Conflicting advice

This is a tricky one. I have a moderate-sized collection of guitar method books, which I like because there's always something interesting to learn from a good one. Sometimes just one new insight can make it worthwhile.

Lately, I've been pondering "The Art of Classical Guitar Playing" by Charles Duncanwhich is loaded with really interesting insight and what sounds, at first glance, like advice which conflicts with other methods I have read. While many authors write about staying as relaxed as possible while playing, Duncan talks about maintaining functional tension (that is, tension which helps your playing) and avoiding dysfunctional tension (which hinders your playing).

This is a bit of a paraphrase, but one specific example I can think of is where he says "an effective playing position is not so much a repose as it is an equilibrium of forces." Meaning that he recommends that rather than finding a totally loose, passive way of holding the guitar, that you instead should use the natural springiness of the body to hold things solidly in place. However, if you were to force yourself into a position resembling the photo in the book without understanding the method behind it, you could very well end up using a lot of dysfunctional tension to maintain that position.


It occurred to me recently, in an email discussion with Philip Hii about his Art of Virtuosity books, that the main differences between what these authors are saying could largely be a matter of terminology and perception. After all, if you truly eliminated all tension in your body, you would pretty much just fall down in a heap. Where one author may say "relaxed," another may say "using balanced forces." This shouldn't be a big revelation but it may account for why seemingly opposite approaches can produce virtuosic results for different authors. They may not really be opposite at all, when you get down to the actual intended experience of playing.



This is why I think that while books have their place, the best "method" is still to find a good teacher and keep an open mind.

Pepe Romero & Wilhelm Hellweg play Carulli and Diabelli

This is a recording I really love.

I was really happy to stumble upon it when I did... I don't even remember how I found it, but I have listened to it time and time again and am always inspired by it. I hope it gets a proper CD release some day, along with the rest of Pepe's back catalog.

Visualization followup

I think that unless I have the time to devote my full undivided attention to this process, it's probably best to work in small chunks, probably with overlap. I went for an hour-long walk yesterday and tried to mentally play through the whole Bach cello suite, but it was too hard to maintain my attention with all the sensory input of being outdoors walking around town. I found myself easily distracted by things like crossing the street and trying not to get hit by cars. :)

Visualization

This topic comes up an awful lot, and I'm not going to go into too much detail about the process, per se. Here is a good article on it from Richard Provost's book The Art and Technique of Practice to get you started if you don't know what I mean.

I've been working on Bach's cello suite #3, and as of a week and a half ago, I considered myself successful in memorizing the whole thing... Which was a nice accomplishment for me, since it's the longest single work I have committed to memory so far with the intention to perform. Well, in anticipation of my lesson last week, I recorded it for my teacher and frankly, it was a bit of a disaster.

At first I tried to rationalize it, saying the music is still new to me, and it was first thing in the morning with no warmup, and, being doubtful of the security of my memory, I had the music in front of me "just in case." I didn't put too much stock in the disastrous nature of this recording, because of those factors, but during the lesson it dawned on me that it probably WAS as well as I could have expected to perform it for an audience. There are all sorts of factors going on which can affect a performance, and the reality was that my memory of the piece was not strong enough to pull it off.

That's OK, because the performance is still months away, but I decided to accept this wake up call and get to work on it. I have been using a visualization process in which I play through each movement continuously in my head; hearing each note and feeling the correct fingering for each hand, without hesitation. This means that, for the left hand, I try to "feel" shapes, shifts, and stretches, too, even though my hands are not actually moving. And this, I think is the key; I have used visualization techniques before in the past but (and I thank Eloise Ristad's A Soprano on Her Head: Right-Side-Up Reflections on Life and Other Performances for my current understanding of it) now I am adding this specific muscle "pre-memory" aspect with great success. It has hard to say what is actually going on; it is sort of muscle memory, in that I think you need familiarity with the right kinds of motions to do this, but really what you are doing is imagining what it feels like to go through the motions of playing.

The big "a ha!" for me was after I went through this process for the entire suite twice, once before bed and a second time after I woke up in the morning but before I got up. I got up, had breakfast, went to my practice room and played the entire suite. At first, it was slightly shaky in the prelude, but soon I fell right into the music and played through the whole thing better than I ever have before.

It was not a flawless run-through and I think it would be too much to hope for perfection overnight no matter how many examples the "technique of performance" and similar books use of instantaneous success after a spontaneous insight. Truthfully, I fell a bit short of the "without hesitation" goal even in the visualization process, but that is part of the point; I found where I didn't know the music as well as I should, and was perhaps relying on muscle memory along when playing.

The important thing, though, is that with few exceptions, in that run-through I felt like I could trust my body to play do the motions of playing the music correctly, and I felt more free to perform from my imagination rather than my technique. What's more is that I found that I was more relaxed as I played, breathing easily and playing more effortlessly than before. Whether that came from the sense of security, or the fact that it didn't occur to me to visualize being tense, I don't know. :)

I felt so good about this experience, that I have made it a primary means of working on the music. My approach now is to work through music like this away from the guitar, reinforcing my memory of the piece until I can play it without hesitation. I do this as close to performance tempo as I can manage without losing sight of the details. When I do play on the guitar, I play through as slowly and deliberately as I need to be sure to do it correctly. If something goes wrong, I go over that section again correctly afterwards on its own and then with surrounding context from the piece.

