A Lesson from Romero Land

Good things, I fear, won’t happen quickly. After the initial encouragement of a successful burst, I’m now in the doldrums, where noticeable gains are hard to come by. My first conundrum is my ring finger. It hasn’t yet gotten the memo that it’s supposed to move with m. So I began to wonder if I should stop trying to train it and just let it do its own thing. Unfortunately, what it really wants to do during i and m alternation is curl in and bump into a string. So I wondered if I should tilt my hand more toward the thumb—this lifts my ring finger far enough from the strings that it no longer blunders into them. But I really hate the feel, and I dislike having to significantly change my hand position for rest stroke alternation. Which brought me, rondo-like, back to training a to move with m, and overcoming its tendency to bump into strings. So round and round I went.

As has been suggested by some who are following my project, I wanted to extend the length of my speed bursts. With that in mind, I tried the following exercise at a metronome setting of 80:


The 32nd note burst at the end is still a short one, but the sixteenth notes are my way of building up to a longer burst. But I’m beginning to wonder if speed bursts are a mirage. Perhaps they give the illusion of progress without the substance. My sense is that an extended fast scale doesn’t feel like a short speed burst. Indeed, when I try to extend a speed burst to eight notes rather than four, it simply falls apart. The approach that works in a four note burst becomes a problem in a longer burst. Thus, another conundrum.

Click here to find my monthly audio progress report. It’s a short one, for reasons that’ll become more clear as you read the rest of this post.

This weekend I had the pleasure of meeting with a former student of mine, Colin Davin. Unlike me, he has an excellent right hand. (His left hand is also pretty good—to hear a sample of his playing, click here.) More to the point of my project, he did his bachelor’s degree at the University of Southern California, studying with William Kanengiser. The USC guitar program is heavily influenced by Pepe Romero, who has one of the best right hands in the business. So I asked Colin if he’d be willing to look at what I’m doing and offer suggestions based on what he learned in the Romero school of playing. He agreed, and we met on Saturday evening.

At first Colin felt a bit strange teaching his old teacher—at one point, after making a technical suggestion, he quipped: “Said the non-pedagogue to the pedagogue.” To which I corrected: “Said the one who can to the one who can’t.” But we soon settled into a comfortable give and take. After all, when I’m sitting across from one who can play circles around me, it’s time to ditch the ego and learn.

Oddly, this was my first opportunity in years to observe at close range Colin’s right hand. His rest stroke alternation is a joy to behold. The movement is precise and fluid. What particularly interested me was that his a finger easily moved along with m, exactly as I’m trying to train mine to do. This heartened me. Maybe my own hand isn’t a lost cause.

I asked him to suggest some Romero-inspired things I might work on. First, Colin demonstrated what he called a “finger push-up” exercise. It goes thus. Prepare any finger on a string, as though I’m about to play a free stroke. Then gently press into the string, as though starting the stroke, but don’t allow the string to leave my finger. Then gently let the string tension push my finger back to its starting position. When I press the string, I should use only enough pressure to displace the string a short distance. I’m not trying to manhandle the string—rather, it should be a light and easy pressure. As I understand Colin’s explanation, the goal here is to cultivate a refined awareness of the finger exertion I use to begin a stroke.

Next, Colin suggested that I should do rest stroke with each finger. As my finger plays a string and comes to rest on the next string, I should allow the tension of the next string to bounce my finger back to its starting position. Think of it almost as though my finger is hopping on a trampoline. This exercise, by the way, is more familiar to me. I’ve seen it described before as a “play and release” exercise. Hearing it from a player who recently went through the Romero school of technique convinces me that I should be more aware of it in my own right hand work.

Colin and I also discussed some questions I had. I asked him if he thought speed bursts were useful. He said he didn’t see anything wrong with them. Sensing a lukewarm response, I asked him if he’d ever done speed bursts. “No,” he replied. That somewhat let the air out of my balloon. Discussing this further, Colin didn’t reject them. It just wasn’t something he’d done, so he had no particular opinion pro or con.

He did, however, suggest I should focus more on an easy and fluid movement, and that I should set aside for now any attempts at speed. (Interestingly, some who are following my project have offered the same suggestion.) He went on to say that he’d never really worked on speed itself. Rather, he’d worked on good technique, and speed was almost a byproduct of good technique. Makes sense to me. So beginning Monday, I’ll rework my routine to incorporate Colin’s suggestions.

