Use Your Pinky!

October 23rd, 2005 Print Tip E-mail Tip

Take a good look at your fretting hand. You should have four fingers and an opposable thumb. Inefficiently though, a lot of us let our pinky take a permanent vacation. If your pinky is not being used, that means 25% of your workforce is unemployed (I'm not including the thumb here, even though Jimi Hendrix, among others, famously wrapped his thumb over the top of his Fender Stratocaster to fret strings).

I usually go out of my way to include my pinky in on the action---including bends. I try to finger licks or riffs in such a way that the little guy gets a bit of exercise. Even open-position chords can benefit from employing your pinky, especially if you don't need to use your index finger. That way it's very easy just to move the chord shape or grip up the fretboard a few frets, lay down your index finger and you've got an instant bar chord (I know it's not spelled that way, but what if you play that chord in a bar?).

Just having the extra extended reach the pinky provides allows you to play passages that otherwise would require a lot more hand movement and possible finger squeaks (although finger squeaks aren't always a bad thing, as Brian May proved with "We Will Rock You").

Anyway, the main thing is to use that slacker, and soon you'll find you can do with it everything you can do with its bigger brothers. The tab below is similar to the intro riff of "Crazy Train" (a great riff that uses all the notes of the F# natural minor scale) played by the inimitable Randy Rhoads, and a good workout for the old pink. Use your pinky to fret the notes at the 5th fret on the A and low E strings (this adheres to the one-fret-per-finger rule---index at 2nd fret, middle finger covers 3rd fret, et cetera). Use it or lose it.

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——————4———5———4——————2———————2————————|
——2—2———2———2———2——————5—4—5———5—4—0——|

GuitarNote!
Showing how addictive guitar playing can become, two guitarists (and probably more) became fabulously succesful without the full complement of fingers. The famous Django Reinhardt, who because of a fire could use basically only his index and middle fingers, and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, who lost the tips of his middle and ring fretting hand fingers due to a sheet metal accident. Though Django was dead by this time, Tony heard his records while recovering and, inspired, carried on playing guitar with plastic thimbles on those fingers. Tony also downtuned to facilitate fretting---no wonder he's called the godfather of heavy metal guitar.