“M”

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

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

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

One exercise I’m trying is the following:




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

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

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

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

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

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

So I’ll look into it again.

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

Missed It By That Much

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      And on to the next problem.

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

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

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

Slow Practice Ain’t Chicken Soup

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

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

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

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

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

Slowly, of course.

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

A Bad Week Gets Better

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

Needless to say, this sparked a minor temper tantrum.

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

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

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

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

A Procedure for Your Consideration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

•                                    •                                    •

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

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

September 30, 2012 Video Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Calibrating Tension

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

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

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

Below is a passage I practiced during the week:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rethinking Speed Bursts

For those of us who’ve never had right hand speed and are trying to get it, speed bursts can be seductive. Back in February of 2011 I was excited when I hit a burst at 184. Only a month into my right hand project, I seemed on my way to soon reaching my goal of sustained i and m alternation at 160. But the apparent quick success offered by speed bursts was a dead end. I gradually found that I can’t do extended fast alternation by merely stringing together a continuos series of speed bursts. Over time, the reason became clear. Far too often, bursts rely on tension for speed. For a short burst, this isn’t a problem—the burst is finished before the tension grinds me to a halt. But for longer stretches of fast alternation, this tension has more time to gum up the machine.

Looking back, I find it telling that Colin Davin, a virtuoso guitarist to whom I talked during my brief infatuation with speed bursts, had little to say about bursts, other than that he’d never done them as a way of increasing his right hand speed. Perhaps he intuitively knew what I was about to learn the hard way.

So I soon soured on speed bursts. I now regard them as a potentially huge waste of time. Certainly they can be a false path for those who are trying to develop fast alternation for extended passages. But let’s not toss the baby with the bath water. Speed bursts are a useful weapon in the guitarist’s arsenal, provided we’ve a more nuanced understanding of their pros and cons.

For one thing, speed bursts can go a long way to convincing one that speed is possible. That’s no small thing. If my fingers have never hit alternation at 184, then I’m unlikely to really believe I can do it. A quick success with speed bursts can buck up one’s confidence. Having hit 184 in a short burst, one begins to believe, and believing is essential to doing. After all, if I don’t believe I can do something, then I’m already halfway to not doing it. For this alone, speed bursts can be an essential step in the right direction. But one must clearly understand the limits of bursts. They’re not a silver bullet. If I falsely believe that extended right hand speed is merely a slight rejiggering of speed bursts, then I’m doomed to a future of hit or miss right hand alternation.

While bursts are limited in what they can do toward building right hand speed, they have good musical uses. I’ve noticed this as I’ve worked with the following passage:

When trying this passage above 120, I sometimes fall behind at the beginning of the second measure. Almost always, however, I catch up by the end of the measure and land squarely on the beat with the final A. I realized that when I fall behind, I unconsciously kick in with a burst that brings me back to the beat. Obviously, falling behind is a flaw I’m working to correct. But in a real world situation, being able to slide in and out of a burst during an extended scale can be a useful corrective skill. And it’s not just useful for correcting a lapse. Aligned with a subtle ear, sliding in and out of a burst can be a powerful technique for altering tempo and rhythm in a musical way. An obvious application is to snap off the end of a fast scale with a quick burst on the final few notes. An imaginative player can certainly find other applications.

By the way, you may notice that in the previous paragraph I airily mentioned practicing the scale at 120. Your skepticism is understandable and duly noted. I’m also aware that I’ve not yet described how I’m currently practicing. That will come in due time. Suffice it to say that, for now, I want to see how this pans out before I’m willing to believe I’m on to something.

A year and nine months of dead ends will do that to you. But at the moment I’m having fun. By the end of the month, I hope to have tangible evidence of progress.

——[My next update will be September 24, 2012]——

The Brass Tacks of Technique

Before I describe how I’m now practicing, we need to begin with a basic matter. Good technique, in essence, is getting the best result with the least effort. For right hand speed, this becomes of paramount importance. The more tension in your playing, the more it ultimately limits your speed. So you need to minimize it as much as possible. And to minimize it, you must first recognize it. Thus, here are four useful indicators of tension to familiarize yourself with.

Step 1: While standing, allow your arms to hang loosely. This a a relaxed feeling, good for guitar playing. Now shrug your shoulders as tightly as you can. This is a very tense feeling, bad for guitar playing. Unshrug your shoulders and again allow your arms to hang loosely, back to the relaxed feeling. Now shrug your shoulders slightly less than before—although they’re not as tense as before, this is still a tense feeling, one to be avoided in guitar playing. Then relax again. Now alternately shrug and relax your shoulders, each time shrugging with a little less force, until your last shoulder shrug is barely perceptible. Your goal is to gradually develop your perception of even the barest hint of tension.

Step 2: Still standing, allow your arms to hang loosely. Now, without shrugging your shoulders, clench your fists and tense your arms as tightly as you can. This is a very tense feeling, bad for guitar playing. Then unclench your fists and again allow your arms to hang loosely, back to the relaxed feeling. As in the previous step, clench your fists and tighten your arms a bit less than before. This is still a tense feeling—one to be avoided in guitar playing. And as in the previous step, alternately clench and unclench, each time clenching with a little less force, until your last clench is barely perceptible. Again, your goal is to gradually develop your perception of even the barest hint of tension.

Note: These first two indicators can be minimized in good playing, but they can’t be entirely eliminated. Some of this kind of tension is inevitable in guitar playing. Nonetheless, it can be minimized if you learn to recognize and control it. The purpose of the first two steps is to refine your perception of these indicators.

Step 3: Clench your teeth as tightly as you can. (Be careful not to break a tooth.) This is a very tense feeling, bad for guitar playing. Now unclench your teeth, back to a relaxed feeling. As in the previous steps, clench your teeth a bit less than before. This is still a tense feeling—one to be avoided in guitar playing. And as in the previous steps, alternately clench and unclench, each time clenching with a little less force, until your last clench is barely perceptible. Again, your goal is to gradually hone your perception of even the barest hint of tension.

