Originally, I thought I could keep up with my Exercise of the Week lesson, but I just don't have the time to be doing that on a weekly basis. So here is a toned down version - the Exercise of the Month. You can expect to see quite a wide variety of exercises here that will help you in many areas of your playing.

First, let me apologize for February's lack of a monthly exercise. I suppose I should rename this section "Exercise of the Month, Except for Months With No Exercises".

Hopefully you are not getting tired of seeing exercises dealing with scales. But here is the thing: Scales are the foundation of creative, expressive playing. Once you develop some degree of scale mastery, then your playing will simply become a voice. The fretboard won't seem like this interfering medium that gets in your way of creating phrases, licks, etc. I know that sounds like philosophical nonsense, but you just have to trust me... And when you have your enlightening moment during which my ramblings make sense, then there will really be no need to go to websites learning exercises, because your guitar "voice" will be uttering an endless stream of ideas that are your very own.

Ok enough of that. This exercise is similar in spirit to my exercises in the 3 Octave Scales lesson - it is meant to get you burning through scales throughout the entire fretboard. Whereas those exercises alternate between 3 and 4 notes per string, this exercise is strictly 4 notes per string. And while the 3 Octave Scale exercises had a certain, convenient symmetry, that symmetry is lost in this case, making coordination difficult. But with these difficulties aside, this exercise will help your fingers become more fluid, and you will see a staggering improvement in your coordination. The end result: Your fingers will move upon the fretboard with impressive grace and authority.

I had to shrink this image down to make it conveniently fit. Hopefully you can make it out ok. The important thing to take note of are the 4 note groupings on each string, and the fact that what you are seeing is nothing more than a G Major scale played across 3 and a half octaves.

As with any exercise, you should play it in whatever manner suits you, be it with legato, alternate picking, or both. I play this exercise strictly with alternate picking, and with slides as shown. As I said above, one of the toughest parts of this exercise is the coordination needed to play all those damn notes! So just take it slow. Take advantage of the MIDI file and get some software that lets you adjust the tempo, etc. I think you will find that much more helpful than playing along to the audio.

Note: The slow, medium, and fast audio clips are all played as sixteenth notes (4 notes a beat) at 50, 150, and 190 BPM, respectively.