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]——