Step 4: Breathe normally, in a relaxed manner. This a a relaxed feeling, good for guitar playing. Now breathe irregularly, as though you’re very nervous or scared. This is a tense feeling, bad for guitar playing. Then breathe normally, back to the relaxed feeling. Now breathe irregularly slightly less than before—although you’re not as tense as before, this is still a tense feeling, one to be avoided in guitar playing. Then back to normal breathing. As in the previous steps, alternately breathe irregularly and normally, dialing down the irregular breathing until it’s barely perceptible. Again, your goal is to gradually develop your perception of even the barest hint of irregular breathing.

Note: The tension you feel in steps 3 and 4 is absolutely unnecessary in guitar playing. Teeth clenching and irregular breathing serve no useful purpose in playing. They should be minimized as much as possible—ideally, they should be eliminated.

Everything that I’ll write in the next few weeks begins with this basic exercise. Without a refined perception of tension, you’ll be unable to refine the efficiency of your technique. Indeed, all technical practice will be worthless, as you’ll have no idea what feeling you’re aiming to acquire. Instead, you’ll merely reinforce tension through repetition without a clear aim.

Occasionally I’m told that I obsess too much over irrelevant details. For example, I’ve been taken to task for my contention that irregular breathing is something to avoid—there are excellent musicians who breathe heavily as they play. So what’s the problem?

I don’t agree with this argument. One should be careful about drawing conclusions from musicians who apparently violate good technique and yet still play wonderfully. First, they might be able to get away with substandard technique when they’re young, but it may catch up with them later. Second, they may have to work harder than they would if they had better technique. The reality is that musicians are often judged by an inadequate sample of their work. We hear them on stage in their prime, or in heavily edited recordings. We seldom see the true amount of work they put into reaching their high standards. And it might take decades to see the true effect of substandard technique.

We also tend to see virtuosos as pristine archetypes. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, virtuosos are very different from you and me. They seem fully formed, stepping from a clamshell like Botticelli’s Venus, perfect in every way from the beginning. Their minds are in the clouds, focused on high art. Surely they don’t obsess over prosaic minutiae like irregular breathing.

Actually, they do, at least the good ones do. About ten years ago I was practicing a difficult left hand shift. Gradually I noticed that every time I did this shift, I took a quick breath. It wasn’t terribly overt—just a tiny breath right at the moment of the shift. But nonetheless, there it was, every time. It seemed unlikely that, with normal breathing, I would just happen to be breathing in whenever I did this shift. So obviously this little breath was a sign of nervous tension. With that in mind, I practiced breathing normally during this shift, until I could do the shift with no alteration of my normal breathing. And I mentally patted myself on the back for this bit of insight.

A short while later, I happened to be talking on the phone to Jason Vieaux. Remembering this little insight, I began to describe to him my taking a nervous breath while practicing a left hand shift. Before I got very far, he broke in with “did you work on breathing normally while practicing the shift?” Turns out he knew exactly what I was talking about, and had worked on it himself when he was in his early teens. As I hung up after our conversation, I reflected that this was one of many reasons why Vieaux is a virtuoso and I’m not: what I belatedly discovered in my 40s he already knew and resolved in his teens.

As it turns out, minutiae are the bread and butter of a virtuoso’s practice time. That’s good enough for me.

——[My next update will be September 17, 2012]——

The Road Not Taken Is Sometimes the Right Road

Please forgive this late post. Usually I try to have something up by the end of the first weekend of the month. But this weekend was a holiday and I had family in town. So I couldn’t get to writing a post until today. This post will be brief.

August started badly. By about the second week I got very discouraged, and had to admit that I was getting nowhere. The situation was this: although I could hit i and m alternation pretty well at 90, I simply couldn’t crack that barrier. No matter how much I tried, 90 was a wall I couldn’t breach.

Yet today I’m more optimistic. Over the last two weeks, I’ve tried something new. Almost immediately the 90 barrier melted away. This morning I hit 120 on a fairly extended scale. Further, I tried this new approach with one of my students yesterday. Up until then, her fastest scale speed with i and m alternation was also about 90. Within one hour of working with my  approach, she hit 104 cleanly. I asked her to keep at it, and we’ll see how she’s doing at her next lesson.

It’s too early to know whether I’m on to something. And I’d like to try it with some other students, to give me a more varied sample than just two people. Nonetheless, I’ll start writing up in detail what I’m doing. Since I need to cover a lot of ground, I’ll go back to posting every week. I hope I’ll also have some good progress to report.


Ironically, my new approach is something I’d found last year. But rather than pursuing it, I instead drifted off in another direction. Now I’m thinking I might have made more progress had I singlemindedly pursued what I’d found last year. In my defense, there was much to deflect me. Interestingly, I’ve also noticed that the 2011 post in which I discussed this new approach drew no comments whatsoever. Which leads me to think that if I and everyone else fail to see that a different approach might work, then maybe it’s a sign that it’s the right approach.

More anon.

——[My next update will be September 10, 2012]——

Busting on Bach

If I’m going to beat something into the ground, then let it be Bach. More than most composers, Bach has a way of making hard labor worthwhile, however relentless it may be. I can tolerate anything so long as the result is a better ability to play something by Bach. He had the inscrutable ability to transform musical elements into something unprosaic. In his hands, scales and chords no longer seem the hum-drum ingredients of mindless drilling. Rather, they become the finely wrought beams and girders of a grand edifice.

It’s a good thing, too, because my project isn’t getting any easier.

When I play scales, there’s a curious disconnect between what I feel in the moment of playing and what I hear as I listen to a recording. As I play, my whole body screams that it’s too fast. Yet when I listen to a playback, I’m struck by how slow it sounds. Apparently relativity is more than a description of physics. Consider a car on a racetrack: in the driver’s seat is a NASCAR champion, and in the passenger seat is a Nervous Nelly who’s terrified of speed. When I’m listening, I’m the NASCAR driver, perfectly comfortable with the pedal to the metal. But when I’m playing, I’m the Nervous Nelly frantically begging the driver to slow down every time the car moves faster than a crawl.

I need to gradually trick my body into feeling comfortable at faster tempos. At the moment, however, my body ain’t buying what I’m selling. So on it goes.

