Morrowind said:

btw do ALL your fingers move independantly?

no matter how hard I try, I can't move my pinky down without my ring finger moving down a bit also. It doesn't affect guitar playing because the difference isn't that huge, but it's really annoying. Feels like a real physical limitation

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Well, I have been playing for 14 years, and they do still tend to stick together as a pair, but it does get better in time....  A good exersize in general is to do a chromatic exersize....  Each finger gets it's own fret, and you start index finger to pinky, one at a time while picking....  When you get to the pinky, your index finger goes down to the next string, and you pick the next 4 sequential chromatic notes....  When you get to the high E string, you move up a fret, and do the order in reverse - start with the pinky, and sequentially chromatically go to the index finger....  Work your way up to the 12 fret, and come back down....  After a while you will get faster and faster, and more coordinated.... 

Then you can start doing the same thing in effect, but one of your fingers will skip a fret, 1, 2, 3, 5....  and you will start to stretch out your fingers as you start spacing out the frets....  It ain't gonna~ sound like anything cool, it is an exercize....  Works really good for building strength, coordination, speed, timing, and finger independence.... 

It is also a good warm-up exersize, even if you just do the first chromatic exersize once up and down the neck....

ChoW~,
>^;;^<

Quote:

There is a tendon that connects the pinky and ring fingers so that they can't move 100% independently of each other. That's why classical guitar players don't use their pinky when fingerpicking. It's not that the pinky is too hard to pick with, it's just that you don't have total control over it.

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