My aim is to do the visualization work and slow practice daily, and play through once at performance tempo after 3-4 times I have played through slowly, to test the process. The process can feel a bit tedious and I think it's important to be able to see and enjoy the progress to maintain the motivation to keep it up.

I began this particular experiment last Tuesday, June 8th. I'll report back on how it's going in another week or two.

Coordination vs control

Today I managed to increase my scale speed by nearly 20%. I've done a lot of right hand work lately, but what seems to have done it today is a shift in thinking, to use relaxed sympathetic motion instead of trying to 'activate' the fingers individually. In other words, instead of thinking of i&m alternating, to move them as a unit led by one or the other, and conceptually, aiming for relaxed coordination rather than exerted control.

I put together an exercise to work on this, which has done the trick for me. Work on each group separately, lightly and quickly as possible, and preparing each motion at the earliest opportunity. Feel each repetition as a single impulse, and allow yourself to relax completely after each rep before repeating. Don't worry about working with a metronome, just see how fast you can do it. When it feels natural, try some scales and try to maintain the same mental and physical state.

This is a different way of working than I presented in my recent post about developing the right hand. I am having dramatically faster results with this new way of working, but I can't say for sure whether it should replace the other way or be used in tandem.

Possibility

I'm reading another frustrating forum discussion about "am I limited because of ____"? The usual answers equate to, "of course you are. Just enjoy living within your limitation." The implied message is, "why even try?"

Think of these two statements:
a) My potential is inevitably limited.
b) My potential is eventually unlimited.

Which is more likely to get you motivated?

Developing the right hand

I found some pieces recently I would like to learn with tremolo passages, but I've never had a good tremolo in spite of years of attempting various techniques for working on it. My new theory is that I need to develop the weaker side of my hand, and I've come up with a good way to work on that which is working great so far.

The first set of exercises begins with playing 1-2-3-4 with the left hand. Starting on the 6th string at the first fret, 1-2-3-4, repeat on the 5th string, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st, then up a fret and back across string by string to the 6th. Repeat this pattern all the way up the neck until you have the 4th finger at the 1st string 12th fret. From there, the pattern is reversed, descending 4-3-2-1 and descending back down the neck the same way it was climbed. You should end with the 1st finger on the first fret on the 6th string again. This is a fairly standard pattern of exercise which most will recognize right away.

The right hand fingering with this is a strictly repeated a-m-i the whole way. So beginning on the 6th strings, you'll play a-m-i-a, then on the 5th, m-i-a-m, i-a-m-i on the 4th, etc. I do this all with light rest strokes to keep the motions small and precise. If you're like me, you'll probably find that it becomes more difficult to coordinate this on the way back down the neck when the left hand pattern is reversed. I think this is because the brain will at first decide that both hands are playing the same pattern, and you will need to do the exercise slowly enough to gently and carefully convince your mind that the patterns are in fact separate. As this becomes comfortable, you can use different left-hand patterns... 1-3-2-4 ascending with 4-2-3-1 descending, 1423/3241, 1432/2341, etc.

The first exercise doesn't have to be completely mastered before going on but I think it's worth developing that for a while first. The next exercise uses exactly the same left hand fingerings as the first, but the right hand uses p-a-m-i for each group of four for the entire exercise. As that become comfortable, try (again with the same left hand pattern) using a-m-i-p for each group of four, then m-i-p-a and finally i-p-a-m. This will present tricky string crossings which will take a while to master.

The next step along the way is to practice scales using these same right-hand fingering patterns. This will again make for a variety of tricky string crossings and it will take some time to get comfortable with them. I begin with the standard "Segovia" fingerings for the scales and then progress from there, perhaps as follows although I think that there will be diminishing returns when it comes to spending a lot of time progressing through similar patterns.

i-m
m-i
i-a
a-i
m-a
a-m
a-m-i
m-i-a
i-a-m
i-m-a
m-a-i
a-i-m
i-m-a-m
m-a-m-i
a-m-i-m
m-i-m-a
p-a-m-i
a-m-i-p
m-i-p-a
i-p-a-m

As you go through these exercises, periodically try some simple tremolo exercises to see how you are progressing. I've come to believe a sentiment expressed by teacher Paul Croft on the Delcamp.net classical guitar forum, essentially that good tremolo follows from good right hand technique. I don't mean to say you shouldn't practice tremolo on its own, but the exercises I've presented above are designed to develop the kinds of coordination and concentration that will help build that balanced right hand technique. I have personally made quicker progress by practicing this regimen than I had by practicing Giuliani arpeggios and tremolo in isolation.

One last thing I want mention is that a lot of us succumb to the temptation to mainly use p, i, and m for most of our music. Indeed, a lot guitar music particularly in the early stages is playable without making substantial use of a. I think it is worth fingering pieces so that a is used as frequently as m and i, if possible. Even if it is not necessary to the piece, it will be a great benefit to one's technique overall.

This post owes a debt of gratitude to Alice Artzt's book, "The Art of Practicing." In it, she describes more or less the same kinds of exercises, and a system for devising many more along the same lines. The exercises I presented here are inspired by her method and are ones that have been working well for me so far.