A classical guitarist’s right hand technique is the cornerstone of his playing. Unhappy with mine, I’ve set out on an odyssey to renovate my right hand.
‘Tis the week before Christmas, and I’m goldbricking. My right hand practice sessions have been sporadic. Frankly, I think I’m suffering a temporary burnout. So I’m shutting down this blog for two weeks. I’ll come back to the task with a renewed spirit in January. Perhaps the new year will bring better things.
But lest you think I’m down, allow me to review the last week or so. A week ago Saturday, I performed with two of my young students in a recital—one of them did his first performance in front of an audience. On Monday, a thirteen year old student of mine played for a masterclass at the Cleveland Institute of Music run by graduate students of Jason Vieaux. She performed Villa-Lobos Etude 8, and I’m told she did very well. (I couldn’t be there, as I was working that evening.) On the same day, I learned that one of my adult students was selected to perform for a Vieaux masterclass in January. (I sent him and e-mail saying that if he played well, he might get a full ride to the Curtis Institute of Music. He wrote back that he always appreciated my sense of humor.) Tuesday I had a group of six beginners perform for an audience of over 1000 people at a Catholic School where I teach. In a delightful coincidence, I found afterward that at the same moment I was onstage with my students, a former student of mine was doing her Master’s recital at the Peabody Conservatory. Saturday I went to Guitars International to help my thirteen year old student select her first handmade guitar. With her new Vazquez-Rubio spruce top in tow, she, her father and I then had dinner at a nearby restaurant and discussed her future, as she’s recently decided that she wants to pursue music as a career. This morning one of my students and I performed for a Christmas program at his Baptist Church. (If you want to get your blood going on a cold Sunday morning, a Baptist service will do nicely.) And tomorrow morning I’ll visit the school of a first grade student of mine, where he and I will play for his music class.
All in all, it’s been a good week and a half. Times like this remind me of why I love my job. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, though I might trade my paycheck for that of a hedge fund manager.
During my student years at the Cleveland Institute of Music, I recall a class in which a student had just played. In this performance, there was a passage that recurred several times. Each time the player flubbed it. The teacher then asked the player about that passage. “Yeah, I have trouble with that part,” said the student. The teacher asked him what was the problem. “I just keep missing it,” replied the student. The teacher asked him again what was the problem. “I don’t know, it’s just always been a problem,” replied the student. This went on for a few more rounds, the teacher asking what the problem was, and the student giving vague replies.
Finally the teacher explained that the student needed to be far more specific. It wasn’t enough to merely acknowledge a problem. To solve it, the student first needed clearly define it. Was it a right hand fingering problem? Was it a left hand fingering problem? Was it a memorization problem? Until he did this, he was likely to keep repeating the problem. Short of clearly defining the problem, it wasn’t going to solve itself.
So this last week, where I tried to tweak the Mudarra Galliard up to 80, I also tried to drill deeper into the mystery of why anything at 80 or above wasn’t working. What I found was that I had to pay attention to more nit-picky things.
The Galliard has four separate passages with sixteenth notes. Each is different from the others. The first passage is thus:
For me, the main problem is a smooth and easy cross from the second string to the fourth string. Pivoting from the elbow alone doesn’t work for me. I find I must float my right forearm so that it barely touches the guitar, moving from both the elbow and shoulder. I also must coordinate the crossings so that my right hand fingers are precisely set for each string. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve swung and missed a note on the fourth string.
The second sixteenth note passage is thus:
This is the only passage on which I don’t use rest stroke. While the right hand fingering is a tad tricky, it usually causes me no problems. That’s not surprising, as I’m more comfortable with free stroke, and there are no big string crossing issues.
The third sixteenth note passage is thus:
Here all the notes of the scale passage are on the first two strings. I can post my right hand thumb on the fifth string, and everything goes fine. This is the passage I can hit must consistently.
Here’s the last sixteenth note passage:
This, of course, is the longest scale passage. And it’s the one that, more than the previous three, keeps me from comfortably playing the Galliard at anything above 80. As I wrote in my December 4 post, I need to be precise about where I place my right hand thumb during this passage. But drilling deeper, I found more. In a fast passage of some length, I must constantly be aware of a build-up of tension in my hand. Practicing this passage slower, I decided to take advantage of the natural breaks. At each eighth note, I relaxed my right hand before going on to the sixteenth notes, consciously letting my hand “go dead” in the instant before playing the following sixteenths.
This is an application of something I’ve learned to preach to my students over the years. I call this idea “micro breaks.” In it, the guitarist constantly tries to find moments within a difficult piece in which he or she can relax either hand. Rather than unthinkingly allowing tension to grow during a long performance, the player instead pins down every little place where either hand can release tension, however fleeting that instant of relaxation might be.
This is hardly a secret among good players. Some years ago I attended a recital by Raphaëlla Smits. During a particularly difficult piece, she came to a passage where she briefly played an E minor arpeggio on open strings. During this moment, she let her left hand fall away from the fingerboard and briefly stretched her fingers, as though relaxing her hand. The gesture was short and unobtrusive, so as not to distract the audience from the music. But to a player, the purpose of this movement was obvious: it allowed Smits an instantaneous break to relax her left hand. I’m willing to bet this was something she’d consciously practiced when learning the piece. I’d also bet that this was merely the most obvious example of something she does many times within a long and difficult piece.
During this project, I’ve occasionally been told that I think too much. “Let go,” I’m told, and just let let my natural instincts take over. But for one involved in remaking oneself, this is bad advice. When it comes to my playing as it is, my instincts are wrong. My instincts must be torn down and rebuilt.
Renovation is harder and more time-consuming than building from scratch. Boy, can I tell you a thing or two about that.
As promised, below is a performance of the Mudarra Galliard for my monthly video report. As you’ll see, it’s at a fairly slow tempo. But for now, I don’t feel comfortable with right hand alternation at anything above 80. My goal for the Galliard is 100. I’ve tried that a few times during my morning practice sessions. It’s just not there yet.
On the plus side, I’m pleased that I made this video in one take. I did a ten minute warmup session, and then turned on the camera, fully expecting my first take would be a disaster. Instead, I got what you’ll see. That’s encouraging, because throughout this project I’ve found that what I work on during my morning practice sessions seldom translates into something I can reliably do in normal playing. Mind you, I’m not dancing in the street over this—it’s a slow performance, only three-quarter speed of what I want this piece to be. Nonetheless, it’s nice to see all this work starting to yield some improvement when the pressure is on.
During my morning sessions, I’m starting to notice that string crossing is becoming more of an issue. For example, I now find that if I don’t precisely plan where my right hand thumb is during certain passages, then my alternation isn’t smooth and easy. For example:
At point A, my thumb rests on the fifth string, and this keeps my hand stable and relaxed as the scale stays on the first and second strings. At point B, however, my thumb between bass notes must float freely above the strings—if it doesn’t, my hand tightens up as I come to the one third string note in the scale.
