New book by Jean-Francois Desrosby

I just read "Guitarists: Unlock your potential" by Jean-Francois Desrosby. I'm still digesting the information, but it's a very succinct book which looks at guitar technique from a physiological perspective. It did give me some new ideas to think about, but most of what I have gotten from it so far are explanations as to why some things which seem most logical don't work (usually because that logic is based on incomplete or mistaken information).

The main principal of his book is to use each muscle in the manner for which it was designed. A good example is giving the task of shifting positions to the large shoulder and arm muscles, rather than driving it from the hand, so the hand can stay relaxed. You may say, "how can the hand move without the help of the arm and shoulder, anyway?" I suppose it can't, but on the flip side, many guitarists create tension in their hand while shifting when in fact the hand should be able to stay relaxed. The key is to figure out what is actually going on whenever you do something, and remove all the elements that are unnecessary.

Here's a video of Mr. Desrosby:

Brigitte Zaczec on Baroque lute

I just found this very nice video of Brigitte Zaczek on baroque lute. I'd never heard of her before but was  intrigued because of her last name's similarity to my own. I find the interviewer to be a bit creepy, frankly, but I enjoyed the performance and the great footage of her right hand technique. It's especially interesting how she uses her right hand thumb to manage the beginning and end of every bass note. We have to do the same thing on guitar, too, but in comparison, we've really got it easy!

As a bonus, here's audio of her playing a piece by Mertz on a period instrument.

Los Romeros workshop (part 2): Etudes and repertoire

I'm not going to be able to offer a whole lot of detail directly from a workshop I took no notes on, but I will offer a few highlights that I can recall and my own thoughts on those topics.

One idea that has stuck with me from the Los Romeros workshop I attended years ago, was Pepe's statement that students develop their technique using studies (specifically mentioning Carcassi, Sor, and Brouwer) and then reward their achievement with appropriate repertoire. This approach depends on having a patient student and some good guidance, but that's nothing unusual, is it?

I think he has a fair point. Etudes may not be "appropriate for the concert stage," but maybe it's better to work through the effort, frustration, and doubt of the learning process while learning these studies rather than  the music you intend to perform. Then, maybe you can go on stage with a whole program of music without baggage of effort, frustration, and doubt. That sounds like a much better situation to me.

A well-composed study like Carcassi's can offer a systematic technical workout in a bite-sized (or perhaps mouthful) chunk. The flip side of that, which I don't think Pepe mentioned, is that a good musical understanding is what transforms a "boring study" into a satisfying piece of music is the performer's grasp of the music itself. Perhaps even more so than the technique.

For example, playing a slur study well is more than merely executing the slurs. The dynamics and tone colors have to flow with the line, and pull-offs to open strings can't sound plunky. So the technique of a descending slur isn't just "pluck the string with the left hand." The speed and direction of the motion, surface area of the finger used, and amount of pulling the string sideways versus sliding across it are all factors that contribute to the sound of the slur.

If you try to control all of this at the muscular level, you'll just get bogged down in the details and never move on. It's much easier if you let your ears control your technique rather than your fingers.

More thoughts on Effortless Mastery

Life has been busy recently, unfortunately full of real-world work, and not a whole lot of time for music. As I often do in these times, I'm still practicing guitar regularly but focusing on one just thing. This time, it is effortlessness.

It took me a really long time to figure out that the way to play effortlessly is not to struggle with material until it becomes easy and effortless. To date, that method has never worked for me.

The message of Kenny Werner's excellent "Effortless Mastery" book basically boils down to this:

• To play effortlessly, you have to play effortlessly now.
• You play effortlessly now by playing only what you can play effortlessly now.
• To play new things effortlessly, you have to work on them as slowly and/or gradually as necessary to keep the effortless feeling. Develop the comfort zone gradually. 
• Play the material fast sometimes, too, but keep the effortless feeling and completely ignore mistakes. You can work them out in the slow practice; the fast practice is to get used to the feeling of playing fast. 

So what is effortlessness? 

I used to think it was a physical feeling, but that's just part of it. Keeping a quiet mind is just as important. With the mind quiet and even detached from the physical side of playing, it becomes much easier to listen to what you're doing and develop a listening-based method of playing rather than a physical activity-based method of playing.

It's important to learn the feeling of effortlessness as early on as you can, whether you're working on difficult music, scales, basic finger mechanics, or even just sitting silently with the guitar.

William Kanengiser masterclass notes, part 4

The final performer at the William Kanengiser masterclass I've been writing about played the fourth movement of Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Homage to Boccherini. Kanengiser offered some thoughts particular to Tedesco's writing. It's often said that the guitar should be treated like a miniature orchestra, because of the wealth of tone colors it offers us, and that idea is especially applicable to a composer like Tedesco who was very much an orchestral composer. He was also very particular about how he used dynamics and articulations.