Some good news. I now believe the shoulder pain I mentioned in last week’s post was a false alarm. Rather than a guitar-related injury, it’s probably just a pulled muscle I sustained while chipping ice off my front door steps. So I’m still good to go with my right hand project. In fact, I want to reassure everyone who expressed concern that I might sustain a guitar-related injury. The way this winter is going, I’m far more likely to suffer a heart attack while shoveling snow.


——[My next post will be on March 7, 2011.]——

Make a New Plan, Stan

A flicker of success is nice, but it won’t boil the broth. I’m looking for something more sustained and durable. So this week I stepped back to reevaluate how I’m working toward my goal. First, the jury is still out on my Rockette exercise. I can’t decide whether it’s building a useful reflex or just frittering away valuable time. Thinking about it, I sense it should work. But maybe this is something that looks better on paper than it works in reality. For the moment, I’ll hang on to it, though I’d like to see some results.

One thing has become clear. My ring finger is perhaps the biggest impediment to my i and m alternation speed. It still tends to curl in, and often bumps into a bass string as i and m play. I’ve decided to be far more vigilant in keeping it moving with m. Admittedly, I get mixed signals when I do this—my speed doesn’t improve when my ring and middle fingers move together, yet the movement does feel easier. I’m also aware that many excellent guitarists let their ring finger curl in as they do i and m alternation. For now, however, I’m betting this won’t work for me. Maybe I’m pig-headed, but all my experience tells me that, for my hand, moving m and a together will ultimately pay off. Possibly I’m wasting time pursuing a pristine archetype when something a tad more squalid would do. So call me pig-headed. Besides, the older I get, the less I’m enamored of shortcuts.

I’ve made a few changes in my 30 minute routine. Instead of beginning on trebles and working toward the bass strings, I’m now doing the opposite. My thinking here is that since I play better on the basses, I want my warmup time to be on the basses rather than the trebles. I also want to firmly ingrain the feel of good alternation before moving to the trebles. By the way, it’s still a mystery to me why alternation should be easier on the basses than on the trebles. I don’t think it’s because of the relative tension of the strings. In fact, when I press my finger against a string, I don’t feel all that much difference between basses and trebles—there may be a difference, but it doesn’t feel like much to me. Further, there doesn’t seem any real difference in the position of my hand and arm. Certainly going from the fourth to the third string doesn’t cause any big change. So it’s an enigma wrapped in a riddle and shrouded in mystery. (Gosh, I’m deep.)

Another change is that I’m trying to extend the length of my speed bursts. To that end, I’ve started working with the following:

Doing this means I can no longer hit the burst at 184. So for now, I’m doing this exercise at a metronome setting of 80. I’m keeping the middle and ring finger Rockette kick in the staccato first measure, and allowing my hand to relax during the fermata.

Speaking of relaxation, I’m sorry to say that my right shoulder is beginning to kick up a fuss. Sorry, but not surprised. February is when I began doing speed bursts during my one hour right hand sessions. And speed work is what put me out of action when I tried to improve my right hand twice before in the last ten years. So I saw this coming. This time around, I’m taking many more relaxation breaks as I work. Further, the last time I tried this two years ago, I foolishly did a lot of continuous right hand alternation, sometimes 10 or 15 minutes without stopping. My thought then was that I could learn to relax my arm on the fly, without stopping to rest. Okay, bad idea, at least for me. It’s not a mistake I want to repeat. If my shoulder gets worse, I’ll begin alternating days of speed bursts with days of less rigorous exercises.

And while we’re on the subject of relaxation, it’s amazing what a tightrope walk good right hand alternation really is. We’re often told it should feel relaxed and easy, and that’s good advice. But carry this advice too far, and trouble ensues. The finger must exert sufficient force as it drives through the string. If not, then the string’s tension gums up the smooth and precise finger movement needed for good alternation. And exactly what should that amount of force be? Well, I guess that’s what practice is supposed to teach me.

All in all, it astonishes me that anyone masters a musical instrument.

I’d like to end this post with a comment I received on my February 12 post. I found the comment interesting. Since the writer chose to remain anonymous, I don’t know who he or she is. But my sense is that he or she is an experienced teacher or player. Or it might be a middle-aged speed metal guitarist typing in his basement while his mother yells at him to take out the garbage. But on the assumption it’s the former, I’ll quote the comment point by point and respond to each.

“If you are doing this as a long-term one-year project, I think trying for 184 is premature. In fact, I would say it’s counter-productive. By your own admission, you say you are actually not able to do it on certain strings and/or start with certain fingers. Therefore, your technique is not really improving. You are just playing faster.”

Well, playing faster is what I’m after. Since I’ve never before hit a burst at 184, I’m encouraged. But of course I want it to be reliable and controlled speed. There’s obviously much more work to be done.

