Anything I can practice with my right hand while waiting for my left to recover?

I'm unable to play guitar currently as I'm having to rest my left hand but not playing is killing me so I'm thinking about things I can practice while I'm waiting for my left hand to recover.

I figure it gives me chance to really get to grips with playing harmonica and I can practice right hand piano technique and creating melodies but I was wondering if anyone can give me some other ideas? Aside from finger picking in open tunings are there any guitar related ones?

Rhythm exercises, string skipping, finger picking. Might not be exciting since your unable to fret but it is doable I guess.

Rhythm exercises, string skipping, finger picking. Might not be exciting since your unable to fret but it is doable I guess.

+1 on string skipping exercises! and on the other mentioned exercises too :)

plus right hand harmonics... though you're mostly limited to the 12th fret.
sweep exercises.
thumb picking 'a la" wes montgomery!
switch from pick to fingerstyle (hide pick in between fingers)
play with the volume knob.
PPS ... as Michael-Angelo Batio put it, "Potential-Picking-Speed" (tremolos :)

Practice double picking. It takes years to perfect it. You could also do strength traing with a ball. Depending on how bad your left hand is you might be able to play slide. Maybe???

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finger picking patterns

banjo rolls, in and outs...etc. alternating bass

Slide? Lap Steel?

You could use this time to practice fingerpicking.

Tune to an open E and use a slide if you can.

Just make sure your left hand doesn't know what your right hand is doing...

or it might want to join in ;)

My left hand is very patient. :)

If you want to gain some picking skills grab a metronome and do this... We'll call V a downstroke, and ^ an upstroke

1-----^---^----V---V------
2---V---V----^---^---------
3----------------------
4----------------------
5----------------------
6----------------------

Ultimately, you want to create alot of patterns and work them with a metronome. You might take a step back and ask yourself what you would like to focus on...

nm...

Lap steel is a lot of fun, if you can hold a hunk of metal.

wait a minute...I've seen that tab...

that's that "Flock of Seagulls" chord.... ;)

Thanks for all the response guys, it's honestly really nice!
I figure it's just mostly going to be tightening my right hand to a click, I can't really do slide 'cause I have to angle my wrist but if I can borrow a lap steel I might be able to do that! :)

I can't really do slide 'cause I have to angle my wrist but if I can borrow a lap steel I might be able to do that! :)

I took a cheap guitar (Epi Special II) and put an extension nut on it, and now it's my "lap steel." Lots of fun, sounds great.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Nuts,_saddles/Resonator_nuts,_saddles/Slide_Guitar_Extension_Nut.html

I converted a guitar to lefty and glued a pick to my cast and was able to carry on.

Metronomic, even picking with skipped strings. Keep taking it up a notch on the tempo. I had a hard time getting my picking hand to be even between the up and down stroke, so I do up/down strokes while watching movies with strings muted. Try triplets over multiple strings, too. It helps!

I'm going to be contrarian here:
Don't work on right hand stuff. You can't do right hand things without the left hand (in performance-I know you can do little exercises). One part of technique that I think is way too underrated is the coordination factor. If you get your right hand doing something new, you'll have to wait for the left hand to catch up, OR the right hand will regress back to where it was to begin with. I really think you'd be wasting your time unfortunately.

The silver lining:
Work on singing solos and lines. You will get an insanely deep connection with whatever music you're playing. Plus you will learn a ton of vocabulary 'by osmosis'. I think this is one of the best things you can do injury or no injury, but being forced to not play would give you another reason to do this kind of study.

Really the one handed exercises I think will end up wasting your time though, and singing more will really be an enormous benefit.

Don't work on right hand stuff. You can't do right hand things without the left hand (in performance-I know you can do little exercises). One part of technique that I think is way too underrated is the coordination factor. If you get your right hand doing something new, you'll have to wait for the left hand to catch up, OR the right hand will regress back to where it was to begin with. I really think you'd be wasting your time unfortunately

At the risk of coming off condescending, I'm gonna step out and attempt to help by disagreeing completely with this idea. I truly beleive that it is our right hand that holds us as guitarists back the most in the field of technique. I honestly beleive in spending time working on specific right hand problematic areas is one of the fastest ways to master the guitar.

