The goal of this exercise is to practice every possible combination of the 4 fingers.

In classical music the four fingers are PIMA.

In Hybrid picking the “P” becomes the Pick stroke. “I” becomes the middle finger, “M” becomes the Ring finger, and “A” becomes the Pinky.

A great classical teacher showed me this exercise where you climb the E major scale and hit every possible combination of PIMA that start with P. There are more if you want to start with other fingers.

Here’s the patterns listed by string number –

4321.    4312.   4231.   4213.   4132.   4123.

You can build more complex patters, or apply this to chord progressions or convert any finger style piece (classical, folk,pop,etc) into this style of Pick, Middle, Index, Pinky instead of the traditional PIMA.

There are also countless videos on youtube or books of classical arpeggio studies that all use the PIMA structure. They would all suit our purpose perfectly!