“M”

I’m stuck short of 100. And the problem, I’m convinced, is m. That’s no surprise. Way back when I began this project, I complained about m in only the third post of this blog. But now, a year and ten months later, it’s time to attack the problem more directly.

The problem, as I see it, is that m automatically tenses whenever it has to move fast. I notice this particularly at the tip joint, which flexes in a bit when I play fast. It likely also tenses at slower speeds, though it’s harder to notice. To counter this, I’m starting with a lot of slow rest strokes with m, consciously allowing the tip to give as it plays through the string.

By the way, there’s apparently some controversy over whether the tip joint should give as it sounds a string. (One of my former teachers was castigated in some quarters for suggesting this in one of his early guitar methods.) But it’s no longer controversial to me. I now believe a flexible tip joint is one key to avoiding excess tension in the right hand. This is a reversal from what I believed a little over a decade ago. So be it.

One exercise I’m trying is the following:




While m only is playing the first string, i is planted on the second string. As I play the first measure, I consciously allow the tip of m to give—it should feel as though m is gliding over the string. I want no sense that m is gripping the string as it plays. I then try to maintain this feel in the second measure.

I’m also giving myself as much work as I can manage with m only. Even when teaching, if I’m playing something with a student, I’ll play m only whenever possible. I’m taking the attitude of young aspiring basketball players who are trying to improve their ball handling skills: if they have a weaker hand in dribbling, then they’ll dribble endlessly with it until it improves to the same level as their stronger hand.

I’m also taking another look at the Alexander Technique. The reason for this happened during a lesson last week. A beginning student had arrived a bit late for a lesson. I was in a hurry to get his guitar tuned so we could get on with the lesson. As I tuned a string, I accidentally overshot the correct pitch. Immediately I felt a slight jolt of tension in my body. It was infinitesimally small—two years ago I’d probably never notice it. But I’m far more sensitive to tension now than I was before I began this project. And there it was. Thinking about it afterward, it amazed me at how little it took to make me tense. (I was tuning up, for crying out loud.) Yet there it was. And this got me to thinking about the Alexander Technique idea of inhibition.

Mind you, I’m skeptical of the Alexander Technique. Much of my skepticism has to do with its practitioners. Here’s an example. Some years ago when I was a student at the North Carolina School of the Arts, an Alexander Technique teacher gave a presentation to the students. Much of it seemed mumbo-jumbo to me, but I was determined to listen with an open mind. At one point, a student who was clearly skeptical asked a pointed but sensible question. Smoothly, the Alexander Technique teacher picked up a model of a human skull and tossed it to the questioner—as he did so, he said “you can answer your question by looking at this.” Surprised, the student who asked the question caught the model skull. The teacher then ignored him and went on with his presentation as though nothing had happened. I watched the student who’d asked the question. He stood holding the model skull with a “what the Hell?” look on his face.

It was at that moment that I lost interest in the rest of the presentation. Clearly this teacher was more skilled at deflecting questions than answering them. I was particularly turned off by his passive-aggressive response to a critical question. He literally threw something at the questioner. Of course, he made the throw in a polite and safe underhanded toss. But the underlying message was clear: don’t mess with me.

Further, in reading about the Alexander Technique, I’ve often gotten the same feeling of smoke and mirrors opacity I encounter with pseudo-sciences like acupuncture and chiropractic. But perhaps the Alexander Technique itself is a useful thing that’s being twisted by the follies of some followers. Whenever something works, it runs the danger of being franchised by mediocrities who flock to it as a lucrative business. The good it offered gets buried under a slagheap of miraculous claims, far from what it was in the hands of its originator.

So I’ll look into it again.

——[My next post will be on November 26, 2012.]——

Missed It By That Much

I wanted to do it. It was so tantalizingly close. I could almost reach out and touch it. But it wasn’t to be. At least not yet.

I really thought I could get a performance of the Mudarra Galliard on video at 100. A nagging cold slowed me down. (Which is why I didn’t post last weekend. Sorry.) But early in the week there were brief moments when my hand felt good at 100. On Thursday I was so optimistic that I set up the video equipment and finished my practice session with the camera rolling. All I got were a lot of botched takes and some creative cursing. Figuring my right hand was camera shy, Friday I tried running audio only takes. Still nothing.