Further, in this passage:
...I must cross from both the shoulder and elbow rather than the elbow alone. If not, my hand tightens as I cross to the third and fourth strings. So in any right hand alternation on more than one string, I’m being very careful to monitor anything that increases right hand tension.
• • •
Friday night I had the pleasure of hearing Matt Palmer in recital. He’s a young guitarist who’s been making a splash lately with the three finger approach to right hand alternation. He’s also written a method book on this, which I’ve mentioned in my blog. Unfortunately I had a gig that night, so I was only able to catch half of Palmer’s recital. But what I heard confirmed my favorable impression from his videos. He’s a very fine player, and his scale work is impeccable. Indeed, I think the right hand three finger approach to scales will become standard technique within the next generation of players. And I think Palmer’s example will do much to push this along. His scales are so clean and supple that any reservations about the three finger technique will melt away upon hearing him.
Palmer’s bio and interviews always seem to dwell on his early years as an electric guitar shredder. I find this unfortunate. It suggests that one should expect machine-gun scales and bad tone from Palmer. But this isn’t at all how Palmer sounds. Rather, he’s a tasteful player with an excellent ear for tone and color. I spoke to him briefly during the reception, and found him to be a thoughtful and down to earth person. If you have a chance to hear him, do so.
Palmer is a tough act to follow, but here’s my video anyway. Enjoy.
The cold is gone, and I’m back on my feet. That which did not kill me made me stronger, or at least restored my ability to type. So let’s pick up some loose ends.
First, I want to point out something that I keep forgetting to mention in my posts. For the last two months I’ve been doing the kind of practice that, in years past, forced me to stop because of right shoulder pain. Yet this time around the pain, though slightly noticeable, is nowhere near what it was in the past. In fact, the reason I kept forgetting to mention it is that it’s so slight that I barely notice it. This encourages me. At the outset of this project I said I’d use this pain as a barometer of how well I was doing. More pain means I’m on the wrong track—less pain means I’m on the right track. I believe the approach I described in my October 30 post is mostly responsible for my freedom from pain.
Second, I’ve been mulling over a comment I received on my February 12 post. The more I think of it, the more I agree with the advice that I should rebuild my right hand slowly and patiently. Next week, for my end of the month video, I plan to perform the Mudarra Galliard. It won’t be at what I regard as a good performance tempo. Rather, it’ll be a baseline for my (I hope) future progress.
Short report this time, as I need to put the finishing touches to a letter of recommendation for one of my former students. Since Christmas is approaching, I thought I’d end this post with a video this former student and I made a few years back. She was sixteen at the time. Today she’s working toward her master’s degree in guitar performance. Geez, time flies. Anyway, enjoy. (And please, no comments about my old right hand position, as I’ve improved it since then.)
Sometimes it’s illuminating to put my posts out there and then stand aside to watch the responses. Here, for example, is one response to my November 6 post:
I totally agree with your view that vague advice about attaining speed such as just “play slow” won’t help the student. But I think you had bad luck or [little] experience with guitar teachers, because none of the teachers I’ve had would say only those simple vague words. All of them were very specific on what to work on during slow practice that would improve my technique when playing faster. Including breathing and several other things about body and mind attitude, besides obvious guitar technique such as good hand positioning, nail shape, and so on.
I’d like to think the teaching described here is true everywhere. But my November 6 post also brought this reply:
One of the best unknown guitarists I have ever heard used to breathe so loud, but that guy could play like nobody’s business. He had a very relaxed, virtuoso technique. Does it really matter that he was a loud breather? I never cared. Perhaps some people are loud and can’t do anything about it? I have had my nose broken multiple times. I can’t deeply breathe without being loud.
As for your blog, you mentioned it being pointed out that your fingers are more extended when alternating on a string. Your hand position was one of the 1st things many of us mentioned to you here. Your RH fingers weren’t curbed and didn’t move in a fist like motion among many other things.
These questions are straight forward.
How slow is slow? As slow as it takes to think about the next note. Thinking one note ahead.
How long should one practice slow? Until you can play the piece at a tempo where you don’t make any mistakes and can think at least one note ahead.
How gradually should one increase the practice tempo? See above and Slow/Fast practice. One measure/phrase, etc played perfectly slow, then immediately practiced at tempo.
So on the one hand, the first reply says the things I mentioned in my November 6 post—among them, labored breathing as a sign of excess tension—are common knowledge. On the other hand, the second reply dismisses labored breathing as a sign of an underlying problem. It also encapsulates my argument that not enough is being said to those of us who lack right hand speed. There’s not a word suggesting that one should look for an underlying cause that might hinder right hand speed. In essence, one plays slow until one can play fast.
And over four decades of playing, that’s not yet worked for me. Nor has it worked for many others.
Okay, I don’t wish to read too much into what may be an off-the-cuff response on an internet forum. I’ve no doubt that the guitarist who wrote the above quote knows physical and psychological impediments can hinder speed. (The guitarist who wrote this is both a teacher and an accomplished player.) But I wonder why he chose to refute my contention that labored breathing is a sign of excess tension. Is there really any argument about this? All things being equal, isn’t it obvious that one who’s breathing heavily is less relaxed than one who’s breathing normally?
Indeed, throughout my project and the discussions it has prompted, I’ve been surprised at some of the arguments against things I thought were common sense. It seems among some there’s a philosophic distaste for proscribing anything if a seemingly good argument, however tenuous, can be made for it. It’s much the same mindset that permeates American politics, in which it’s hard to argue against something if it’s portrayed in a positive light. “Pro-life” for example—who could be against that? Or “pro-choice”—who could be against that? Well, this isn’t so surprising, since everyone wants to cast their argument in the strongest possible way.
More subtle, however, is the notion that in proscribing a thing, one is necessarily less open-minded than one who defends it. Obviously every case must be judged on its own merits. But I reject the idea that because a thing is minimally defensible, it’s thus not to be proscribed. An open mind doesn’t mean one must accept every idea that washes up on the beach.
I’m sorry, but I can’t accept advice that’s never worked for me. Nor can I be satisfied with advice that’s good as far as it goes, but doesn’t go far enough. Something more is needed. That’s what I’m looking for.
First, let’s clear up a minor mystery. Remember how, in my October 30 video, my little finger splayed out when I did the drumming on the soundboard? And recall that it didn’t do this when I began alternating on a string? The reason, I found, was that when drumming, my fingers are more extended than when they’re alternating on a string. If my fingers are a bit more curved, the little finger is more relaxed and more apt to move with its neighboring fingers. Duly noted, and I’ll work that tidbit of information into my right hand work.
This week I exchanged e-mails with a very fine guitarist who’s been following my project. While very encouraging overall, he did respectfully disagree with me on a particular point. I’d written the following:
“In my experience, much of the advice about attaining speed is too vague. Some players will get it, but most don’t. I suspect that many of the players who do get it have the physical knack, or they have the mental knack for figuring things out for themselves and the discipline to apply what they’ve figured out. In short, I believe many who get it do so through their own effort, and not necessarily because of specific and effective advice.”