“The clarity of your playing at this speed is not very good.”

I suppose it depends on who’s doing the listening. To my ears, the bursts I recorded for my February 12 post sound pretty good. I’ll admit that the second burst started a little ahead of the beat. And the eighth note staccato lead-ins to the bursts are uneven. But I’m happy with the bursts themselves. The notes are clean and I like the tone. I’ll take it.

“I admire your dedication but don’t lose sight of your goal—If you want to improve your technique, you have to do it in smaller increments in order for your brain to start receiving signals and start learning the new processes.”

The problem, of course, is defining how small those increments should be. I’m pretty much ignoring string crossing. I’m starting speed bursts only with i, not m. I’m generally not adding left hand notes into my bursts. I’m almost always practicing bursts with slower lead-in notes—almost never from a standing start. One might argue that if my increments get any smaller, I won’t be working on anything at all. Nonetheless, your point is well taken. One baby step at a time.

“If you don’t, you may be very well be on your way to a detrimental hand-injury.”

Honestly, hand injury is the least of my worries. What does worry me is my right shoulder, which has been a problem in the past. The closer I get to practicing at high speeds, the more likely I am to have problems with my shoulder. Believe me, I’m watching this very carefully.

“My advice, finally: I think the speed bursts are good. But, it may be better for you to look for sustained periods of speed instead. Again, we are trying to improve our technique and not how many notes we can cram in one beat, right? So, now that you’ve done one month of preliminary assessment of your technique and know that there is an evenness issue with your strokes, let us now then start by playing eighth-notes at 80 (slower if you need to) evenly for 5-10 minutes at a time. Do that for a week, then move up slowly to 85, 90, 95, 100 etc...you’ll find different results with this, imho. Maybe then you can start with 16th notes at 40 and follow the same process.”

As mentioned earlier in this post, this is pretty much what I’m now doing. So we’re of like minds on this point.

“Never play faster than you can think.—Manuel Barrueco.”

Geez, if I followed that advice, I’d have to use a calendar rather than a metronome.

“No, I’m not Barrueco. :)”

Perhaps not, but I’ve already decided you’re the one I’ll blame if I follow your advice and it doesn’t pan out. For that, and also for your thoughtful comments, I thank you.

And now to answer one other comment:

“Perhaps you’re not familiar with English weather Tom?”—Paul Croft, England

Well, I’ve never been there, so I guess I’m not familiar with English weather. Is it anything like this?

——[My next post will be on February 28, 2011.]——

A Flicker of Success

On Thursday morning, I was doing my 30 minutes of speed bursts as described in my last post. While doing this, my right hand felt very good about 15 minutes into the routine. I didn’t have a metronome handy—since I was still laying the foundation, I didn’t expect to have anything worth measuring. So I didn’t know exactly how fast my bursts were. But they felt pretty darned fast. Certainly faster than anything I’d ever done before. That afternoon, I had some time to kill between students. Curious, and now having a metronome at hand, I decided to see just how fast I could do a burst. Let it be written and proclaimed throughout the land that at 4:10 pm on February 10, 2011, my right hand hit a rest stroke alternation burst at 184. To share the news, I made an audio sample this afternoon. To hear it, click here.

Before we break out the balloons and party hats, here are the caveats. I can only do this after about ten minutes of warmup. Even then, it’s hit or miss. I tried to show one of my students that I could hit a burst at 184, but couldn’t do it. Now I know how it feels to hit a hole-in-one when no one’s around to see it. There’s more. I can only do the burst starting with my index finger. For some reason, starting with my middle finger doesn’t work as well. I can’t do the burst on treble strings. Apparently the different feel of the trebles increases the difficulty just enough that my hand can’t yet do on trebles what it can do on basses. (Weird.) And crossing from one string to another? Forget it. Finally, I can’t maintain this speed for anything more than a short burst.

So my 184 burst is like those particles that flicker in and out of existence at CERN. It’s all very neat to observe in the lab, but it’s too evanescent to use in real guitar playing.

Nonetheless, let’s step back a moment. Never in almost 40 years of playing has my right hand done this. Four notes per click at 184 with rest stroke? Never happened before. So things are looking up. In spite of all the caveats, no one’s gonna rain on my parade. Today I’m a happy guy.

So what’s next? I need to tinker with this burst to make it something I can produce on demand. Good technique should be reliable. Further, I need to be able to do it on any string, starting with either i or m. I don’t want a finicky technique that only works under narrow circumstances.

