Hi,
Just wondered if anyone can offer some sage advice as to improving my ability to stretch between the first and second finger of my left hand. I'm playing a tenor uke (as you can see by my sig), and I often have the need to stretch between my first and second finger and also fret a note with my pinkie. What seems to happen is that I will inadvertently flex my wrist (as if trying to "curl" the neck of the uke with my wrist) to reach the chord, and when I notice this I straighten my wrist back to minimal flexion (as it's supposed to be). This tends to make things easier, but I find that my slight limitation in stretching between 1 and 2 sometimes causes one or both of those fingers to be misaligned with the frets when I fret the pinkie note, and I get some muting and what I call the "thunks". Shifting the second finger tends to shift the first, if you know what I mean, so I need to improve the stretch between them.
Any good exercises that you've found to work on this? I am using hand -exercise putty as a matter of course to strengthen my fingers for barre chords and to strengthen the adductors of the fingers....and of course I play as much as possible and practice stretching and spiders.
Thanks!
K
Just wondered if anyone can offer some sage advice as to improving my ability to stretch between the first and second finger of my left hand. I'm playing a tenor uke (as you can see by my sig), and I often have the need to stretch between my first and second finger and also fret a note with my pinkie. What seems to happen is that I will inadvertently flex my wrist (as if trying to "curl" the neck of the uke with my wrist) to reach the chord, and when I notice this I straighten my wrist back to minimal flexion (as it's supposed to be). This tends to make things easier, but I find that my slight limitation in stretching between 1 and 2 sometimes causes one or both of those fingers to be misaligned with the frets when I fret the pinkie note, and I get some muting and what I call the "thunks". Shifting the second finger tends to shift the first, if you know what I mean, so I need to improve the stretch between them.
Any good exercises that you've found to work on this? I am using hand -exercise putty as a matter of course to strengthen my fingers for barre chords and to strengthen the adductors of the fingers....and of course I play as much as possible and practice stretching and spiders.
Thanks!
K