I’ve noticed over time that there’s an iron law of progression I can’t avoid. First, I catch a glimpse of something getting better, but only alone in the practice room and only for a few seconds. Then, slowly, the improvement gets more consistent and reliable, but still only in the practice room. If I try to show it to anyone, it disappears. After much painstaking work, I can then show it to one or two people. But God forbid that I should try to put it on stage in front of an audience. In time, however, even that barrier will fall.

Which leads me to the mantra that sustains me through each flicker of hope:

      If I can do it once, I should be able to do it twice.

      If I can do it twice, I should be able to do it thrice.

      If I can do it thrice, I should be able to do it consistently.

      If I can do it consistently, I should be able to do it in front of an audience.

      If I can do it consistently in front of an audience, I’ve got it.

      And on to the next problem.

You can hear where I am now on this audio sample. The tempo is 100, and you’ll find it’s neither clean nor rhythmically secure. But I sense I’m close to cleaning it up. (No, really I am. Seriously. Why are you looking at me like that?) I’m now very familiar with the physical tension that creeps in whenever I try this piece over 90. There are moments in my practice sessions where I’m able to keep the tension at bay just long enough for one good rep. I just haven’t gotten it on a recording yet. With patience and careful monitoring of the tension, I believe I can clear this hurdle.

So my goal is to get a clean performance of the Mudarra Galliard at 100 on camera by the end of November. Wish me luck.

——[My next update will be November 12, 2012]——

Slow Practice Ain’t Chicken Soup

As a guitar teacher, I could save myself a lot of breath by having “slow down” tattooed on my forehead. It’s possibly the most common thing music teachers say to their students. And rightfully so. Humans are wired to run when threatened, and nothing is so reliably threatening as a difficult passage that students try to bulldoze their way through. So “slow down” has a venerable place in music instruction.

By itself, however, “slow down” doesn’t tell us much. When we’re doing something wrong, slowing down is only part of the solution. What then do we do when we slow down? If we don’t know, we might keep doing the wrong thing we did when playing faster. We’ll just do it slower. So now we can more calmly and methodically ingrain the thing we’re doing—the wrong thing, that is.

Throughout this project, I’ve dutifully genuflected at the altar of slow practice. But absent the right idea of what I should be doing, it got me precisely nowhere. And that goes for every other strategy related to slowing down. Breaking down passages into smaller bits? Been there, done that. Adding one note at a time to a scale passage? Done it. Practice dotted rhythms? Check. Increase tempos one click at a time with the metronome? Snap notes with a sharp staccato? Kick my fingers like miniature Rockettes? Check, check, and check.

It’s all worthless without the correct aim. For learning right hand speed, this aim must be a carefully calibrated understanding and increasing control of internal tension. If I’m not learning to recognize and control internal tension, then slow practice goes nowhere slowly.

Mind you, slow practice will still be an essential part of my teaching and my own practice. Knowing what I’m trying to achieve, slow practice is still the best approach in the early stages of learning something new. But now I’m less apt to dwell in the land of slow. And I’m less apt to tell students to slow down. Rather, it’s better to tell them specifically what they’re doing wrong, and how they could do it better. Then they can practice in a new and more productive way.

Slowly, of course.

——[My next update will be October 29, 2012]——

A Bad Week Gets Better

Short post this week. My new goal is to record the Mudarra Galliard at a metronome setting of 100. (For my taste, this is a good performance tempo.) It became my new short term goal after a disturbing incident last week. While practicing a six string descending scale, I found I could hit 120 with fair consistency. So I decided to try hitting scales in the context of an actual piece of music. Dusting off the Galliard—which I’d previously worked on for months—I found I could barely hit the scales at anything above 80. Yet going back to the six string descending scale, I could still hit it at 120.

Needless to say, this sparked a minor temper tantrum.

After I calmed down, I began working the problem. (If nothing else, this project has forced me to learn patience.) Two days later, I was consistently hitting the first scale of the Galliard at 100. What particularly encouraged me was how good it felt. My hand rippled through the scale like it was nothing. And the sound was that silky smooth rest stroke sound I love so well. Of course, the long scales at the end of the Galliard aren’t there yet. But hey, that gives me a reason to get up in the morning to practice.

