Spider Exercise - warm up fingers stretching

Spider Exercise


Most beginners on Guitar be it Bass, Acoustic or Electric find one of the hardest parts of playing is moving there fingers between the frets quickly enough and putting enough pressure on the strings between the frets to make the notes ring out correctly.

As any professional bass guitarist will tell you warming up is an essential part of a good playing technique .

The ‘Spider Exercise’ is the ideal warm up and fingers stretching exercise.

This exercise not only gets the player moving their fingers around the fretboard but helps stretch the finger ligaments increasing the speed of the players fingers movement, and pressure on the strings in each fret.

Here is the ‘ Spider Exercise ‘ start slowly and gradually build up your speed.

The first part of the spider exercise:-
1st Finger on E (4th) string the thickest string, on the 5th fret and pluck
then using your
3rd (ring) finger placed on the D (2nd) string on the 7th fret pluck this then
place your little finger on the thin G (1st) thinnest string on the 8th fret and pluck

once you can play this comfortably upwards and backwards then try this slightly different exercise which is still part of the spider exercise.

The 2nd part of the spider exercise:-
1st finger 5th fret on thickest E (4th) string and pluck followed by your ring finger on the 7th fret on the D (2nd) string and pluck
now drop down a string to the A (3rd) string using your 1st finger on the 7th fret pluck and then move up to the 8th fret on the same A string.

Play this 2nd part exercise until you can do it upwards and backwards comfortably and then combine both exercises part 1 and part 2 and practise until smooth and comfortable.

These combined exercises form the complete “ Spider Exercise ” which is the ideal bass players finger warm up and finger stretching routine and should always be performed before starting to play any songs.

Good Luck