Over the last week I’ve begun my practice sessions with quick staccato alternation. The tempo isn’t fast—I begin at two notes per click at 55 and gradually work up to 80. What’s fast is the exchange between i and m. There’s nothing new about this. Many guitarists recommend this for developing fast alternation, and I’ve done it before myself. My rationale is that light playing, for all the real good it does, isn’t enough. Light playing by itself fails to develop the quick snap and strength I need to drive a finger directly through a string at speed. So for now I’m walking a tightrope between the lightness needed for ease and the strength and quickness needed for controlled speed.

Below is a video progress report. The piece is Bach’s Two Part Invention No. 8. (I intend to record this with a young student of mine later this summer.) I warmed up for about ten minutes, then turned on the camera and did three takes. The video below is the third take. The metronome is set at 90. I’d be happier with 100, but the Nervous Nelly in me won’t yet allow it. Two things bother me. First, there’s a bit too much scraping on the wound strings. Second, I don’t like the looks of m—it sure looks like it’s pulling to the side as it plays.

But enough about me. Judge for yourself.

A New Posting Schedule

As you might have noticed, there have been no posts for the last two weeks. My apologies for this. I’ve concluded, however, that there’s no point in posting when I’ve nothing new to say. Doing so is an imposition on your time and patience. Further, it waters down whatever useful things I’ve written over the last year and a half.

I am, however, soldiering on. In fact, lately I’m feeling better about my prospects. Over the course of this project, I’ve boiled away some things that don’t work. What’s left is a basic process that needs more time to gel. If things continue to improve, I’ll write up a full report of how I went about it.

Of course, if I don’t improve, then it’s back to the drawing board.

For the rest of this project, I’ll report at the end of each month. This will include a video of whatever I happen to be working on at the time. My goal for the end of July is to post a video of Bach’s Invention 8—at least my half of the guitar duet version I’m playing. Lately I’ve been hitting it pretty reliably at 80. But I want my performance tempo to be no less than 90, so I’m trying to inch it upward.

By the way, it’s interesting how the left hand can sabotage the right. For example, in the following passage, I’ve a left hand shift down the fourth string during a sequence of sixteenth notes:

Often this little shift creates a tiny burst of nervous tension that slows down my right hand. Yet in the following passage, all my shifts are either on an eighth note or take advantage of an open string:

...so this passage creates no nervous tension, and I can play it easily compared to the previous example. Obviously I need to practice the previous passage until there’s no nervous tension whatsoever.

You can expect my next post on Monday, July 30. I hope to have good progress to report.

The One Who Won’t Go Away

Yes, I’m still here. My ultimate goal still eludes me. But little things keep me going. For example, this week I decided to see if my free stroke alternation has improved—since my main goal is to improve my rest stroke, I’ve virtually ignored free stroke during my right hand alternation practice sessions. To my surprise, when I tried doing free stroke alternation, I immediately felt awkward. Switching back to rest stroke felt like coming home to a better place. For me, this is momentous. Rest stroke has always felt like something other than my native language. I could do it, but never with the comfort or fluency of free stroke. So when rest stroke starts to feel like home, I don’t take it lightly.

Obviously I’m troubled by the fact that, kilometers from my goal, I’m progressing in millimeters. It heartens me, however, to know that I’m far more patient now than I was in my youth. When I first began playing the guitar in my teens, patience was alien to me. This, by the way, goes a long way to explain the current flaws in my playing. But today I’m far better able to practice with an untroubled mind. Frustration and impatience are symptoms of emotional baggage that throw obstacles in one’s path. If each morning I can confront my recalcitrant right hand with equanimity, then I’m more likely to sustain the work needed to solve my problems. Mind you, I’ll not overstate my serenity. I’m not Buddha, and the toddler in me is still there banging his little fists on the highchair. But he’s faded enough that he no longer runs the show.

As an aside, here’s something I like to tell students who are off to college: you can learn a lot, though it might be something your teachers never intended to teach you. During my project, for example, I’ve noticed that I’m sometimes dismissed as one who willfully ignores good advice by those who are telling me things I’ve tried many times before or things that make no sense. (An example of the latter is one who apparently thinks my technique would improve if I just ditched the metronome.) I get the distinct impression that some would be happy if I just admitted failure and quietly went away. This spotlights a delicate matter that some teachers would rather ignore.

There’s an old saying: “victory has a thousand fathers—defeat is an orphan.” Everyone is happy to associate with someone who succeeds. Guitar teachers are no different. We swell with pride over the students on our watch who get better. But what of the students who don’t? To be sure, some fail because they don’t do what they should. Obviously it’s unfair to blame teachers for the failure of students who ignore them. But what about the students who do what they’re told, and yet they fail? Very often they’re shunted aside. I’m reminded of a story one of my teachers told me. He was working with a student who, after working with another teacher, had come to him with severe hand problems. This student claimed he was practicing many hours a day. To see if this was true, my teacher talked to friends of this student. They emphatically confirmed that the student was an obsessive practicer. Yet when my teacher delicately tried to raise the subject of hand problems with the student’s teacher, the teacher airily dismissed this with “isn’t it amazing what some students will say to get out of practicing?”

To those who don’t teach for a living, it might be surprising to learn that much of what goes into a high reputation for teaching is a carefully manicured illusion. Bear in mind that I’m not talking about teachers who simply do what they do and let the chips fall where they may regarding their reputation. Rather, I’m talking about those who endlessly twiddle with their brand, ensuring the word goes out that they’re a cut above the rest. Some of this is true enough—some teachers really know what they’re doing, and are in essence broadcasting their real success. But much of this branding is hype. Seen from afar, a particular teacher might bear the look of the one who’ll take you to heights you’d never achieve on your own. Close up, however, you’re confronted with a jaded burnout who capriciously cancels lessons and couldn’t be bothered to teach you how to tie a shoe, much less learn how to play a Bach fugue.

Even good teachers hit a wall in what they can do. Most problems they can help you with, but some problems are more subtle and don’t yield to obvious solutions. Various teachers react in various ways. Some are intrigued by a seemingly unsolvable problem, and see it as a challenge. All too many, however, are annoyed. A student who works hard but inconveniently doesn’t progress goes against the brand. Rather than dimming the brand, it’s easier to blame or dump the student.

