The close proximity of the frets and fingers whilst playing up in the ‘dusty end’ of the upper fretboard, and the limited use of it by so much of the popular playing you will do on your journey, make it a difficult realm on the neck to become comfortable and confident in.
With so much else to do as a beginner and intermediate player, it is hard to justify to much time with this work until you have covered everything else. This is why I saved it till TECHNIQUE 138.
If you however you have already waded through all the SCALES and ARPEGGIO tutorials, then you will have spent some time up here and will have already experienced the challenges, so incorporating this into your warmup should make sense.
The guitar you play may make it difficult to get going because it depends on the design of body and neck join. Just start from the highest fretable note.
Here is a simple routine I use as part of my warmup each day to ensure that the upper end of the fretboard is ready for me when required.
These notes come from the Chromatic Scale (see TECHNIQUE 1 and PRACTISING 2). It is the set of notes which has every note in the octave. It is useful for technique matters when all the fingers and frets need your attention. It also reinforces the approach known as ‘position-playing’ and ‘position-shifting’ - each finger is covering its own fret and plays all the notes that fall into it, and when the action moves sideways, the fingers move as a team to cover them in a new position. See TECHNIQUE 2, SCALES 8 & 22.
I made three paths, each of which leads from E, down towards the next, so once you have done the work you can grab your fretboard diagram, and build and continue all the way back down to the low end of the board.
Then follow the scale back up and also get used to gradually moving into the dusty end from different paths.
Then practise bending, sliding, hammering and pulling each note with each finger after picking.
The precision required is more demanding and the fingers have to get used to moving out of each others way.
Practise it unplugged unless you want the world around you to start complaining.
The phrase ‘dusty end’ I think came from an interview I read with Malcolm Young, the rhythm guitarist of ACDC.
