Unleash the Power of your Pinky! Video Lecture | Guitar: Become a Pro (English) - Music

if the fingers of your hand were members
of the band Metallica Lars Ulrich would
for sure be your pinkie a small
diminutive but definitely part of your
hand yet it can also be fierce in the
right context
just like Lars so we're gonna talk about
some ways you can use your pinkie get in
the game to kind of add melody some your
chords specifically major chords now to
continue on with the metaphor I think
Hetfield is obviously the middle finger
I don't need to feel like I need to
explain that Hammett would probably be
your index finger because it's like your
lead finger which would mean Trujillo is
the ring finger which also just kind of
seems right but anyway so we're gonna
start with an F major chord and this
regular voicing we're gonna use is this
one right here now our ring finger is on
the 3rd fret of the D string which is an
F my middle finger is on the 2nd fret of
the g string which is an a its major
third and my pointer finger is on the
1st fret of the B string C so f HC a
root note its major 3rd and is perfect
fifth right so this is one of the most
common chords that you'll see and again
a movable chord so half F sharp G
g-sharp a so on and so forth now if we
start to just employ the pinky and it's
not most minimal way we can just add it
right here on the third fret of the high
E string which is a G okay so it's
really a very important finger and
something to really think about I think
a lot of people kind of ignore their
pinky for the most part as far as when
it comes to chord buildings I'll try to
do anything that they can do to not have
to use it because you know might be too
hard to stretch you might not feel
strong enough to hold that string down
but it's really important because
whatever's on top of the chord and when
I say on top the highest note of a chord
a lot of times that'll be the note that
you can kind of hear pick out the
easiest so a lot of times what people
will say is that when you're composing
or writing something you want the melody
on top or maybe like you know you're
singing is on top of the chord so
usually in a lot of chord voicings your
pinkie ends up being the finger
responsible for adding that note on top
that melody right so the the first one
we're gonna do is just adding it to the
same fret that your ring fingers on no
matter where that is so in this F major
chord voicing we're adding a G okay now
in the key of F G would be the second
note so you might think that the name of
the score would be like an f2 or
something like that but the way it works
since we're going all the way around we
have the first the third in the fifth
when we add the second note in the scale
on top an octave away that's actually
gonna be the ninth note right so like
the eighth note the act of being the one
again the nine being the two again so
this we could think of as an F 9 or an F
add 9 because there's no 7 right so we
have a half major like an F 9 thing just
like we can mirror this like a G and
it's 9 right
now if we do the same thing but we just
move it up a string and I'm on the third
fret of the B string
now it's actually alters the entire
court itself we don't have an F major
chord anymore our notes are F a and D
now that would be an inversion of a D
minor chord so when you get that pinky
up to the B string now this is the root
note of a minor chord D minor D sharp
minor and E minor minor so forth right
so we're actually doing like a lot of or
making a huge change in this core just
by kind of moving that pinky back and
forth right so now we're gonna stay in
the same kind of pattern but we're just
gonna go up another string so now I've
got three D 3G and one being so I have a
F
a b-flat a sharp same difference
it is C now this is a suspended four
chord we've taken the major third and
we've had at the fourth note of the
scale and then we sell the fifth so one
of four and five together making half
suspended for quarter so just by using
this pinky we can kind of take a regular
major Gordon nine minor the suspended
major nine minor suspended
and you can do this in the context of a
bigger bar chords to my god
[Music]
so even though that cord is the thicker
cord you can kind of still hear that
[Music]
so the think II really does have a lot
of responsibility in adding a melody on
top of these chords and because it is
the highest note that's because it's on
top it actually affects it in in a
profound way so to speak so really yeah
just be more cognizant of your think you
know you can do a little bit more with
it you know instead of just kind of
altering four words you can kind of do
like little hammer ons flourishes stuff
like that but just be cognizant that
anytime you're in like a major position
like this your pinkie is available to
add melody or add something to maybe
kind of spice up regular chord
progressions where you're just using
typical old my major chords and you use
same thing with minor
so again just experiment you know you
don't even necessarily have to think of
all I'm adding 9 I'm adding like a 7 a
suspended for stuff like that just kind
of like get a chord shape huh kind of
get that pinky moving around as a free
agent and see what you can do with it