One of the biggest problems for new guitarists is their inability to control their pinky finger. Any guitar tabs that involve the pinky become downright scary and intimidating, leading to further neglect of this important fourth finger. Ignoring the pinky is a bad idea, since it is absolutely essential to your progress as a guitarist. That's why it's a good idea to do pinky strength exercises to develop control over the finger. The following is a very simple guitar exercise you can perform a few times per day in order to work on this skill.

First, let's take a look at the tab for this exercise. If you don't know how to read tablature yet, head over to the reading guitar tabs lesson.

Now, let's go over the tab in detail. The important thing here is to play the notes with the correct finger. To make it easy, just follow this pattern: Pinky, ring, pinky, middle, pinky, index. What you are doing is alternating between your pinky and the rest of the fingers on your hand. This constant attention on your pinky finger help you develop proper control and timing.

Perform this pattern on every string, hitting all the necessary notes on the 1st through the 4th frets. Once you make your way from the 1st (e) string to the 6th (E) string, slide your hand to the next position and work your way down the guitar fretboard playing the same pattern:

So all you're doing here is just sliding to the next fret (pinky now starts on the 5th fret instead of the 4th) and continuing the same exercise. You can continue repeating this pattern until you get all the way down to the 12th fret.

Each time your pinky has to play a note, make sure it is pressing down very firmly, and that you are using only your fingertip to press the string. Try to avoid using the side of the finger! This made seem difficult at first, but with continued guitar practice you'll see that the finger starts to loosen up over time.

Make sure you perform this guitar strength exercise at least once per day until you feel confident in your control over the unruly but very important pinky! This exercise is also a great way to warm up and improve your overall accuracy. A must-have exercise in any beginner guitarist arsenal.