The guitarist I corresponded with disagreed, replying that all the high level players he’s talked to are consistent in what they say: one must begin with patient and slow practice. During this slow and deliberate practice, one must emphasize relaxation, combined with lots of successful repetitions.
All true. And some players who are told little more than this will do very well. But I still think that, for most players, this isn’t enough. We need something more. It’s not enough to be told to practice slow. It’s not enough to be told to emphasize relaxation. The vast majority of serious guitar students do precisely that and get nowhere in regard to right hand speed. Why? Because, I believe, they aren’t told specifically enough what it is they’re supposed to be working toward.
Let’s take slow practice as an example. As any experienced teacher knows, “slow down” is probably the single most frequent advice we give to students. (I’ve joked to my students that I could save myself a lot of breath if I just had “slow down” tattooed on my forehead.) But what do we really mean by this? How slow is slow? How long should one practice slow? How gradually should one increase the practice tempo?
Instead of telling a student to practice slowly, we should instead focus on something more tangible. Consider, for example, saying this to a student: “Can you play this passage without labored breathing?” If your breathing is labored, then you’re more tense than you should be. So slow down. How slow? Until your breathing is no longer labored.
There’s a subtle but important difference between this and merely telling a student to practice a passage slowly until he masters it. If I tell a student to practice slowly, then slow practice becomes an end in itself. The student simply does it until he improves by sheer chance, or fools himself into thinking he’s improved, or gives up in frustration. But if I tell the student to focus on his labored breathing, he becomes more aware of a tell-tale symptom of excess tension. He slows down until the labored breathing ceases, which neatly answers the question of how slow he must go. How long should he practice slowly? Until he can accurately and consistently play the passage while breathing normally. How gradually should he increase the tempo? Exactly as fast as he can increase the tempo without a return of the labored breathing.
Here are some specific things we should be telling students repeatedly:
Good technique should be easy. If you can’t do a particular technique easily, accurately, and consistently, then you don’t have good technique. Assuming you’re practicing consistently and intelligently, technical excellence should be something that’s always there, not something that comes and goes.
Labored breathing is a sign of excess tension. It’s not a sign of interpretive excellence, nor is it a sign that you’re more musically committed than other musicians. It only means you’re working harder than you should to put across your musical ideas.
In all aspects of playing, be alert to those little shots of nervousness—they feel like tiny jolts of electricity. If you consistently feel this in a particular passage or technique, then you’re too tense.
If you’re trying to change deeply ingrained bad technique, there are no quantum leaps. You must proceed in tiny steps. If you try to overreach, you’ll slide right back into the deficient playing you’re trying to overcome.
Some might object that I’m saying nothing new here. Perhaps. But look around. Is the kind of specificity I’m advocating really the norm? Are teachers really insisting on these things, so that excess tension is something every well-trained and ambitious student understands in all its ramifications? Consider the following video:
Skip ahead to the 4:50 mark, where these two players trade fast scales during a cadenza. If you listen closely, you’ll hear which player has the easier technique—it’s obvious. It’s also obvious that the player who’s working harder has never understood that excess tension is something to take seriously.
If you think I’m picking on someone whose playing I don’t care for, then consider Julian Bream. I regard Bream as the greatest guitarist of the 20th century. I yield to no one in my admiration for him when he was at his best. Indeed, whenever I have a young player who begins to show potential, I always make sure he or she hears recordings of Bream in his prime. To my mind, one can’t fully know what the guitar can do without hearing Bream.
That being said, I’d never use Bream as a model for good technique. Bream, I think, is an example of how artistic genius can overcome flawed technique—for a while. He’s also an example of how even the greatest artist inevitably can be felled by flawed technique.
• • •
What is a teacher if not a catcher in the rye? One might find solace in an “I’m okay, you’re okay” attitude, thus sparing one from the danger of weighing one’s own ideas and finding them wanting. But if we’re to be something more, then we must know the value of what we teach. And we must insist on it in the face of ignorance or apathy. If we know with sufficient clarity what should be emphasized, and we pass it on with conviction and imagination, then we might spare others the sad fate of diminished potential.
Who knows—Holden Caulfield might’ve made a good guitar teacher.
Throughout this project, I’ve operated on the assumption that if something isn’t producing results within two or three months, then I’m doing something wrong. I don’t expect to get from here to there in one grand leap. But I do expect progress, however slight it may be. Thus far progress has been wanting.
Over the last few weeks, a somewhat different approach has been brewing in my brain. It’s a bit hard to explain. Nonetheless, I’ll try.
Consider training a dog. Let’s say you want to train a dog to do the following in this order: sit, bark, roll over, sit, beg. That’s a long sequence, one the dog isn’t likely to do correctly on his own. You could try training the dog through negative reinforcement, punishing it every time it doesn’t do what you want. But the dog doesn’t understand what you’re trying to get him to do, nor does he know why you’re punishing him. You may eventually train the dog to do the sequence correctly, but at a high price. The dog will be confused and fearful, and will always perform the sequence for no other reason than to avoid punishment. In essence, the dog’s natural behavior has been forcibly twisted into something he doesn’t like doing. No permanent behavior change is accomplished. Take away the punishment, and the dog will drop the new behavior you’ve painfully forced him to learn. Not only that, but you’ll likely have created a dog who’s confused and fearful around you and perhaps every other human he encounters.
As professional animal trainers know, there’s a better way to train the dog, and it goes something like this. Put the dog and yourself in an enclosed space—one that’s large enough that the dog doesn’t feel confined, but small enough to keep you and the dog in close proximity. Have a generous supply of dog treats with you. Watch the dog carefully. If he runs about in all directions, say and do nothing. But if he trots up to you, praise him and give him a treat. Soon the dog associates going to you with getting a treat. When he does this consistently, now reward him only if he comes to you and sits. If he does anything else, do nothing, but the instant he sits, praise him and give him a treat. Soon the dog learns that sitting is rewarded and starts doing it consistently. Then you add another behavior. And another, and another, until the dog has learned the entire sequence.
Notice that you’re never forcing the dog to do anything. The dog is doing all the things a dog naturally does—most of them aren’t what you want him to do. You’re merely selecting and rewarding specific behaviors. Everyone is happy: the dog is getting praise and treats, and you’re teaching the dog the sequence of behaviors you want him to perform.
This analogy only goes so far in a guitarist’s right hand training. Obviously my right hand isn’t wagging a tail and excitedly trying to figure out what I want it to do. But there’s an illuminating parallel here. When training my right hand, I first need to be very specific about what I want it to learn. Once I define precisely what I’m trying to accomplish, I then begin at whatever point my hand easily and automatically does what I’m trying to accomplish. I don’t force it to do anything. Rather, I try to find a situation in which my hand naturally does the specific thing I’m trying to ingrain. That situation might be far from real guitar playing, but that’s not important. What’s important is that I find a place where my right hand already does the right thing. That’s my starting point, and I can go forward from there.