I am that inconvenient student. And I’m not going away. How one reacts to this can offer a glimpse into what one is (or would be) as a teacher.

——[My next update will be June 17, 2012]——

Review: Jason Vieaux & Jung Eun Oh

Jason Vieaux & Jung Eun Oh
4:00 pm—June 3, 2012
Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music

It’s become a Guitar Weekend tradition that a Jason Vieaux performance closes out the entire festival. This puts pressure on him. First, he often performs in the greater Cleveland area. So designing a program that’s fresh to an audience already familiar with him takes some planning and adds to his already daunting practice schedule. Further, as the anchor leg of the weekend, Vieaux follows three recital by artists who, inspired by the presence of their fellow artists, make a point of hitting it out of the park. Certainly all three performers did so this time around. Add to that an audience with an appetite whetted by what’s gone before, and you begin to understand why musicians spend so much time in the practice room.

As anyone who’s followed his career knows, Vieaux is up to the challenge. The centerpiece of his concert was the Britten Nocturnal. This is a piece he’s learned fairly recently, but now he has a handful of public performances under his belt. I first heard him perform this in September of last year—it was, I think, his first performance of the Nocturnal. His performance yesterday sounded more lived in, with a heightened eeriness that suits the piece. I’ve long felt that the Nocturnal isn’t quite music, but rather an aural description of somewhere alien and disquieting. After yesterday’s performance, Vieaux noted that the Nocturnal always takes him to another place. “I can be sitting backstage talking about baseball, but when I begin playing the Nocturnal, it just takes over.” Intriguingly, Vieaux compared the Nocturnal to a Mozart sonata: “Every note counts. It’s a very tight piece.”

For the rest of the concert, I must admit to a personal bias. Vieaux and soprano Jung Eun Oh performed both Britten’s folksong arrangements for guitar and voice, and also his Songs of the Chinese. To my ears at least, the shadows of Julian Bream and Peter Pears hung heavy over the concert. Mind you, I’m no fan of the notion of definitive performances, whereby all subsequent performances must inevitably fall short. But the 1965 recording by Bream and Pears is a special case, and has against my will become a template for how I hear the Britten songs. Try as I might to hear these songs with fresh ears, I always miss the imagination and flair that Bream and Pears brought to this music. Certainly some of Bream’s best playing is lavished on this recording. The bar is a high one—even artists on the level of Jason Vieaux and Jung Eun Oh don’t quite match it.

Perhaps it’s just me, but there it is. I doubt the audience shared my reservations.

——[My next update will be June 10, 2012]——

Reviews: Gaëlle Solal—SoloDuo

Gaëlle Solal
4:30 pm—June 2, 2012
Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music

If you’re in a blue mood and need some cheering up, attending a Gaëlle Solal recital might be just the ticket. She’s a bundle of high spirits who seems unjaded about being a concert artist and can’t wait to get before an audience. If you’ve ever seen a musician who appears to need a gun in the back to go on stage, well that ain’t Solal. A couple of times she literally skipped on stage—incidentally, not an easy thing to do in the long and flowing dress she was wearing. And once there, she knows how to hold the stage.

Solal’s program was almost entirely Spanish and Latin American, with a side trip to Turkey. This isn’t a safe choice, as it might quickly prove monotonous. Fortunately Solal has the emotional and imaginative range to pull it off. Her playing is by turns passionate, driven, soulful, moody, or dark, depending on the needs of whatever she’s playing at the moment. Solal also eschews the traditional program notes, instead working written commentary into the program listing itself. We unfortunately missed the full effect of how Solal puts together her recital—she normally includes some creative lighting instructions for her performance. But Mixon Hall has a large glass window behind the stage, and since this was an afternoon recital we couldn’t provide the full darkness that Solal wants at a certain point in her performance. After hearing Solal without her preferred lighting changes, I’m intrigued by what must be the full effect when she plays in a hall that can accommodate her wishes for lighting.

I must confess that I inadvertently almost prevented Solal’s recital from happening. It was my responsibility to drive her from the inn she was staying at to the recital hall. The inn and hall are close by—only about a three minute walk—but I figured she’d be in full concert dress and would appreciate getting to the hall by car. I met with her beforehand to confirm what time she wanted me to pick her up. But we must have gotten our signals crossed, because we ended up with an understanding that was a half hour apart. So when I didn’t show at the time she expected, Solal nonchalantly picked up her guitar and, in full concert dress, hiked over to the hall. I’m relieved to report that she found the incident funny, and her recital went smoothly. Indeed, after the recital she seemed more concerned that I would be embarrassed by the mixup, and assured me that it was her fault. I replied that, no, I’m really trying to sabotage her career, and must try harder next time.

SoloDuo—Matteo Mela & Lorenzo Micheli
8:00 pm—June 2, 2012
Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music

SoloDuo is a sure bet—when you go to their recital, you’ll get the highest quality of ensemble playing. Indeed, they’re so reliable that it’s easy to forget just how hard this is to pull off with the guitar. Just keeping it in tune throughout a concert is a full time job. That two players can shape it to their musical will is a minor miracle.

Matteo Mela and Lorenzo Micheli first played together a little over ten years ago. Though they’re both Italian, they met in, of all places, San Antonio, Texas. Right away, they hit it off musically. Of course, the notion that two Italians will inevitably be simpatico is a notion that even an Italian would find amusing. Indeed, Mela and Micheli are something of an odd couple, with differing techniques and personalities. But almost immediately they vaulted to the top of their field. And they’ve quickly built a discography noted for both its musical excellence and its exploration of little known repertoire.

The hallmark of SoloDuo is its tight ensemble. They favor quickish tempos, though never hectic. Their touch is light and rhythmically incisive. Most remarkable is their ability to maintain a fluid pulse in tandem. Talking to Micheli after the recital, he said that he and Mela are so attuned to each other that when one tries something new, the other seems to know before it happens.