Later that day I worked with a student on the Courante from BWV 996. He’d watched the Jason Vieaux video lesson on this piece, and wanted to know how Vieaux had done a particular cross string trill. After figuring it out, I demonstrated the trill to my student. Happily, my right hand was still working well that day, and the trill rolled trippingly off my fingers. “Hey, look at me, I’m Jason Vieaux!” I exclaimed.

So the week began badly but ended well. And now it’s the Galliard at 100 or bust. Next week I’ll delve into this in more detail.

——[My next update will be October 22, 2012]——

A Procedure for Your Consideration

What follows is the procedure I worked with a few weeks ago. Before describing it, however, a reminder: everything begins with the exercise for recognizing tension that I described in my September 9, 2012 post. It’s also a good idea to review my September 23, 2012 post.

As you may recall, I was working with Bach’s Invention No. 8—more precisely, one half of my guitar duet transcription. Early in September, I decided to break it down and pay more attention to detail. So I started with the first sixteenth note scale passage:

I began practicing this passage by merely tapping i and m on the guitar soundboard, choosing a tempo at which I felt no tension in my right hand. (For me, this was at 60 beats per minute.) I made sure I did the tapping with the same right hand fingering I would do when playing this passage on the guitar.

After doing this three times, I then simulated the string crossing by moving my fingers to a different spot on the soundboard, precisely on the tap where my fingers would move from the fourth to the fifth string.

Let’s step back for a moment to explain why I’m doing this. Tapping my fingers on the soundboard removes the resistance of the strings. My fingers can easily do this—my a finger easily moves with m, and c doesn’t lock up. So my goal at this point is to model the easy feeling of alternating my fingers with absolutely no excess tension. Further, I asked myself this: if I can’t merely tap my fingers on the soundboard with perfect rhythm and ease, then what makes me think it’ll go any better on the strings? Rather, I should master right hand alternation in easy stages. Begin with the easiest thing, then move to things that are progressively harder. Also, throughout this procedure I stay at one tempo.

Back to work. When I can easily tap my fingers on the soundboard with perfect rhythm and ease, I now play the rhythm of the passage on one open string. (No left hand at this point.) This introduces the resistance of a string, so it’s a bit harder than tapping on the soundboard. Again, I don’t move on until I can play this rhythm perfectly on one string. And I continuously monitor the tension I’m feeling, trying to keep it as close as I can to what I felt when I was merely tapping on the soundboard.

When this goes well, I move on to the next step. Now I introduce string crossing by playing the following:

 Again, there’s no left hand here. And again, I continuously monitor tension to keep it close to what I felt when I was playing a single string.

Stepping back once more, the idea throughout this procedure is to use each step as a model to define the tension I’ll aim to feel in the next step. Playing a single open string should feel no more tense than tapping on the soundboard. Playing the open strings with string crossing should feel no more tense than playing a single open string. And so on as I continue to each new step. Breaking the scale passage into discrete and easy steps allows me to more precisely calibrate the tension I’m feeling. Again a reminder: I’m still at the tempo that I used for the soundboard tapping.

When I’ve mastered the open string crossing step, I finally add the left hand to the passage. Again, I continuously monitor tension to keep it close to what I felt in the previous step.

I maintain the same tempo throughout this procedure. Only when I’ve mastered the final step do I bump up the tempo. If I started at a slow tempo and feel very little tension in the final step, then I’ll increase the tempo by five (i. e. from 60 to 65)—if I’m working closer to the edge of my ability, I’ll increase the tempo only two notches.

Thus, I carry out the entire procedure step by step, one tempo setting at a time. When I reach my target tempo, I move on to another passage.

•                                    •                                    •

This basically sums up how I was working in early September. I’ll say more in subsequent posts.

——[My next update will be October 15, 2012]——

September 30, 2012 Video Update

My goal today was to get on video one performance of the first eleven measures of Bach’s Invention No. 8, and I wanted to hit at least 100. Since anything at this tempo was hit or miss during my week of practice, I guessed that getting this on video would be hell. So at about 9:30 this morning I set up my camera and lights. Then I warmed up for about ten minutes. After working from a tempo of 85 up to 100, I decided to go for it. So I turned on the camera and noted the time, assuming that I’d run about ten minutes of tries and choose the best one. Just for a tiny bit of leeway, I set Dr. Beat at 102.