For my hand, the goal is specific. The a finger should move easily with m whenever doing i and m alternation. Further, the feel should be free and easy. In fact, a moving with m is a byproduct of this all-important feel. In previous posts I’ve questioned whether this was necessary. No longer. I’m convinced that a (and to a lesser extent, the little finger) must move with m during alternation. I don’t care that some guitarists—very good ones, in fact—do otherwise. John Williams, for example, often extends his little finger when doing i and m alternation. But his hand isn’t my hand. I’ve worked at this long enough to know there’s no way around it.
So here are the basic steps I’m following.
Step 1: I begin with what my hand can do. For me, that’s extremely basic. Away from the guitar, holding my hand in front of me, I can easily move m-a-c together. The movement is simple and natural. I don’t have to force a and c to move with m. They simply do it. In fact, it’s harder to not do it then to do it. So that’s where I start, and I move in tiny steps from there.
Step 2: I drum my fingers on the guitar soundboard. This isn’t as easy as merely waving my fingers in the air. But it’s sufficiently close to Step 1 that the difficulty isn’t excessive. It doesn’t take much effort to maintain the easy movement I’m aiming for.
Step 3: Play very lightly on a string. This is a crucial leap, and it’s very hard to maintain the same feel and movement I had in Step 2. I choose the easiest string—for me, it’s the sixth string—and I do it very lightly and not very fast. I start at four notes per click at 72, and try to maintain as closely as possible the feel and movement I had in the first two steps.
Crucial to this approach is that each step should be only incrementally more difficult than the last. Once I’ve established the movement and feel in Step 1, at no subsequent step should I lose them. Quantum leaps are strictly avoided.
I’m now convinced that much of the work I’ve done so far has been wasted. Instead of cultivating what my hand can already do, I’ve instead tried to force it to do what it’s not yet ready to do. As an extreme example, you might recall I mentioned that several years ago I tried taping my m and a fingers together, to see if this would train them to move together in alternation. It didn’t work, and now I know why. Like the dog who’s punished into doing something he doesn’t understand or want to do, I wasn’t really training my hand to do anything useful. Rather, I was training my fingers to move together only when forcibly restrained. Absent the restraint, my fingers would simply revert to their old subpar movement and feel.
Even the less drastic things I’ve tried—remember the Rockettes exercise?—were still missing the point. The key, I now believe, isn’t to force my fingers to do the right thing. The key is to begin with the right thing and then very gradually increase the difficulty under which the right thing is done. So I start with finger-flapping in thin air. Then on to drumming on the soundboard. Then so on. On through single string alternation. On through gradually more extended alternation. On through string crossing. On through gradually increasing volume. On through varying tone color. And on until it’s a reliable musical technique.
At every step, my success depends on how well I evaluate where I am, and how creatively I design and practice each incremental step. If I don’t accurately recognize each new level of difficulty as it crops up, then I’ll overreach and ultimately fail. But the advantage to this approach lies in its immediacy. Remember, each next step should be only a bit harder than the last. If I try a next step and the correct movement and feel fall apart, then I’m overreaching. So in a practical way, this approach is self-correcting: if at any point I loose the correct movement and feel, then I’m doing it wrong. Step back, rethink, and try again. This strikes me as as much better than simply pounding away and hoping for the best.
This is a rough sketch of what I’m now doing. But Saturday morning I got an intriguing glimpse of its potential. I have a young student who has an ongoing problem with her little finger extending whenever she does an arpeggio with the other fingers. So during our last lesson, I briefly described the approach. I then had her begin with Step 1, as described above. She did this easily. Then she tried Step 2, which again she managed quickly and easily. Then she moved to Step 3, doing i and m alternation on a single string. She told me that for her the first string was easier, so I agreed that this was the string she should begin with. In a matter of seconds, her i and m alternation was perfect, with a and c faithfully moving with m. It was beautiful to watch. In one brief session, her hand looked like that of an excellent concert artist. Obviously she has much work ahead to consolidate this into a reliable technique. But she has the movement and, far more importantly, she has the feel.
I’m as cautiously excited about this as I’ve ever been throughout this project. I really believe I’m on to something good. Time, as always, will tell.
• • •
Below is my end of the month video update. Watching it, I notice that when drumming my fingers on the soundboard, my little finger locked up. I also notice that this problem disappeared when I went on to single string alternation. Obviously I’m more concerned with what happens during actual playing. Be that as it may, I’ll work on improving what happens during the drumming.
The longer I do this, the more clear it becomes what I’m up against. The excess tension that steps in whenever I try right hand speed is a familiar enemy now, down to the finest detail. I can, for example, say at what speed it first appears when I try extended i and m alternation. (Up to 84, everything is okay—after 84, things fall apart.) When doing a six string descending scale, I can say exactly where it feels bad, and exactly where it feels good. (On the second and third strings, my fingers hang up—on the fourth through sixth strings, my hand feels much freer.)
What I hope is that understanding the problem in finer detail will mean coming up with better solutions. Take, for example, the hang up on the second and third strings during a descending scale. I noticed I was blending two different string crossing techniques during a descending six string scale: at the beginning of the scale, I’d pivot from the elbow alone, but as my fingers came through the second and third strings, I’d then cross from the elbow and shoulder. Maybe, I reasoned, this is unnecessarily complex. So now I’m simplifying the crossing by moving from the elbow and shoulder throughout a six string scale. We’ll see if this pays off.
My progress, as always, is glacially incremental. I’m trying to extend the length of my bursts. I’ve found I can fairly consistently play the last three strings of a descending scale cleanly at 120. This, for example, is getting pretty reliable:
So that’s something. Above 120 is still a problem. But remember that my interim goal is reliable scales at 120. If I can establish a foothold there, then maybe higher speed will be within my grasp.
I begin each session with five minutes of finger push-ups. Then I set the metronome at 84 and do extended alternation on each string individually. After that, it’s on to this at 84:
If this goes okay, I bump up the tempo one notch at a time. (For the week, I found I could hit it in the mid 90’s before my hand tensed up.) After that, it’s on to the exercises I described in the beginning of last week’s post. Sometimes I stay with this until it’s time for sweeps, rasgueados, and stretches. Other times I’ll do five or ten minutes of arpeggios, tremolo, and cross-string trills.
• • •
One interesting tidbit came up during the week. On Tuesday, my right hand session was awful. Indeed, it was so bad that I quit early in disgust, omitting the fifteen minutes of sweeps, rasgueados, and finger stretches with which I normally end a session. Thinking about it afterward, I realized I was unconsciously reacting to an unpleasant phone call I had to make later that day. It was one of those things I had to do but would rather not. It became clear that this impending unpleasantness infected my attitude toward practice. In fact, after this bad practice session the problem unexpectedly resolved itself in a way far better than I’d hoped. And sure enough, the next morning my practice session was more productive and pleasant.
This reminded me once again that a positive attitude is vital to practice. I can’t let myself get thrown off by the inevitable problems of day to day life.
• • •
In my October 9 post, I referred to some left hand positioning advice that I found indefensible. As I mentioned last week, this caused a surprising discussion. If you wish to follow this discussion, you can find it here.