Their program at this recital was a tip of the hat to Presti-Lagoya, the duo par excellence of an earlier generation. SoloDuo proved once again that they take a back seat to no one. It may well be that future guitar duos might find themselves paying tribute to SoloDuo. But for now, SoloDuo is building its legacy one great performance at a time. We’re the lucky ones who’ll someday say we knew them when.

—(Next up: Jason Vieaux & soprano Jung Eun Oh )—

Pavel Steidl Review

Note: I’m attending the 2012 Guitar Weekend, jointly sponsored by the Cleveland Institute of Music and Guitars International. As a nice break from my ongoing project, I’ll review each of the four recitals.

Pavel Steidl
8 pm—June 1, 2012
Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music

In this cookie-cutter world of concert guitarists who are often indistinguishable from one another, Czech guitarist Pavel Steidl is an original. If you want poker-faced seriousness in the straight-laced tradition of stuffy classical concerts, you’ve come to the wrong man. But if you want to see and hear an artist who makes music jump off the page, Steidl is your man.

And see him you must, as well as hear him, for Steidl’s performance is a visual extravaganza. When appropriate to the music, his playing is choreographed with facial tics and hand gestures that convey every emotional twist and turn. If Marcel Marceau had been a guitarist rather than a mime, he might have performed something like this. In a lesser hands, this approach might devolve into rampant silliness. Happily, Steidl isn’t a lesser artist.

Steidl performed his entire recital on a copy of a 19th century Stauffer, built by luthier Bernhard Kresse. This was an apt choice for a program of almost all 19th century music, with one side trip to Bach. It also put to rest any suspicion that a 19th century guitar lacks the punch to put across the virtuoso music of its time. Okay, it’s not going to out-shout a modern Gernot Wagner. But with the right player, it can certainly hold its own.

Steidl’s playing of 19th century music is thoroughly in the atavistic tradition of the improvising virtuoso who sees the printed page as a starting point. This tradition sadly is rare in our own age of strict fidelity to the score. To be sure, some of today’s classical players gingerly step beyond the written text. But where most others dip a toe in the water, Steidl shouts “cannonball!” and flings himself into the pool. He’s a welcome reminder that in an earlier age audiences wanted to be astonished, and weren’t shy about voicing displeasure when the artist didn’t deliver. I doubt Steidl would ever be hooted out of a 19th century drawing room.

To be sure, this is a dangerous game to play. On last night’s program, Steidl’s approach worked best for the Ferrante, Mertz, and Paganini. I’m not convinced that it suits Sor, which was also on the program. Be that as it may, Steidl wasn’t put on this earth to play music as I think it should be played. I’m glad to hear another opinion of how Sor should be played, even if it crosses a line that I wouldn’t cross. To Steidl’s credit, he had the good judgment to tone down his unbuttoned approach during his performance of Bach’s Chaconne. Here Steidl was all business, albeit somewhat more romanticized than most. It suited me, as I often find performances of Bach too sterile.

Steidl closed with a encore of his own composition, an eerie work that included a bit of Tuvan throat singing. You read that right, and I won’t try to describe this otherworldly effect. Suffice it to say that if you haven’t yet experienced Steidl live, you owe it to yourself to do so. He had last night’s audience eating out of his hand.

—(Next up: Gaëlle Solal and Soloduo)—

The Long Haul

I need to rethink what I’m writing here. Too often I find myself with nothing more to report than that I’m still plugging away. In the long haul of improving one’s playing, it can’t be any other way. But it makes for uncompelling reading.

What bothers me is that there’s so little to see, hear, or read that seems apt to my situation. Much of the advice that’s been brought up is stuff I’ve seen and tried many times before. But I’m not convinced that there’s nothing out there. Rather, it’s simply that good information is drowned out by the noise. Guitar teaching is a small and fractious world in which the loudest and most self-serving often rise to the top. To be sure, a few good people get there too. But their example is lost in the din of those who continually thump their own tubs. (A good example is the concert artist who attaches registered trademarks to his teaching methods—this is someone who long ago lost touch with keeping the ego in check.)

Speaking of humility, nothing so sharpens it as very publicly announcing a goal and then very conspicuously falling short of it. Honestly, I really believed I’d have more to show after a year and five months of work. I’ve learned much, and I think I’m a better teacher for it. I’ve even thought of distilling this blog to the things I believe are essential to right hand speed. But I’m brought up short by the very pertinent fact that I’ve not yet succeeded. It seems premature to say that I’m sure of anything. Actually I am sure of some things, but without the goods, I’ve no authority on which to stand in saying it. Absent accomplishment, I’m just another guy talking who can’t back it up. We’ve enough of that in the guitar world.

Going forward, I want to find and identify those who really know what they’re doing. Then, in a nutshell, I want to describe the barrier I’m running into and see if they have anything good to tell me. In doing this, I want to avoid the usual suspects: those whose reputations are built on résumés and hot air.

Exactly how will I go about this? I’ve no idea. But embarking on a journey without a map seems to suit me.

•                                    •                                    •

Today I was reading an article about Julian Bream, who I regard as the finest concert guitarist of the 20th century. Talking about his retirement from concert life, he said the following:

“But I still have a daily routine—scales and arpeggios, a couple of Villa-Lobos studies and one or two of passages from the Concierto de Aranjuez or Britten’s Nocturnal—the ones that I never could play.”

It’s humbling to know that an artist of Bream’s caliber has things that elude his mastery. But I take inspiration from his determination to keep chipping away at his flaws.

——[My next update will be May 27, 2012]——

It’s a Virtue—Or So I’m Told

My apologies for posting a day late. Sunday was a Mother’s Day, so it was busier than usual.

I’ve hit a wall. Or maybe it’s better described as a giant cotton bale. Unlike a wall, a cotton bale gives a little. You push, it gives. You push a little more, it gives a little less. You keep pushing harder, it keeps giving less. And then, finally, it stops giving at all. At that point, it might as well be a brick wall. But at least it was soft enough initially to make the impact a comfortable one.

