Do i really need to use my pinky while playing guitar?

Question

Pinky guitar

Answer 1

you can believe i'm bullshitting this, but my teacher's teacher was paul gilbert, and I got to meet him once.  he didn't mention this at all lol.

but my teacher did tell me that paul always made him use his pinky.  to be honest, you'll be alot faster if you do use it, and you'll find that after a few weeks, not even years, jsut weeks, of practicing that it will become second nature, you won't even notice it anymore.

in short, the answer is no, you don't need to use your pinky, but why not?  it can only make you better.

Answer 2

Yes you need. Period. Why for God's sake does every novice work out another stupid 'shortcut'?? It'll cause you huge problems if you will resist to use it.

Answer 3

A lot of great guitarist over the years have had the "lazy" pinky, and then out of nowhere in certain songs.. they use it and it disappears again!  Clapton, Page, Vaughn, Trower, Beck, watch some old videos of them.. you'll see what I mean.  While technically you dont need the pinky... you would be much better off learning some good finger excercises which just about glues the pinky to the fretboard!  

    Recently I got a chance to see a bluegrass show.  Believe it or not... the 5 string banjo player used NO fingers at all on his "fretting or fingering" hand.  All he used was his thumb, as a birth defect caused mishaped and very deformed fingers.  This guy was FAST too, and didnt miss one note!

Answer 4

If you think about it, if you don't use your pinky finger you are losing 20% of your fretting hand's capabilities.  Now at first, it seems like you can get by without it and if your aspirations are not huge, you can get by just fine.  Some notably famous guitarists don't use their pinky fingers which just means they were able to overcome the loss of that 20% by other means.  Django Reinhardt loss most of the use of two of his fingers and he was still one of the greats of guitar playing.

But you have to ask yourself if are you one of those people with exceptional talent that can overcome any obstacle in their way in order to become an immortal guitar hero?  For most of us, that answer is certainly no.  So therefore it is a good idea to use whatever resources you have at your disposal and, difficult though it might be at first to get used to, your fretting hand pinky finger is indeed an available resource just waiting to be put to use.

Don't even get me started on using the thumb :-)

Answer 5

If you're able to play well enough without it, I would say you're fine.  However there will be some cases in certain songs in which the pinky is required in order to reach across to hit the proper frets.

Answer 6

Well i also play metal neo classical and stuff & i have never seen a song which doesnot requires to be played without ur pinky,anyways it is wrong u should be able to use ur pinky otherwise it will cause a big big problem later on.

Answer 7

u dont, but i highly recommend u do

i didnt use my pinky in my 1st 2 years of guitar playing.

when i started to learn really fast neo classical (yngwie malmsteen) solo's.

i realised how important it was, u really gota use it to go up and down those scales fast and cleanly. if u dont use ur pinky u will need to move ur hand alot more to reach for those notes, when ur playing at these speeds, it gets abit confusing when u see ur hand moving up and down like crazy.

and when ur moving that much, its harder to keep it clean. u might accidently touch other frets/strings by accident. Everything just seems like a mess!

Answer 8

If you play chords, you will use your little finger around 90% of the time.

Answer 9

If you have been playing for 3 years and don't use your 4th finger, then I have to guess you can't play anything more complex than a simple chord because you MUST use the pinky finger for a LOT of chords... especially barre chords...

If you don't care about REALLY playing the guitar, then just keep doing what you are doing.. if you want to expand into some of the more intricate chords and melodies than you MUST use 4 fingers.