Over the last week I’ve focused on trying to smooth the transition from short bursts to a continuous scale. First I warmed up with continuous alternation at 84. After this, I began with the following at 100:
When that felt comfortable, I then tried this at the same tempo:

Then finally I moved to a continuous scale, also at 100:
Obviously the idea is to gradually shorten and then remove the pauses between each one-string burst. My goal is to reduce the tension in short bursts, so that I can lengthen them into longer passages. On some days, I was able to lightly play the continuous scale at 112—one day I managed to barely hit 120. My goal, however, is to hit this cleanly and consistently, not hit or miss. So there’s much yet to be done.
As I did these exercises, I listened closely to my rhythm. I wanted each burst to snap sharply and cleanly. But more important, I was also very alert to these signs of excess tension:
a tight feel in a and c
a and c become rigidly extended or flexed
clenching teeth
tensing or hunching right shoulder
labored breathing
Working this way, I’ve noticed my descending six string scale tends to hang up on the second and third strings. Once I get to the fourth string, it’s smooth sailing the rest of the way. In fact, right now I can pretty consistently hit 120 on the three bass strings. At first I suspected that since the third string is the only one that has two notes, this might be the reason for my awkwardness. But I’ve no problem slurring the full six string scale at a high speed with the left hand alone. So I’m guessing this is a right hand crossing problem. Obviously I’ll spend more time working to smooth out this part of the scale.
• • •
On an unrelated note, I was surprised by some of the reactions to my last post. In this post, I drew attention to a left hand positioning suggestion that was, I thought, so obviously bad that there should be little debate over it. Oy, what a can of worms that opened! More on this in next week’s post.
First things first. I soon realized I was playing part of the Mozart excerpt wrong and corrected it. After relearning it, I finally checked the score. My revised version is correct—hey, I even got the key right. Though to be honest, if asked to write it out, I’d have written in common time, so I’d have gotten the time signature wrong. Anyway, here’s the corrected excerpt:
My apologies to Mozart and his fans (of whom I’m one) for playing it wrong on my October 2 video.
This last week I stayed with the two exercises shown on the video. In the scale with the three string burst, I occasionally managed a tempo of 120. Anything above 120 invariably fell apart. The Mozart excerpt crept up to 84.
It occurred to me that, temporarily, I should lower my sights a bit and try a more attainable goal. I’ve decided to shoot for 120—first with a three string burst, then longer until I can do a continuous six string scale cleanly and reliably. So my specific goal is this at 120:
The repeat is an important part of my goal. I want to be able to do an extended scale at 120, not just a burst. If I can, then it’ll mean I’m well on my way to reducing my right hand tension during speed. I’ve also found over the years that descending scales feel easier to me than ascending scales. So my target scale must include extended ascending passages.
Why lower my goal to 120? I’m taking to heart something I’ve heard concert artist Jason Vieaux tell his students. He strongly advocates when learning a difficult passage that one should start slow and gradually work up the tempo one metronome notch at a time. One shouldn’t leapfrog over intermediate tempos. His reasoning is thus: At slower tempos, a particular problem might not be apparent. If you increase tempo gradually, you’ll eventually hit a tempo at which the problem just begins to be apparent. Here you can define the problem and work out a solution, all at a tempo in which you’re not going like a bat out of hell. So you carefully solve the problem and then continue your deliberate climb up the tempos. If, however, you jump over intermediate tempos, you may jump far past the tempo where the problem was easier to notice, isolate, and understand. So now you’re puzzling over something that’s gumming up the passage while playing lickety-split, something you would understand better had you first encountered it at a slower speed.
Makes sense to me. In fact, I suspect I haven’t yet attacked my right hand project with sufficient care. (Nine months of piddling progress has a way of making one rethink.) Rather than lobbing artillery shells over the horizon and hoping to hit something I can’t see, maybe I should try pistol shots at a closer target that I can see. I can hit 120 now, but I need to make it more reliable and easy. If I can do this, then perhaps I can more successfully tackle higher goals.
• • •
From time to time my project spurs discussion on various classical guitar internet forums. While I sometimes participate in these discussions, time constraints often dictate that I merely observe. Indeed, some of these discussions seem to happily thrive in my absence. A particular point, however, has come up more than once. So I’ll address it here.
On October 2, someone made this post. I replied thus. My reply brought forth the following:
Philip Hii understands something important about teaching—you cannot move your student’s hands for them. You must use whatever means you can to try to transmit your experience to them, to teach the unteachable. The feel is more important than anatomy and leverage and muscle type. We cannot control our bodies by verbal/analytical micro-instruction; we must use feel, which is kinaesthetic sense that we all have, but often suppress.
The proper approach for one who does not know, such as yourself, to learn from someone who does know—from them—is not to criticize or question them but to try to break your mind open and try again to understand. It is the parable of the full tea cup. They are trying to help you. So don't resist. Try again... This is how you can achieve your goals. Add it to your admirable work ethic and you will succeed.
This strikes me as a thoughtful argument, and it merits a response in some detail.
I don’t have an infinite amount of time to practice. I can’t try everything, so I have to decide what to try and what to ignore. By the way, this isn’t unique to me. No player has the time to try everything. All of us discriminate between what we take to heart and what we ignore. The question, then, is how one decides.
One criterion I use is that I try to see how careful someone is in giving advice. If a person offers advice that seems well considered, then I take this person seriously. But if the advice is peppered with things that are obscure, contradictory, or just wrong, then I approach this person’s advice with some suspicion.
For my taste, Philip Hii’s “Art of Virtuosity for Guitar” falls in the latter category. I’ll offer three excerpts from the book—each in turn illustrates something I find obscure, contradictory, or wrong. Here’s the first example (if the examples below are unreadable, click on them for a larger display):
This is Hii’s first description of this stroke. Yet it’s hard to understand what he’s saying. “You play from the hand” is an unfortunate phrase—it implies that the player should pluck a string by moving the entire hand. Is this really what Hii means to say? “Pull it slightly toward you” is also vague—does Hii mean toward one’s head, toward one’s waist, or toward one’s feet?
Example 2:
Yet further in the book, Hii says this:
So here are two contradictory statements. It may be that Hii intended his earlier recommendation only for a specific exercise, and not as a general right hand technique. But he doesn’t make this clear. Thus, we’re left with two conflicting statements, both of them apparently about general right hand technique.
Example 3:
I’ve no idea why Hii recommends that the base of one’s index finger should touch the neck, nor does he offer a convincing explanation. In fact, this is something I tell students to avoid. The reasons are obvious: it cramps the fingers, and runs the risk of inadvertently muting the first string. It’s just bad advice.
I could offer other examples, but three should suffice to explain my wariness regarding Hii’s advice. That’s not to say that I dismiss everything in “Art of Virtuosity for Guitar.” But there are enough things that bother me, so I’ll look elsewhere for advice.
Doubtless some will dismiss my critique as mean-spirited nit-picking. I don’t see it that way. For me, a guitar method stands or falls on the quality of its information. Everyone decides for themselves how to evaluate this quality, and everyone has their own standards for doing so. Yours may be different from mine. So be it.