The rest of the feedback given to this performer was of a technical nature, so I'm going to conclude this series of posts by gathering together all the technical and miscellaneous suggestions that were offered during the masterclass.

• Kanengiser reiterated throughout the class the importance of pulling the notes out of the guitar, moving the strings rather than hitting them. This is really the key to getting a good, consistent tone and needs to be at the core of our technique so that even in the fastest playing where you can't be thinking about control, you can rely on your fingers to activate the strings effectively. Move the strings in towards you before releasing them.
• The open high E string needs to always be played warmly and fully, to keep the tone balanced with the other strings. Do whatever you can to avoid harshness/excessive brightness.
• When performing vibrato, move from the shoulder and use the forearm as a pivot point. Don't just wiggle or shake the hand, but get the larger muscles involved.
• Practice maintaining the clarity and continuity of a single voice when changing strings. This is difficult on guitar, but really important to musical playing. 
• You can be flexible with the right and left hand positions in order to solve technical problems. The two examples I recall Kanengiser giving were related to damping. We often hear that the last phalanx of the left hand fingers should be positioned perpendicular to the plane of the fingerboard so as to only touch one string at a time, but when playing a descending scale in open position, dropping the hand a bit so the pads of the fingertips touch the adjacent string allows us to easily damp the open strings we've played so they don't keep ringing inappropriately. Likewise, we can roll the right hand thumb one way or another to damp a bass string while it is resting on an adjacent one in preparation.
• Sometimes it's necessary to simplify the music in order to discover its true shape. For example, when the melody is part of a series of arpeggios, leave out the arpeggios for a while and work on the melody on its own.
• When considering the shape of a line, figure out which notes are "juicy" and which are transitions. It's important for us to understand where the notes fit in the harmony and relation to the beat. Guitarists are infamous for arbitrary and inappropriate accents. 

This concludes my series of posts from that masterclass. Thanks for reading! If you've found this information to be helpful or you've otherwise enjoyed reading it, be sure to check out William Kanengiser's CDs, DVDs, and performances. 

Unforgiving

After doing some maintenance on my guitar this week, I put on a new set of strings, of a type I hadn't used before. I'm not going to tell you what they are, but they are much lower tension than I normally use on my guitar.

I strung it up, tuned to pitch, and played a few notes and was really blown away by how beautiful they sounded. All the warmth, fullness, and volume I've ever wanted in a string, yet so easy to play. 

Today has been kind of a crazy day for me, though, and after playing for a while I was really unhappy with my sound. At first I wanted to just swap them for something familiar, but I thought maybe I'd damaged my nails, so I redid them. As I tested them out, I could get that great tone again, but it went away when I started playing normally. Frustrating.

These strings are just totally unforgiving, and with any carelessness on my part the tone is unusably lousy. But with nails well-cared-for, solid contact with the string, and well-directed plucking motion, they reward me beautifully. That's how I want to sound all the time, and that's how I want to play all the time, regardless of the strings. 

I think it'll be worthwhile to leave them on for a while and focus on whatever I need to do to get that classic tone.

Sustained notes within a line

This has come up a few times for me recently, and while it's not an original idea, I thought I'd share it for those who don't know about it.

Classical guitar is a rather percussive instrument with quick decay, and often times the music we play has notes written within a line which are far longer than the instrument will actually sustain. Yet, when you hear this music played by a great guitarist (whose expensive guitar may or may not offer an extra millisecond of sustain), the line sounds unbroken.

There are tricks for increasing sustain, vibrato can help, but this is what really makes it work. You need to match the next note to the memory of the attack and tone of the sustained note. Otherwise, if you accent it too much or too little, you may give the impression that you're starting a new phrase.

Also, sometimes (especially in baroque or renaissance music), a voice can disappear for several measures before returning. To my ears, it's particularly effective when, for example, a piece with three voices sounds like they're the same three voices throughout. This doesn't mean there can't be dynamics or variation in the tone color, it's a matter of intention and attention to detail. I noticed this effect a lot with Paul Galbraith's Bach recordings.

What it all boils down to is that you should make a goal of matching the sound your create with the instrument with the intention you've got in your head. Then you just need to listen a lot to great music and educate your imagination.

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PS: I've concluded my video project, as I have to finish moving out of my house and am just too busy for the next few days. I will keep posting music I work on periodically, so please subscribe to my Youtube channel.

Here's a link to the playlist with all 13 videos I made this month.