Guitar Lesson 11: the finger position exercise, with Michael Angelo Batio
Taught by Fret, your Change Your Strings Guitar teacher ·
A finger position exercise trains one finger per fret: index on the first fret, middle on the second, ring on the third, pinky on the fourth. Keep your hand planted and walk 1, 2, 3, 4 across every string. Michael Angelo Batio uses it to build fretboard confidence and clean speed.
What you need
Watch Michael Angelo Batio demonstrate the finger position exercise in the video above, then read the breakdown.
Now that you know the open strings, it is time to wake up all four fretting fingers. In this Sweetwater lesson, drawn from his Guitar Solo 2.0 book, Batio shares a finger position exercise that, in his words, ups your fretboard confidence and speed. It is the drill almost every fast player built their hands on.
The whole idea is one finger per fret. Assign each finger its own fret and never let them trade jobs:
- Index plays the first fret.
- Middle plays the second fret.
- Ring plays the third fret.
- Pinky plays the fourth fret.
Keep your hand planted in that four-fret box. The weak link is always the pinky, so the point of the exercise is to make it pull its own weight instead of letting the ring finger cover for it.
Play frets 1, 2, 3, 4 on the low E string, then move the same shape to the A string, then the D, the G, the B, and the high E. Climb across all six, then reverse and come back down.
e |----------------------1-2-3-4-B |------------------1-2-3-4-----G |--------------1-2-3-4---------D |----------1-2-3-4-------------A |------1-2-3-4-----------------E |--1-2-3-4---------------------| (1=index 2=middle 3=ring 4=pinky)
Three cues make it work. Press just behind the fret, not on top of it, so each note rings clean with the least effort. Keep every finger hovering close to the strings, even the ones not playing, so no finger has far to travel. And alternate pick each note, down then up, the way you drilled in Lesson 07: alternate picking.
Speed is a byproduct, not the goal. Batio plays this fast because he first played it slow and clean thousands of times. A slim-necked guitar like the Sawtooth ST-M24 (Michael Angelo Batio signature) that he plays throughout the series makes the four-fret reach less of a fight while your hand is still growing. A metronome, even a free phone app, keeps you honest.
Practice this
Set a metronome to a slow tempo, around 60 beats per minute, one note per click. Play the pattern up across all six strings and back down, staying perfectly even, one finger per fret the whole way. Do it for three minutes. Only nudge the tempo up when every single note rings clean and no finger buzzes or flies away.
Where you are
In Lesson 10: the notes in standard tuning you learned what each string is called. Now all four fingers can move across those strings with control. This is the same hand foundation Michael Angelo Batio built his speed on, and it works in any tuning, starting with standard E A D G B E. Keep a set of fresh strings under your fingers so the notes stay clear. Next, Lesson 12: triads, where those independent fingers start stacking into three-note chords.