Further, whatever its merits, Hii’s book doesn’t address in detail the problems I’m encountering. I hasten to add that there’s no reason to single out Hii’s book in this regard—no guitar method I’ve seen addresses my circumstance in sufficient detail. (And that includes a method I had a hand in writing.) So for the moment, I’m pretty much on my own.
Of course, if anyone can suggest a method I’ve not yet seen, I’ll be happy to look into it.
Short video this time. In it, I show two things I’ve been working with recently. The first is an attempt to ease my way into a longer burst:
As you’ll hear, I’m still working with light strokes, as my hand works better when I don’t try to play loud. By the way, this is similar to a speed burst exercise I tried some years ago:
The idea here was to break down a six string scale into short one string bursts. At the time, I found it fun to do, but it has the same defect of all burst exercises: it doesn’t acclimate my hand to a good feel for longer passages. So the first exercise you’ll see on the video is something I hope will ween me off short bursts and into longer scale passages.
The second thing you’ll see is a fragment of Mozart. One day during practice it struck me as a nice thing to use for my extended lite work. Since I’m doing it from memory, I may not remember it exactly as Mozart wrote it. One day I’ll dig up my CD of this music to see if I’m playing it right.
I know I promised earlier to show I could do a short burst at 200. But it wasn’t happening this morning, and I saw no point in documenting the failure. Further, I’d lost interest in the short burst approach over the last week. For now, I prefer to try slightly longer bursts, to see if I can make them work.
As an aside, I bought Matt Palmer’s “A New Approach to Fast Scales” method book. In it, he explains his right hand three finger approach to fast scales. Those knowledgeable about guitar technique will quibble with the title—Palmer isn’t the first to do this. But the book is a detailed explanation of how to apply this technique in many musical circumstances. Personally, I think this should be used and taught far more than it is. I suspect over the next few decades we’ll see more young guitarists doing fast scales with a, m, i rather than i and m. To be sure, two finger alternation will retain its usefulness—it offers a particular force that three finger alternation might not be able to match. But the three finger approach just makes sense. It enables high speed without pushing to the limit one’s speed with any given finger.
Interestingly, Palmer’s book is of almost no help to the likes of me. It says virtually nothing about how to develop finger speed. Rather, it’s written from the perspective of someone who already has speed, and wants to increase it further. Nonetheless, I did find some glimmers of information applicable to my own situation. Here’s one bit of text I found illuminating:
My preference for playing fast scales is to use a stroke somewhere between a free stroke and a rest stroke (a “frest” stroke?)
This intrigued me, as I’ve previously posted that, when switching from rest to free stroke, I couldn’t always tell exactly which stroke I was doing. So it was encouraging to see a good player say something similar.
And here’s another bit of text that jumped out at me:
I do not commit the weight of the follow-through of the attack to produce the rest stroke sound. In contrast, I commit the weight to the plant and to the attack itself. This method seems to allow my fingers to recuperate and return to their starting positions faster. Try both methods of attack to achieve a level of comfort that suits you, and the sound quality you desire. I suggest starting with a relatively light attack as you get used to the motions required to play evenly. Once you have achieved evenness, gradually increase the power of your stroke.
This seems in keeping with my extended lite approach. In my opinion, good players like Palmer don’t always realize the importance of what they say to players like me. I think the last two sentences in the above quote should be far more emphatic—indeed, they should be expanded into a chapter of their own. Instead, they’re practically throwaway lines that the average guitarist will overlook.
In Palmer’s defense, he’s probably not writing for the likes of me. But in the real world, most of those reading his book will be more like me than Palmer. It may well be that those like Palmer can’t adequately understand and explain what those like me need to hear. Perhaps it takes the likes of me to get to where Palmer is, and then explain how I did it to those who aren’t.
That at least is part of my motivation to keep on trucking.
If you’ve been following this blog since the beginning, you might recall my Rockette exercise. You also might have noticed its current and conspicuous absence. This exercise has fallen from my favor, and it’s taken time to puzzle out why I found it so unproductive. Slowly I’ve come to believe that it missed the point of what I’m trying to accomplish. The reason is subtle and requires explanation.
I now believe that good i and m alternation is a movement my hand can already do. To see what I mean, hold your hand in front of you, wrist aligned and fingers loosely curled. Now begin alternating i with m-a-c. I can do this easily, with all the speed I would need for a fast scale up to 160. My fingers move effortlessly and correctly, a-c easily moving with m. Further, I believe almost anyone with a normal right hand can learn to do this basic movement.
But woe unto me and anyone like me when this simple movement is done on a guitar string. For most of us, the string resistance gums up the movement horribly. This is where so many guitarists like me go off the tracks. We work on right hand alternation and arpeggios long before a good movement and feel are securely ingrained. The string resistance deflects our right hand into excessively tense movements. Unfortunately, we little note this at first. We’re not yet trying fast scales or arpeggios, so the excess tension isn’t obvious, particularly to inexperienced players. So we’re blissfully unaware that we’re setting the stage for future disaster. Unaware of what’s happening, we ingrain these excessively tense movements. This becomes our normal feel, long before we move on to more challenging things. What makes this especially pernicious is that we don’t encounter the full effect of the problem until we’re well past the time during which we ingrained the excessively tense movement. The bug in the system lies dormant for so long that when it finally becomes apparent, we’re at a loss to understand what it is and why it’s there.
Sadly, the blame often falls elsewhere. Usually, it’s written off as a matter of talent. Some people have it, some don’t. If you have it, hooray for you, and book Carnegie Hall. If you don’t have it, oh well, at least you can buy a ticket to Carnegie Hall.
Getting back to my Rockette exercise, I now think it slightly but crucially misses the mark. It forces the fingers into an unnatural movement that doesn’t closely mimic the all important feel of good alternation. It favors an intellectual abstraction—more movement ingrains relaxation—over the feel of relaxation itself. Mind you, this abstraction isn’t wrong. Greater movement does tend to avoid the bugaboo of excessively restricting movement. (Advocates of “economy of movement” sometimes misinterpret it to mean that smaller movements are always better than large movements. This is simply wrong, as anyone who’s seen a good golf swing can attest.) But remember the easy feel of doing right hand alternation in thin air, away from the resistance of a guitar string? That’s the thing itself, the hint to how good right hand technique really feels. The Rockette exercise distracts from the crucial thing itself. If we’re deflected from the crux, we might never get where we’re trying to go.
The Rockette exercise is gone. In its place is extended lite, gradually sped up as a good feel takes hold. Let’s see how the new kid does.
Busy weekend. No time for a long post. Went to a recital this evening. Met a couple of guitar graduate students from the Cleveland Institute of Music. One of them asked me: “Are you the guy doing the right hand blog?” When I replied that I was, he turned to the other guitarist and said, “I thought it was him.”
Thinking about it afterward, I couldn’t decide whether he found my blog worthwhile or that he just wanted to see what kind of damned fool was writing it. I hope it was the former.