I hit on the first take. Great! My recording session was done!

Then I noticed I’d forgotten to turn on the lights.

“Idiot!” I snapped as I turned them on. I then sat down to what assuredly would be a crappy morning of botched takes and salty vocabulary. But happily, the first two takes were okay—those are what you’ll see on the video below.

You’ll notice I play quietly. This is part of the process I’m now following to improve my alternation speed. It’s a necessary step, and I intend to stay with it for a time. But it’s just a step along the way. I’ve no intention of settling for the wimpy sound you’ll hear on the video.

Next week I’ll begin to describe in more detail what I’m doing. Today, however, I’ll revel in the blessedly quick end to my morning recording session.

——[My next update will be October 8, 2012]——

Calibrating Tension

Before going further, it’s time to discuss that which defies discussion. That something is tension—the thing itself when trying to improve right hand speed. To be sure, this is very hard to do. Tension is an elusive, amorphous thing whose dimensions exist only in the mind of the one who experiences it. I can’t beam my experience of tension into your mind, nor can you beam your experience into mine. It’s a feeling that lacks a precise vocabulary. Imagine if you had to describe the color red, without being able to point to anything red. To paraphrase a venerable quote, talking about tension is like dancing about architecture.

But we’ve no choice. For those of us who have trouble with right hand speed, improvement is directly linked to how well we can learn to quantify and control tension. Practicing without a clear understanding of tension is aimless practice. It’s like jumping into a car and barreling down the highway without ever asking where we’re trying to go. Understanding tension is the GPS device that gives us a fighting chance for success.

My September 9, 2012 post is a step in that direction. It’s only a start, however, and I’d like to offer a brief illustration of how this might be applied in an actual practice session.

Below is a passage I practiced during the week:

Without a precise understanding of tension, I might merely practice this until I get to my target tempo. (I’m shooting for a performance tempo of 108. I’d like, however, to get to 120 so that 108 isn’t on the edge of my ability.) But with no precise understanding of tension, how would I do that? What, exactly, am I trying to do as I practice? To get faster with reliable accuracy, of course. But that’s the goal—it’s not the means by which to reach the goal. Indeed, it’s essential to understand that a goal isn’t synonymous with the means to reaching the goal.

Imagine, however, that prior to  practicing the above passage, I’ve spent some time familiarizing myself with the four steps described in my September 9 post. Having done this with some care, I now try playing the above passage at a gradually faster tempo. As I do, I encounter a tension spike illustrated here:

Now I have something more specific to work at. First, I can ask myself why tension spikes at this point. Is it a right hand problem, or a left hand problem? For me, it seems unlikely to be a left hand problem. I’ve fingered the spike spot in a way that has no difficult left hand shift. Rather, I notice the tension spike marks the point at which I begin three measures of continuous sixteenth notes. As this passage isn’t technically daunting, I suspect the problem is psychological. Unconsciously I’m nervous about this extended passage of sixteenths—the first extended burst of speed in the piece. Knowing this, I’ve something more concrete to work on. I can begin to directly monitor and control the tension at the exact spot where it begins. There’s nothing nebulous about this. I can monitor my breathing, notice whether I’m clenching my jaw or tightening my shoulders.

Let’s step back for a moment. By no means am I implying that I’m talking about something that no one’s ever heard of. Every good player knows that excessive tension is an impediment to good technique. What I’m arguing is that we need to be far more precise in our understanding of excess tension. It’s not enough to use tension as a buzzword. Rather, we must learn to calibrate it.

I’m reminded of a scene in the movie “The Right Stuff. ” In it, astronaut trainees are doing a breath control experiment. Blowing into a tube, they must carefully keep a little plastic ball between two marks—if the ball rises above or falls below the marks, they’ve failed. It seems a good analogy for what we’re trying to accomplish in our control of tension. Too little tension, and we lack sound and control. Too much tension, and we lose speed and ease. Good technique is a balance between extremes. If we fail to calibrate tension, then we fail to control it. And, of course, this failure is manifested in our rendering of the music.

As it happens, this is exactly what I worked on over the last week. My goal is to have the first eleven measures of Bach’s Invention 8 on video at a tempo above 100.

——[My next update will be October 1, 2012]——