Comfortable or not, I’m not getting anywhere by repeatedly flinging myself against the bale. I’m backing up and going back to basics. For the first half hour of my practice sessions, I’m doing i & m alternation very slowly—roughly two hits per click at 70. Throughout this, I’m carefully observing both the feel (a and c should feel light and easy, as though they’re not there) and the look (a-c should move with m at all times). I’ve done this before, but I believe I’ve been too impatient in the past. I’ve sped up too soon, without having the correct movement and feel so deeply ingrained that they stay correct at any speed. Patience—a virtue I’ve not had in abundance—is now my mantra.

During the second half hour I’m working on two Bach Inventions: Nos. 4 & 8. (They’re guitar duet transcriptions.) Both require much alternation, and I prefer to do most of it rest stroke. So they’re good pieces with which to try out what I practiced in the first half hour. At no time to I go any faster than where I can maintain correct movement and feel. Along with the Inventions, I’m also slowly playing through El Colibri. This morning I got it up to four notes per click at 60. Again, however, there’s no rush in this. Whatever time it needs to settle in, I’ll give it.

By the way, another reason I’m using the Bach Inventions is that I’m having a student work up four of them. I’ve told her that this summer I want us to record them so I can post them on my web site. I’ll include some text that gives a little background on the Bach Inventions. (I’ve done something similar before. If you haven’t already seen it, here’s a link to my recordings and text on Fernando Sor’s Op. 44bis.) That will give my student something to shoot for. Not coincidentally, it’ll also give me something to work at. Her rest stroke alternation is already better than mine. So I better keep up.

Patiently, of course.

——[My next update will be May 20, 2012]——

New Day, Same Old Right Hand

The student recital was yesterday. Unfortunately no video is forthcoming—the sound on the recording I made is virtually inaudible. On the bright side, my students played well. I was particularly pleased that the two students who had pieces with right hand alternation had little trouble pulling it off in front of an audience.

My right hand, however, didn’t do so well. Clearly it’s not ready for prime time. While I’m disappointed, I’m not surprised. All along I’ve tinkered with turning the modest improvement in the practice room into a performance ready technique. It hasn’t happened yet. So I need to focus more on getting my right hand off the lift and onto the road. A technique that works only when there’s no pressure is no technique at all.

During my practice sessions, I’ll concentrate more on recreating the pressure of a performance. One way to do this is something I (and other teachers) do with students. I often have students repeat a difficult passage ten times. On the tenth time, there’s a rule: if you make a mistake, you have to repeat the passage ten more times. The idea here is to become accustomed to the “one and done” pressure of playing for an audience. It also has the side benefit of putting extra repetitions where they’re most needed.

I’ll also start playing more for my students—briefly, of course, as I don’t want to cut into their lesson time for my own benefit. Actually, a little of this is good for students. When they see their teacher working to improve, they tend to take their own practice more seriously.

Most important is that I need to pin down and consistently recreate the mindset that improves my right hand. I’m struggling with a mind and body that’s deeply accustomed to doing things a certain way. If I’m extremely careful in the practice room, I can just barely spark a flicker of a new way of thinking and doing. But this new way is incredibly tenuous. Any little thing can snuff it out. The pressure of playing before an audience can destroy it, leaving me to the same old mindset and reflexes that get me nowhere.

Teaching an old dog new tricks: it’s funny how an old cliché takes on deeper resonance when one lives it oneself.

——[My next update will be May 13, 2012]——

Airworthy?

Next Sunday, May 6th, I’m playing duets with some of my students on a Cleveland Classical Guitar Society open recital. Three of the pieces—The Flatt Pavan, Drewrie’s Accordes, and Bach’s Two Part Invention No. 4—require scales at a modestly quick speed. This last week I worked on those, trying to get my rest stroke alternation out of the wind tunnel and into the air.

So far, the result has exploded in the hanger. I did a run-through with one of my students yesterday. My rest stroke alternation felt so clunky that I had to rely on free stroke most of the way. Needles to say, I’m disappointed with this. After a year and four months of work, I expect better.

For the moment, I’m assuming this is a temporary setback. Perhaps I need to calm down a bit and let all the work I’ve done settle in. I suspect I’m nervous about putting rest stroke on stage, and that’s sabotaging my fluency. So this week I’ll try again to get my rest stroke alternation off the ground. Although I can certainly do the upcoming performance with free stroke, that would be a cop out. I’d rather try and fail with rest stroke than succeed with free stroke.

By the way, my teenaged student had no problem with his rest stroke alternation. Interestingly, his career goal is to become a cardiac surgeon. Maybe if I ask him nicely, he’ll graft his right hand onto my right arm.

——[My next update will be May 6, 2012]——

The Plodding Hummingbird

The week before saw a bit of pain creeping into my right shoulder. So I set aside my normal right hand session and instead worked on learning El Colibri—very slowly. I figured if I had to slow down to give my shoulder a rest, I might as well learn a new piece. With the metronome never above 50, I worked out the right hand fingerings. In some places I use normal i and m alternation, in others I use p and i, and in others I use a, m, i. The varied fingerings make the piece easier to play, and also allow bits of relative relaxation within the piece. Part of my approach to right hand speed is to be smarter about right hand fingerings. Constant i and m alternation might be more macho, but I’m more interested in results rather than proving a point.

Though glacially slow, I’ve now got El Colibri memorized. But all the other hummingbirds are rolling their eyes at mine.

By the way, if this pain keeps cropping up, I’ll finally stick a crowbar in my wallet and see a doctor. Until now, I’ve never done this because I can always easily make the pain go away: just stop practicing right hand speed. Since I don’t, however, intend to give up on my project, then I need to get this pain problem squared away. (For those of you living in more civilized countries, medical care is something many in the United States forgo because of the expense. We’d rather entrust ourselves to the expensive and selective embrace of insurance companies than allow the specter of socialism destroy us.)

In two weeks, I’ll be performing with some of my students for a Cleveland Guitar Society open recital. Most of what we’ll play is well within my normal speed limit. With two of my students, however, I’ll have to do rest stroke scales at a speed I’m not yet comfortable with. I can, if necessary, play these scales at tempo with free stroke. But I really would like to put to the test what I’ve been working on for the last year and four months. So that’s what I’m shooting for.

If possible, I’ll record a video of the results. Bear in mind, though, that my students might object to being put on Youtube. So anything I want to post is contingent on their permission.