Slow and careful practice is fine to a point, but I can’t learn speed slowly. To get speed, I have to do speed. So speed bursts, in which I’d lost faith months ago, have nosed their way back into my practice sessions.
I begin each right hand session with five minutes of finger push-ups. I still believe finger strength is a necessary part of improving my right hand. That means finger push-ups—along with sweeps and rasgueado—will stay in my right hand sessions. Then I begin what I call my “extended lite” work. In this, I lightly play i and m rest stroke alternation on one string for extended passages. (You can see samples of this on my September 3 video.) The light playing ensures that my fingers move correctly, without my a and c fingers locking up as they would if I played harder. It also ensures that i and m snap smartly through the string, with no sideways deflection caused by pushing hard against the string’s tension. As I’ve explained before, I’m ambivalent about this light playing. I eventually want to be able to alternate quickly at any dynamic level. But for now, it’s essential that I ingrain good and relaxed movement of my fingers.
I do extended lite for about twenty minutes, frequently stopping to rest my right arm. After this, I move on to very short speed bursts, beginning at 120. Here I play at a more normal dynamic level. But I’ve added a wrinkle that I hope will better sensitize me to excess tension. I’ve noticed that when I do speed bursts, they almost always sound like this:
...getting louder through the burst. This, of course, means my hand tenses up through the burst, something I want to avoid. Thus, I try to maintain an even volume through the burst, or even decrescendo—then my hand won’t tighten up. So this is what I’m shooting for each time I work on short bursts. If I can gradually eliminate this tight sensation, then I hope eventually I’ll be able to double or triple the length of these bursts. This would bring me closer to extended alternation up to 184 with a relaxed hand.
When I first began doing extended lite work followed by speed bursts, there was always a clear distinction between the two—one felt completely different from the other. That’s not good. But over the last week, I’m feeling more of a segue between them. It helps that I’ve lately been able to begin my extended lite work at 92. By the end of it, I’m at 112, which isn’t far from the 120 tempo at which I begin speed bursts. More and more, the feel I have at the end of my extended lite work is similar to the feel when I begin my speed bursts at 120. This is exactly what I’m aiming for. As much as possible, I want my hand to feel pretty much the same at a wide range of speeds. Only at the extreme limit of speed would my hand begin to feel tight.
I’m still better at speed on basses rather than trebles. But the third string is starting to feel a bit more hospitable. I’ll keep at it.
On the bright side, I’ve breached several more barriers during the week. On Monday morning at 8:39 I hit a short burst at 192. (Yes, I really did write down the time. Humor me.) Five minutes later I hit a short burst at 200. By the way, 200 is so damned fast that after I hit the burst, I sat quietly wondering if I’d really done it. It took me a minute to convince myself that I’d actually done a burst at 200. Maybe I need what they have at hockey games: a light and klaxon that go off whenever I accurately hit a high speed burst.
And on Thursday morning at 7:58, I hit a short burst at 208. Hey, since my metronome only goes up to 208, maybe I can declare victory and close down my project.
On the bad side, I may have to delay my promised end of September video performance of the Mudarra Galliard. The problem right now is that there’s almost no spillover from my technique work to my normal playing. What I can do in the laboratory doesn’t work in the rough and tumble world of real playing. For the moment, I’m okay with that. This new approach seems to be getting somewhere, and I’m willing to change the game plan and ride it wherever it may go.
But I’m determined to prove I can hit a short burst at 200. So that will be my new end-of-the-month video goal.
When the Philological Society of London decided in 1857 that a new English dictionary was needed, it was estimated that it would take about ten years to complete. This was a tad optimistic. The work that culminated in the Oxford English Dictionary took over seven decades to complete.
Closer to home, I probably underestimated the immensity of my project.
Here’s a sobering line of thought. Reading a book about neuroplasticity, I encountered the assertion that mastering a physical skill might take some 100,000 repetitions. Such assertions necessarily are approximate, of course, and beg the question of how anyone knows this to be so. But let’s take it as a given. Doing some quick ciphering, I can do 2400 reps in an hour—that accounts for non-rep time devoted to strength and conditioning, taking rest breaks, tuning the odd recalcitrant string, and stopping to investigate a mysterious crash caused by a curious cat. This works out to 100,000 reps in, according to my calculator, 41.666667 hours. (Love those irrational numbers.) So working an hour a day five days a week, it would take roughly two months to master a given skill. That in itself is daunting.
On top of that, however, my quick cipher ignores limiting factors. For example, those repetitions can’t be mindless—rather, they must be purposeful and carefully controlled. And I can concentrate only for so long in one sitting. That in itself limits the number of reps I can do in any one session. Further, my right hand project isn’t merely one skill. It’s actually a constellation of interlocking skills, each of which needs its own time and attention to master. Thinking this through realistically, it’s easy to see how my little project balloons exponentially.
On the bright side, when a man’s reach exceeds his grasp, he’ll at least be everlastingly engaged in interesting work. So I’ll always have a reason to get up in the morning.
My end of August (or beginning of September) video report is up and running. Rather than jabber endlessly on camera, I’ve opted for a Marcel Marceau document of how I’m currently working on rest stroke alternation. Though there are other things I do during my morning sessions, the video concentrates on the bulk of what I’m currently doing. Enjoy.
As I delve deeper into rest stroke, I find some of the arguments surrounding it less and less illuminating. Simplistic statements are made about issues that, on closer examination, are too complex to be resolved simplistically. Perhaps some of the teacup tempests we see in the classical guitar world might cool into more reasoned debate if the issues were more carefully defined.
For example, one argument I often see is that we should cultivate a hand position that allows us to freely mix rest and free stroke, with no change of hand position. Most of the time I see this idea argued as though it’s an obvious good, and thus only a damned fool would think otherwise. Implicit in the argument is the idea that having to change hand position is awkward and expressively limiting. Further implicit is that there’s no disadvantage in playing free and rest stroke from the same hand position, so why not do it? If these two implications are accepted without question, then indeed the argument seems irrefutable. But look closer, and the argument becomes more nuanced.
To begin, is there really no disadvantage to playing free and rest stroke from the same hand position? Before leaping to a conclusion, one must be precise in what one is talking about, as different cases give different answers. Consider, for example, playing free stroke and rest stroke on the same string, with the same finger, from the same hand position. There are three ways to do this:
1) Do both strokes from a free stroke hand position. But doing rest stroke from a free stroke hand position means you must flex the base joint while extending the middle joint. This is an awkward movement.
2) Do both strokes from a rest stroke hand position. But doing free stroke from a rest stroke hand position means you must extend the base joint while flexing the middle joint. This is also an awkward movement.
3) Find a middle ground between free stroke and rest stroke hand positions. But this means adopting a hand position that’s ideal for neither stroke.
By the way, I hasten to add that I’m not saying one should never do any of these three possibilities. Rather, I’m saying there are negative consequences to doing so, and one should know them.
Yet there are other cases in which there’s no downside to playing free and rest stroke from the same hand position. Consider the following:
Using the indicated fingering, it’s easy to play the G, B, and E eighth notes with free stroke, followed by a rest stroke on the half note G. No change in hand position is needed. I often do this, as can any competent player.
