An Old Nemesis Returns, Then Politely Leaves

In my last post, I meant to mention that my right shoulder felt great. In fact, it felt so good that I was ready to declare myself out of the woods regarding shoulder pain. Toss the confetti and strike up the band.

Then Sunday afternoon my shoulder starting hurting.

By Monday morning, it hurt enough that I cut short my morning right hand practice hour by thirty minutes. What particularly concerned me is that I had a two and a half hour wedding gig coming up on the 26th. When a gig is on the line, I don’t fool around. I cancelled my morning practice session on Tuesday, and cut short my morning sessions on Wednesday and Thursday. The only other practicing I did was for the wedding music, which didn’t stress my shoulder. I also had a last minute gig come through on Friday, so I didn’t do my morning practice session that day.

Strangely, the pain just fizzled away. My shoulder now feels fine. Why it started hurting is a mystery to me. I wasn’t doing anything that should have brought it on. I’m encouraged that it went away so quickly. But I’ll hold off on declaring a permanent victory. After all, the 1918 Armistice turned out to be a false hope, and those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Who knew that George Santayana would come in handy for guitar practice?

Anyway, I got to run the Carulli Fandango in a couple of performance situations. During the wedding gig today, I ran it twice while playing background music in a noisy room. My hand felt good, but I couldn’t tell you how it sounded in all the hubbub.

So for the upcoming week, it’s back to resolving the questions I posted last week, and also suspiciously monitoring my right shoulder. At the beginning of July I hope to post a video of the scale excerpts I’ve been practicing. And I’m still working toward posting a full performance of Guardame the first week of August. By the way, the student I mentioned in my last two posts did her first public performance of Guardame.

And if you’re wondering, today’s wedding gig went well. I am tired though, thus the short post.


——[My next update will be July 3, 2011]——

A Little Specificity, Please

Until I began this right hand project, I’d never before kept a practice journal. One reason is that it too easily becomes an end in itself. As in “my playing didn’t improve today, but I got some really good material for my journal—hey, maybe I can turn it into a screen play!” Further, even though I’m now keeping a written journal, I almost never read it. In fact, the only time I read what I’ve written during the week is when I’m writing a blog post, as I’m doing now. Otherwise, I’ve little idea what I wrote, say, three months ago. And really, why bother? After all, every time I begin a practice session, my playing emphatically tells me what needs work.

Nonetheless, occasionally I can learn something from going back to read what I’ve written. Sometimes it’s not what I’ve said, but rather what I haven’t said. Consider, for example, the entries for the first week of May:

May 2: Finger push-up 2 minutes.
May 3: Hold hand into the string. Play hard!
May 4: (blank)
May 5: (blank)
May 6: Fandango at 50.

These aren’t the entries of an engaged mind. They suggest a lot of finger wiggling with nary a thought behind it. This won’t do. So from this day hence, I’ll either formulate new and precise questions about my playing, or be busy trying to answer them. Toward the end of this week I decided to set a quota of three good questions per week. I then wrote down some questions. After writing them down, I realized I had four questions instead of three. I then wondered if I should set a quota of four questions. When I realized this was a fifth question, I ditched the idea of a quota.

This is how progress happens.

To be serious, all practice is problem-solving. And the problem should be specifically defined. “I want to get better” is nice, but ultimately worthless. Hey, who doesn’t want to get better? But as a practice goal it’s too vague, offering nothing in particular to work on. Specificity is the soul of good practice.

So here are two questions I wish to answer:

• When I begin playing at the beginning of my morning session, my right hand feels awful. My rest stroke couldn’t accurately hit the side of a mountain, much less a guitar string. After about five or ten minutes of playing, things improve. But I don’t believe my right hand technique should start from zero every time I begin a practice session. So I need to experiment with how to get my hand working well as quickly as possible at the beginning of a session.

• Lately I’ve noticed noise from the string below the one I’m playing during rest stroke alternation. For example, during a passage on the second string, I hear faint but clearly audible sounds from the third string. I don’t think it’s from my a finger accidentally hitting the string. (In fact, a is slowly getting its act together.) Rather, I suspect it’s from i and m bouncing off the adjacent string as they return to the string they’re playing. Curiously, I’ve never had this problem before, and I thought I’d had them all. Oh well, a new problem gives me another reason to get up in the morning.

This week should be a bit of a hassle. I broke a good portion of my i nail. Of course, this happened right before a wedding gig, and I spent most of the gig working around the broken nail. By the way, it wasn’t a priest who presided over the wedding, but rather an actor playing a priest. The wife of the actor told me this—I replied: “what, Rowan Atkinson wasn’t available?”

I’m shooting for a full performance of Guardame las vacas at the end of July. It’s coming along nicely. During the week, I played it alongside the student I mentioned in last week’s post. Right now, we’re about even on the first variation. But I know the subsequent variations better than she does, so I’m ahead there. Give her a bit more time, and the competition will be closer. I’ve warned her that I’m not giving up without a fight. I’m working hard at this, and she’ll have to work at it to surpass me. It’s the wisdom of age pitted against the potential of youth.

Oh for heaven’s sake, stop giggling.


——[My next update will be June 27, 2011]——

Summer of the Right Hand

For years I hated summer. Perhaps it’s because of where I’ve lived. Five years in Florida (where it’s hot and buggy), five years in Texas (where it’s hot and dry), and eight years in North Carolina (where it’s hot and muggy). I’m one of the few people in northeast Ohio who actually likes the weather here. But even after I got here, I spent many years living in top floor apartments, where heat rises and settles in for the summer. So I’d crank up the air-conditioner and envy the TV dinner sitting in my freezer.