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

Through New Eyes

T’was a busy day, so this will be a short post.

This was a week of numbers. Start at a particular tempo, work the metronome up one notch at a time, write down what tempo I end at, and then try to do a little better the next day. But at no point did I rush the process. I stuck to my guns, demanding a Barrueco-like precision before upping the tempo. So it’ll take whatever time it takes.

Am I getting better? I wish I knew. All I know is that I’m staying the course with this approach for a while.

I can say this, however: it’s coloring everything I see and hear when I watch other guitarists play. Today I attended a concert by students of the Cleveland Institute of Music. This is a high level program. But even at this level, I see signs of the very thing I’m struggling with myself. When I see and hear a player slightly muff something, I can sense in the player a little of the inner turmoil that I’m trying to overcome. And when I see and hear a player smoothly sail through knotty passages, I sense the work and emotional discipline it took to make that happen.

If nothing else, the last year has cultivated in me a deeper respect for those who’ve triumphed over human frailty. These rare individuals reshaped themselves into something altogether singular. They serve music with a fidelity that few can approach. Submitting oneself to the needs of something higher than oneself is a quality that commands respect. It’s worth it to me to come slightly closer to understanding what that means, even if I fall short myself.

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

Chasing Barrueco

I’ve adjusted my practice sessions to reflect my more quiet approach. I begin with five minutes of finger pushups. Then I set the metronome at 60 and begin playing i and m rest stroke quarter notes, having each finger lightly release immediately after sounding the string. I do this on all six strings. Then I do the same thing double time, playing eighth notes on all six strings. Then the same thing with sixteenths on all six strings.

After this, still with the metronome at 60, I very lightly play the Mudarra scale excerpt. First I do it in a normal tone color, near the right side of the soundhole. Next I do it sul ponticello. Then I do it sul tasto. For each of these repetitions, I aim to play cleanly and evenly. Someone listening should hear playing every bit as good as Manuel Barrueco’s. (Albeit slower and quieter.) If a repetition goes badly, then I start over with the three different reps. But I’m not allowed to bail out on a particular rep—if I make a mistake, I must first play through the mistake and finish the rep. Only after playing perfectly each rep at each different tone color can I then increase the tempo. And I increase the tempo only one notch.

Here’s my thinking. Light playing helps ingrain playing of minimal tension, but it’s inherently sloppy. On the other hand, controlled playing helps ingrain accuracy, but it inherently increases nervous tension. Thus, I’m trying to experience and ingrain the upside of each, while carefully rationing their downsides. Further, by requiring myself to start over when a rep goes bad, I’m dealing with the problem of playing under pressure, but in a small dose. After all, it doesn’t take long to play all three reps. So at this point, screwing up a rep doesn’t carry an overwhelming penalty. Obviously as I get better, I’ll turn up the heat and make the penalty for a mistake more severe.

I do this for roughly a half hour, seeing how far up the metronome I can get. Since I require perfection for each trio of reps, and I’m upping the tempo only one notch at a time (60, 61, 62, etc.), I don’t get all that far. (The best I did last week was 88.) So be it. I’m taking to heart the idea that speed can’t be forced. As one guitarist commented to me last year, one can’t make a plant grow faster by tugging on the roots.

Why the three different tone colors? Because the strings feel different for each, and I want to become comfortable playing fast rest stroke alternation at any point on the strings.

In the last fifteen or twenty minutes, I play four pieces:

• Carcassi Op. 60 No. 7
• Giuliani Op. 48, No. 5
• Brouwer Etude 7
• a bit of Recuerdos de la Alhambra

I begin each at a tempo at which I can play perfectly, from beginning to end. Again, my goal is to play as cleanly as Barrueco. If I do well at the previous day’s tempo, then I try it one notch faster. If that’s successful then it becomes my starting tempo for the next day.

After that, it’s on to right hand sweeps and rasguedos, followed by stretching.

All through the playing, I keep it very quiet, to emphasize a very easy feel. But if my hand feels good during a particular rep, then I don’t mind if my playing creeps up to a mezzo forte. I’ll continue practicing this way until at least the end of this month. Then I’ll evaluate how it’s going.

I can report, however, an encouraging development. Yesterday I was working with a teenaged student who has better rest stroke alternation than mine. We were playing though Drewrie’s Accordes, The Flatt Pavin, and The Galliard to the Flatt Pavin. (Yes, from “The Renaissance Guitar” anthology by Frederick Noad. I love that book.) Usually I have trouble keeping up with this student. But yesterday things went well—I didn’t struggle to stay with him. It was also good motivation for the student: what teenager wants to be outrun by a middle aged man?

By the way, in the photo above I’m pretty sure Barrueco is laughing because he heard I was trying to catch him.

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

Whatever

No progress to report. No new insights to report. No new video to post. No nothing. Just a lot of quiet repetitions, grappling with my old nemesis.

Since I’ve nothing new to say, maybe I should try to describe exactly what it is that I’m trying to weed out of my playing. Try this. Stand and allow your arms to hang loosely at your side. With very little effort, swing them gently back and forth, as though they’re hanging from well-oiled hinges at your shoulders. This is your arms in their most relaxed state.

Now stop and tense your arm muscles as tightly as you can. Every muscle in your arms, down to your fingertips, should feel tight almost to the point of pain. Try to move your arms while maintaining this rigid tension. This is your arms in their most tense state.

The two states described above are opposite extremes: one extremely relaxed, the other extremely tense. Anyone can feel the difference. And anyone, of course, can see that extreme tension is a bad state to be in for playing the guitar. But distinguishing between these extremes isn’t enough for a guitarist. To reach a high level of playing, an aspiring guitarist must be able to distinguish between finer shades of tension and relaxation.

The problem is that those who don’t know this don’t know that they don’t know. Those who do know this either don’t know how important it is, or don’t know how to describe it.

Here’s an example. It’s an instructional video by a player who can do right hand speed far better than me. It’s a roughly 13 minute video, but I ask you to pay close attention to the part between 3:20 and 3:55—beginning where he says “It’s very important to feel the freedom of motion on the strings.”