So here are two cases in which one can do free and rest stroke from the same hand position, and yet the consequences are entirely different—in the first case there are negative consequences that should be considered, in the second case there are no negative consequences at all. Clearly, a simplistic answer that glosses over real world differences won’t do.
Indeed, I’m finding the line between free and rest stroke is more ambiguous than I thought before beginning this project. A year ago, I could say with confidence that, in any given musical passage, I knew exactly where I was using free or rest stroke. Today, however, I’m not so sure. For example, there’s a scale passage in Guardame las vacas in which I start with rest stroke but end with free stroke. Yet as I recorded this passage for my July 30th video, I honestly couldn’t say exactly where I changed from free to rest stroke. In fact, sometimes there were notes in which I couldn’t say whether I was doing rest or free stroke—it felt like neither and both.
There’s nothing wrong with this ambiguity. Artistry isn’t always an “either/or” proposition. In the end, excellence is its own justification. Sometimes one can carefully listen to opposing sides of a debate, and when the two camps demand to know which side one supports, the only sensible answer is thus: “It depends.”
Since I haven’t precisely described my one hour right hand sessions in a while, here’s a breakdown of what I’m currently doing.
• 5 minutes: String push-ups. Finger strength, I suspect, is one component of speed. I do finger push-ups thus:
Rather than playing the notes, I push each string as though doing a rest stroke, and then release the pressure without releasing the string. This uses the resistance of the string to help build finger strength. It’s also a quiet way to begin my session.
• 25 minutes: Condensed Mudarra (see August 13 post). I begin at a tempo of 60, four notes per click. When that goes well, I gradually increase the tempo until my hand begins to tense up—nowadays, that’s at a tempo somewhere in the 70’s. Occasionally I get to 80. All of this is done quietly. As noted in my August 13 post, louder playing increases my hand tension. So for now I’m sticking with my plan to ingrain a less tense movement, hoping that as it takes hold I’ll be able to play increasingly louder.
• 10 minutes: Speed bursts. Though I’m still suspicious of their ultimate value, I’ve decided I need more familiarity with the sensations of speed. Now, however, I’m examining these sensations with a more critical eye. For example, I’ve noticed that during high speed bursts, I very lightly clench my jaw. I’m working to stop doing that.
• 5 minutes: Right hand arpeggios. I’m particularly interested in improving the independence between m and a. Depending on my mood and how things are going, I might run through the Carulli Fandango.
• 5 minutes: Right hand sweeps and rasgueado.
• 10 minutes: Finger stretches.
I’m aware that the condensed Mudarra and speed bursts are opposite solutions to the same problem. But I rather like the idea of tossing two solutions into the ring and letting them fight it out. (Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself.) Of course, this runs the risk of a bad solution working against a good solution. All I can say is that I’m aware of the danger, and choose to try it anyway. I’m becoming more confident in my ability to evaluate what I’m doing. If I’m doing something unproductive, I’ll find out soon enough.
It recently occurred to me that my situation is similar to that of a stroke victim who’s lost the ability to walk and through therapy is trying to regain it. There’s some difference: the stroke victim has completely lost the ability and must teach another part of the brain to relearn it—I have the ability, but not on a high level, and thus must retrain myself to improve it. For both of us, however, success or failure hinges on neuroplasticity.
For a musician, neuroplasticity should be a given. After all, musicians are tireless tinkerers with neural wiring—we can’t learn anything new without it. But we’re also human, and it’s human nature to fall into a comfortable routine, especially if it’s gotten us to a reasonable level of accomplishment. It’s the rare individual who can set aside a comfortable routine in search of something better. I encounter this self-defeating inertia often as a teacher. It’s more disconcerting to find it lurking within myself. But having roused myself from this inertia, I find it changes me in subtle ways.
Some of these changes are disquieting. We tend to see ourselves as conscious entities, freely choosing our actions and beliefs. But is this is really so? Most of what we do is unconscious reflex. Indeed, it takes little effort to see ourselves as mindless automatons, going through the motions of thought without the substance. Much of what passes for consciousness is perhaps illusory. It may be that most of the time we’re no more conscious than the simulated citizens in a computer game of SimCity.
If nothing else, my right hand project has the virtue of waking me from the slumber of routine. That’s something. Perhaps it’s more valuable than any technical goal I’m trying to attain.
Over the past month or so I’ve come to accept that progress will be much slower than I’d hoped when I set out on this project. But now I wonder if progress is happening right before my eyes and I’m too jaded to see it. In my May 1 video I could play rest stroke alternation no faster than a crawl. Yet two and a half months later, I can reliably do this roughly three times faster. So fixated am I on my goal—still frustratingly far off—that I’ve overlooked the fact that my rest stroke alternation speed has tripled in less than three months. Geez, Moore’s Law has nothing on me. The obvious explanation for my failure to notice this progress is that since I started from a crawl, three times faster than a crawl isn’t all that noticeable.
But progress is progress. Henceforth I shall revel in my victories, however small they may be.
I spent much of my one hour right hand sessions working on a condensed version Mudarra’s Galliard:
As Joe Friday might have said, “just the scales, ma’am.” By the way, in the above example I left out the cadenza I’m doing at the end. Let’s just say that, until I post a video, it’s my little secret. But I’m sure you’ll find it deeply moving.
Although I don’t like doing it, I played rest stroke alternation very quietly this week. My reason for this is thus. When my fingers meet no resistance, they move perfectly, with no excess tension at all. Only when meeting the resistance of the string do my fingers begin moving badly. The higher the volume I try to play, the greater the tension in my hand—the greater the tension in my hand, the more my inactive fingers tend to lock up during i and m alternation. So my approach this week was to play at a volume where my fingers move easily, and see if that easy movement becomes ingrained enough that I’ll later be able to increase the volume with no ill effects.
As I said, I don’t like doing this. I’ve heard guitarists who do speed by playing lightly. To my ears, it yields a dinky little sound that I find tentative. But I’m hoping that as an easy movement becomes ingrained, I’ll gradually be able to ramp up the volume and keep the easy movement.
T’was a strange week. I began it with little hope that I was getting anywhere, but determined to soldier on. Early in the week I would start each i and m alternation session at about 60, and then nudge up the tempo until I hit a wall. By Friday I found myself hitting 80 with a fair degree of confidence, although my right hand tension felt dangerously close to locking up. But I did hit a few clean reps at 80. Nothing comfortable and reliable yet, but the fact that I could do it at all was encouraging. Curious, I then tried to play Carulli’s Fandango, which I’ve had on the back burner. At a tempo of 100, it went better than I expected. I was so pleased that at the end of the week I contemplated rewarding my right hand with a doggie treat.
I still think it won’t be until the end of September before I’m ready to play Mudarra’s Galliard at a performance tempo. (And I’d prefer a tempo of 104, rather than the 92 I mentioned last week.) But after a summer of discontent, I’m beginning to feel some of my old optimism creeping back.