Lately, however, I’ve lived in a house with a finished basement. For most of the year I use my upstairs bedroom. But from June through August I move to the basement to escape the heat. (Another reason I moved is that there’s a bird’s nest in my bedroom air conditioner, and I don’t want to disturb the baby birds chirping away there.) In my basement is a bed, a ratty old couch, an end table, and a lamp. The television sits idle upstairs. Instead, I raid my local library for books that catch my eye. Then, at night, I recline with a book and luxuriate in the cool basement air. So summer has become a more pleasant, relaxed, and contemplative time for me.

Which sets me to regarding my project in a better, more optimistic light. At almost the halfway point of my one year experiment, I now see that I expected too much too soon. Instead, sneaking up on speed with gradually increasing tempos seems the way to go. And the progress is there, albeit slow. Remember my May 1 video, where I ponderously played the first variation of Guardame? It’s getting better. I’m now hoping to post a video of the complete Guardame at a good performance tempo—probably not at the end of June, but certainly at the end of July. When I can do that well, it’ll be time to turn to another scale excerpt to practice, one that needs a faster tempo than Guardame. I’m now turning an envious eye to Joaquín Turina’s Fandanguillo. I’ve always liked that piece, but never had the chops to play the fast scale at the climax:


Maybe it’s edging into the realm of possibility for me. That would be so cool.

Now to discuss a question I received regarding how I teach. At one point during a discussion I wrote:

There’s ideal, then there’s “I’ll take what I can get.” With students, particularly young ones, I teach the ideal.

Which brought the following reply:

But that was my point Tom—what is the “ideal”? In your own writing I believe you said you’re not sure whether, for example, your a finger should move with the m finger in i/m alternation. I’m quite sure that mine shouldn’t and can both demonstrate and explain my reasoning and the logic behind it, as I see it. Other teachers believe and explain the opposite. How do you approach it with your students?—Paul Croft, England

A fair question. As it happens, I have a young student who’s just beginning to get her right hand into shape. She has time to practice this summer, so I’ve told her this is going to be her summer of the right hand. Among other things, she’s working with Guardame, as am I. But what a difference! Unlike mine, her right hand is wonderful to behold. In alternation, her fingers move easily and directly, with no extraneous motion. Her inactive fingers move with m, exactly as they should. Her tone is smooth and warm—it’s easy to forget she’s playing a $150 Yamaha. She has only to increase her speed and volume, and that, I suspect, will happen soon enough.

To answer Mr. Croft’s question, the ideal is something I seldom need to natter on about with my more ambitious young students. For whatever reason, they seem to achieve the ideal without much trouble. By the time they’re ready to buckle down with rest stroke alternation, the basic movement is already there. Typically, they can almost immediately outrun me in rest stroke scales, or if they can’t, it isn’t long before they can. So with my more accomplished students, the question of whether they should continue chipping away at technical flaws seldom arises. For them, unlike me, the ideal happens so naturally that they don’t have to agonize over whether to settle for less.

Damn them.

Which raises an aside. Among guitar teachers there’s some difference of opinion on whether beginning students should concentrate more on rest stroke or free stroke. For me, there’s no question. Start with rest stroke as early as possible. Young students who’ve mastered rest stroke early usually have no trouble with it later. And they’ll get a good free stroke soon enough. I’ve seen this so often that there’s no doubt in my mind.

By the way, when my student starts playing well enough, I’ll see if she’s willing to post a video. After all, why should I be the only on the hot seat?


——[My next update will be June 20, 2011]——

Of Bugs and Magnifying Glasses

It’s been a while since I’ve described how my one hour sessions go. So here’s a synopsis. I begin with five minutes of finger pushups with i, m, and a. For less string resistance, I do this over the soundhole—for more string resistance, nearer the bridge. After this, I set the metronome to 40 and begin playing the first variation of Guardame, four notes per click. (Toward the end of the week, I found I could begin comfortably at 60.) If things go well at that tempo, I increase the metronome setting one click. I continue doing this for thirty minutes. The last couple of days, I found I could get to a metronome setting of 80 before the end of the half hour. It didn’t always feel good at this tempo. But lately—well, more on this anon.

I’ve also added other musical excerpts to my alternation session. There’s this bit from Alonso Mudarra’s Galliard:


(Yes, I know the last two measures aren’t in the original. Cut me some slack here.) I’ve also added this excerpt from Drewrie’s Accordes:


(See, I can stick to the script on occasion.) The idea is to add a little real world playing to the mix. All these excerpts toss in some string crossing, and all offer something more than a short burst. Also, they’re from pieces I use with students. So what I learn while playing them becomes fodder for my students.

Then it’s on to arpeggios. For the moment I’m sticking with the Giuliani E minor and the Carulli Fandango. But I might soon add more work between m and a. For this, I like to tweak Fernando Sor’s Op. 6, No. 1:


For the moment, my arpeggios are working better than my rest stroke alternation. Indeed, at the beginning of the week my alternation felt awful. On Thursday and Friday, however, things took a turn for the better. There were moments where my alternation felt pretty good at 80. For Guardame, that’s approaching a reasonable performance tempo. A further bit of good news: my right shoulder feels good.

The rest of my hour is rounded out with sweeps, rasgueados, and stretches.

As an aside, sometimes I suspect a malevolent god is toying with me. Every time I’m about to collapse in despair, a sudden tiny improvement appears like a puddle in the desert. So I sip gratefully and trudge on. All I can say is that there better be one hell of a Starbucks at the end of all this. But I can't shake the feeling that I’m just a bug under the watchful eye of a kid with a magnifying glass.

Theology always makes me nervous.


——[My next update will be June 13, 2011]——