises before the harder ones. So, I had to edit the images of the summaries of some of the techniques, but the patterns themselves remain unchanged.

Diatonic chords are such a basic concept that I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has already published something similar to my study. The patterns associated with thumb and index and with thumb/index + single notes are more closely related to flamenco guitar and may be more interesting if you don’t care for the others.