But damn, this is so cool to hear my old, slow right hand hit a burst at 184. I might spend the rest of the evening listening to that audio sample over and over again. Practice? I’ll start that again on Monday. By the way, during an internet conversation about my right hand project, I wrote that if I hit 144, I’d celebrate by running naked through the streets. This prompted the following reply from across the pond:

“I think a nice cup of tea and a large slice of battenburg cake is much more sensible.”—Paul Croft, England

If you ask me, the English just don’t know how to celebrate.

——[My next post will be on February 21, 2011.]——

Confidence Is the Horse That Pulls the Cart

Progress works in mysterious ways. January seemed no more than a lot of finger-wiggling signifying nothing. Indeed, I was on the verge of scrapping my Rockette exercise, as it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Then the first practice day of February offered a sliver of hope. About fifteen minutes into my Rockette exercise, my hand felt good. Curious, I tried a few speed bursts. To my surprise, the good feeling persisted. My hand didn’t lock up during the bursts. In fact—and this astonished me—my rest stroke alternation felt as good as if I were doing free stroke.

A bit of back story. When I first began playing guitar, I was self-taught. (You know the old saying that someone who represents himself in a court case has a fool for a client? There should be a similar saying for self-taught musicians.) I first drifted through folk guitar, learning stalwarts like Sligo River Blues, My Creole Belle, and Freight Train. I also wrote songs that, today, I couldn’t be flogged into performing. Count it as one of life’s small mercies that you’ll never have to endure them. Somewhere along the line, however, I chanced upon a library LP of classical guitar playing. It was 400 Years of the Classical Guitar, performed by Alirio Diaz. To a fledgling who regarded Travis picking as the non plus ultra of guitar playing, this was a revelation. I was hooked.

Of course, one can love sincerely but not well. In my early struggles with the basics of classical guitar technique, rest stroke just never caught my attention. I was aware of it, in the way a cat might be dimly aware of quantum mechanics. But for whatever reason, in the long list of things I needed to master, rest stroke never moved to the front of the line. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I took rest stroke seriously. And like people who learn a new language late in life, it’s never come easy for me.

Now maybe you can understand that when rest stroke alternation begins to feel no worse to me than free stroke, my attention perks up. Something’s afoot. I don’t yet know what it is, and I’m not dancing in the streets over it. (If I did that this week, I’d have been hit by a snow plow.) Nonetheless, I’m encouraged.

So my Rockette exercise has earned a reprieve. I’ve morphed it into the following:

As you can see, speed bursts are inching their way into my practice sessions. Everything else—30 minutes of alternation, 15 of glacially slow arpeggios, 5 of sweeps and rasgueado, and 10 of stretches—is pretty much the same. No problems with shoulder pain to report.

It’s now time to answer a question that no one has asked: how do I know I can reach the speed I’m aiming for? First, I’d like to thank everyone for not asking that question. It implies a faith in my prospects that so far has little evidence to back it. Or maybe it implies massive indifference. But I’m a glass-half-full guy, so I’m going with the former.

To answer my own question, I reply that I really don’t know. And yet I’ve confidence that I can reach my goal. The reason, to my delight, popped up in one of the comments to my January 16th post:

“How fast and loosely can you do that finger alternation without the guitar? Kevin Gallagher had me try that in a lesson and I was amazed by how fast I could do it and how easy it felt. Since then, I’ve been able to increase my speed and reduce my tension a lot by getting familiar with that feeling.”——William Bajzek (Washington, USA)

I smiled when I read this comment, so aptly did it describe the reason for my confidence. If I can alternate i and m at 160 away from the guitar, then why shouldn’t I be able to do it on a guitar string? Yes, I know it’s not that simple. There’s a big difference between tapping your fingers on a table top and alternating i and m on a guitar string. In fact, the vast majority of classical guitarists can’t do it exceptionally well. But do we really know why? Most of us try once or twice and fail, never to try again. But how many of us try again and again? And how many of us rethink after each failure, to come at the problem from another angle?

Which leads to another comment that made me smile:

“It has often been bandied about that the good rest-stroke players are evident from the very start. That’s an aggressively depressing thought to any non-good rest-stroke player. But it might also indicate that it is an element in the fundamental approach, rather than raw volume of work, that is the difference.”——Miguel de Maria, Arizona, USA

Indeed. So why not sally forth with confidence that I can figure it out as I go? In time I may learn that my confidence was misplaced. But there are worse things than misplaced confidence. Unquestioned defeatism is one. Given the choice, I opt for the former.

——[My next post will be on February 14, 2011.]——