Quote:
The second thing was a technical exercise: play a scale with fret hand only. IOW, play with hammer-ons and pull-offs alone, no picking, and play in time. (Ideally to a metronome.)
|
I heartily second that one, and luckily for me I learned it years ago while taking lessons.
Definitely great for timing. What I also found is that it really helps to strengthen the hand in a good way, i.e. it promotes dexterity and accuracy of fretting. Also for me, keeping the pinky from being too unruly and straying too far from the fretboard.
I found it worked best on all 5 two octave diatonic major scale forms. (G, A, C, D, F). It's in the lower part of the fretboard too (2nd and 1st positions), so it's arguably a good warm-up/stretching exercise as well.
So yeah, definitely a good one! (Thanks for the reminder JonPR!
)