The information between 3:20 and 3:55 is the most important thing this player has to say to someone like me who can’t do right hand speed. In fact, he could dispense with everything else on the video and describe in far more detail what he was talking about in those 35 seconds. I’m not saying that everything else on this video is unimportant. Those other things are important. What I’m saying is that those other things are already being said elsewhere, and they’re being said in a way that’s pretty well understood. The thing I’m centering on isn’t said often enough nor well enough. It needs more than saying—it needs to be shouted from the mountain top.

A crucial aspect of good teaching is this: what is it that should be emphasized? Many things must be said, but what is it that must repeated until it really sinks in? Touching on this, here’s something I sometimes say to students. There are two ways of knowing something. The first is “yeah, yeah, I get it—whatever.” The second way is “Oh yes! I get it!”

The first way is useless.

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

Light Speed

This week I stayed true to my determination to play quietly. To be honest, I don’t much like it. The guitar is an intrinsically quiet instrument. It makes sense to to play out, getting the sound across the lip of the stage and into the audience. As a public speaker, I’ve never been one to mumble and stare at my shoes when addressing an audience. My desire to be heard carries over to guitar playing. So playing softly all the time goes against my grain.

And that’s precisely why I should keep doing it.

To be clear about something that’s gradually come into focus during this project, I’m more inclined to lean toward directions in which I’ve never before wanted to go. More and more, I’m starting to see the first year of this project as a debunking of things I wanted to believe would work. Speed bursts, for example, are something I wanted to work. After all, I’ve often seen them recommended by players who can do speed well. And they appeared to offer quick results—remember, at only one month into this project, I could hit a burst at 184. Ultimately, however, I found speed bursts to be a dead end. They aren’t the same as a sustained fast scale. The feel for one simply doesn’t work for the other. I’m not saying speed bursts are useless. They’re great for tiny kernels of speed, and certainly they convinced me that I had the potential to succeed in learning to play fast scales. (By the way, that’s no small thing.) But for sustained scale passages, speed bursts just didn’t get me anywhere. So I dropped them, and had to find another path.

And thus I went, shedding ideas that didn’t pan out, as a snake sheds skins that no longer fit.

Having started a new path (again), I’d like to see preliminary evidence that it’s a promising path. And I believe I’ve found it. One thing became clear during the week: playing lightly made it easier to notice the internal tension that hinders my right hand speed. Subtle twinges of tension that flew below the radar when I played with greater force now stand out in sharper relief. Here’s a way to think of it. Imagine standing on a busy city sidewalk during rush hour. Within all the noise from cars, trucks, and people bustling about, imagine that somewhere close by is a cricket chirping. With all that ambient racket, you’re unlikely to hear the cricket. But now imagine you and the cricket are in a sealed and soundproof room. With all the distractions removed, the cricket is easy to hear. Playing lightly does something similar for me.

It’s too early to know whether this will pan out or is another dead end. I’ll stay with it for at least a few more weeks.

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

Pianissimo Man

Things seemed to be creeping ahead for a while. Last week, working with the Mudarra Galliard scales, I was able to inch up the tempo day by day. One day a successful hit at 102, the next day a hit at 104, the next day a hit 105.

Then I hit a wall.

Two things in particular convinced me that I needed to try something different. The first was on March 7, when I had a good session going. I’d worked my way to 105 and had some good hits at that tempo. Then I got up to transfer a load of laundry from the washer to the dryer. This took no more than two minutes, but when I returned to the guitar my right hand speed was gone. What the hell? So I dropped all the way back to 80 and slowly worked my way back up. It took a good ten minutes to get back over 100.

I wasn’t pleased.

The second sobering episode happened the following Monday, March 12. It was just a bad day. I could get nowhere near 100, and spent the entire session trying to recapture what I’d done the previous week.

One of my criteria for good right hand speed is that it must be consistent. I don’t want a right hand that comes and goes. The two episodes described above just won’t do. If my right hand speed is unreliable, then I need to try something else.

I’ve decided to try something I’ve described before, but never really stuck with. For the rest of this month, maybe longer, I’m going to do my right hand alternation sessions at a very low volume level. The idea is this: when alternating in thin air, or merely tapping on a table top, my hand feels very light and relaxed, and I can easily hit a very fast tempo. On a guitar string, of course, this ease vanishes. But I need to gradually work the ease I feel away from the guitar into playing on a string.

This isn’t a new idea. I’ve brought it up before, and I’ve seen it recommended by other guitarists. But I’ve shied away from it for several reasons. The most obvious is that I don’t like the wimpy sound of playing lightly. But there’s another more important reason. I’ve found that playing lightly badly influences the control I have over my accuracy and tone.

Force and speed don’t get on well together. Each has its advantages. A more forceful stroke makes control easier. With enough force, the finger better controls the string rather than letting the string tension deflect the finger. On the other hand, a lighter stroke more easily produces speed. But the problem is that the advantage of each hinders the advantage of the other. Increase the force and you increase control, but at the cost of ease and speed—increase the ease and you increase speed, but at the cost of control.

Until now, I’ve leaned toward force. Not excessively so, mind you, but enough to control my accuracy and tone. That’s not surprising. After all, any classical guitarist worth his or her salt is always striving to control sound. Few of us are satisfied with speed without good sound.

(Some are, but let’s not go there.)

Now, however, I’m willing to go further toward a light touch, even if it means temporarily sacrificing accuracy and tone. I believe progress lies along a road that will feel wrong, at least for a while. It seems obvious that trying only what feels comfortable and correct won’t get me where I want to go, else I’d have gotten there already. Further, while I don’t want a wimpy sound, I do want to control speed at any volume, including pianissimo. By the way, I’ve noticed that many guitarists who can play fast scales can’t really vary the sound of their fast scales. Rarely do I hear a fast picado scale played pianissimo. Pianists, however, routinely play fast scales at every shade of volume. Perhaps this is a real world manifestation of the difficulty in controlling a light touch on the guitar.

So it’s piano, piano, and more piano for me. At least I won’t be disturbing the neighbors any time soon.

——[My next update will be March 25, 2012]——