I don't see how it could hurt anyone's playing to devote special time to right hand rhythm. The OP has actually a great opportunity to focus on the most difficult part of playing guitar, by improving his right hand chops. He has everything to gain by doing this. Not that some singing and ear training work is not important or helpful but he could gain some real facility by working on his right hand given the current circumstances.

At the risk of coming off condescending, I'm gonna step out and attempt to help by disagreeing completely with this idea. I truly beleive that it is our right hand that holds us as guitarists back the most in the field of technique. I honestly beleive in spending time working on specific right hand problematic areas is one of the fastest ways to master the guitar.

I don't see how it could hurt anyone's playing to devote special time to right hand rhythm. The OP has actually a great opportunity to focus on the most difficult part of playing guitar, by improving his right hand chops. He has everything to gain by doing this. Not that some singing and ear training work is not important or helpful but he could gain some real facility by working on his right hand given the current circumstances.

I can see what you're saying here, but hear me out on this. I think the reason right hand stuff holds us back is usually coordination, not lack of skill. In fact if you don't practice with each hand separately to begin with it would stand to reason that both hands are equally developed.

Rhythm really comes from within-not trying to be esoteric here. But it really comes from know what you want to play, then executing it. 9 times out of 10 I would guess issues with rhythm are coming from not having the internal rhythm decided or strong, not from a deficiency solely in the the right hand. I would say that spending 3-6 months working on singing and tapping rhythms will do a world of good. Not only tht, but I think that doing 3-6 months of right hand only exercise will see either marginal results or no improvement overall. Sure the right hand is better than it was six months ago, but then you have to slow it down again while the left hand catches up.

I don't want to be misunderstood here either, I'm not saying you should ignore the right hand. Picking feel, rhythm, attack, efficiency, etc are all very important. And if you're working of a finger style technique sometimes getting rid of the right hand will help. But I think overwhelmingly doing right hand only stuff will give only marginal results, while practicing away from the guitar will deepen your connection with music-which always enhances whatever technique you already have. That kind of development is no lose. You can never be hurt from having a deep connection with music, or great ears, great internal rhythm, or good decision making-all of which can (and should) be worked on away from the instrument.

Anything I can practice with my right hand while waiting for my left to recover?

Right hand picking exercises, and pick and fingers stuff. Harmonica is great too. I don't know what kind of music you are going for but there are a lot of string instruments like the guitar that require a specific right hand picking or bowing technique (I know because I just started playing fiddle). Ya know, flatpicking, banjo or classical guitar right hand exercises are great for building stamina, improving tone production, speed, muscle memory just to name a few. Sure your left hand will have to catch up but I think you will have gained more than by not playing guitar whatsoever.

Never forget to sing of course, that always helps too.

Ambidexterity is the state of being equally adept in the use of both left and right appendages (such as the hands). It is one of the most famous varieties of cross-dominance. People that are naturally ambidextrous are rare, with only one out of one hundred people being naturally ambidextrous. The degree of versatility with each hand is generally the qualitative factor in determining a person's ambidexterity.

Melodica?

http://www.larryhoppen.com/images/Melodica.jpg
:lol:

There are good keyboard exercises for finger independence. They are hard. Dunno how useful or engaging they'd be for a guitarist.

Sounds like it's time to take up the pedal steel.

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Banjo rolls and crosspicking.

Ambidexterity is the state of being equally adept in the use of both left and right appendages (such as the hands). It is one of the most famous varieties of cross-dominance. People that are naturally ambidextrous are rare, with only one out of one hundred people being naturally ambidextrous. The degree of versatility with each hand is generally the qualitative factor in determining a person's ambidexterity.

Off topic, but I knew a girl in high school who was an amazing artist, and ambidextrous. It was wild watching her draw with both hands at the same time!

Well,,,, yeah,,,,, but they say you'll grow hair on your palm.