Moving On

No, I’m still not dead.

I’ve found a new project. My goal now is to make a full length CD. This is merely for my own pleasure. I’m not getting any younger. Someday when I can no longer play, I’d like to listen to a recording of myself when I still could play and fondly reminisce about the good old days. As for now, these are the good old days.

I’ve pried open my wallet to buy some decent recording equipment. If you’re curious, you can see it here. So far I have two pieces recorded. Since I’m slow to learn new pieces, this will take a while to finish.

This also dovetails nicely with my old right hand project. The pieces I’ll be recording sometimes challenge my right hand speed. In the piece I just recorded, for example, the right hand arpeggios pushed the outer limit of my ability. (You’ll hear them at the 3:25 mark of the video below.) Thus, my quest to improve my right hand isn’t entirely aborted. It’s simply taken a backseat to something more enjoyable.

Here’s one of the pieces I’ve recorded so far. It’s the first movement of Giuliani’s Op. 15. One movement down, two to go. Hope you enjoy it. And be assured that failure in one project doesn’t preclude starting—and enjoying—another.

Failure and Beyond

I’ve failed.

There, I said it. And I don’t like it. But it is what it is.

I’m moving on to other things. Currently, I’m trying to learn one piece in which I do everything as perfectly as I can. No cutting corners, and no settling for “close enough.” I want to play the piece exactly as I hear it in my head. And when I get there, I plan to make a recording and write up a detailed study guide for the piece. So that’s my new project.

By the way, I’m surprised to find that I also have a left hand. Who knew?

Perhaps all isn’t lost in my quest for right hand speed. But it’s clear my problems are too fundamental to be solved piecemeal. Rather, I must begin at the beginning, and that’s where my new project starts. By rebuilding my playing bit by bit, I may actually improve my right hand speed. I’m simply not focusing solely on speed. I just want to get back to learning and playing music. My right hand will either improve or it won’t.

Nonetheless, “Building A Better Right Hand” shouldn’t fizzle out with no ending. It needs an epilog. Below is a brief summary of what I feel are the most important posts of this blog. Others might pick up the baton and take it farther. I hope my experience helps.

These first two posts I regard as the most important things I learned during my project:

The Brass Tacks of Technique
As early as, possible, every guitar student should be taught something like this.

Training the Musical Pooch
An overview of how to cultivate speed.

These next five posts touch on concepts important to developing a relaxed technique:

Calibrating Tension
Pianissimo Man
Light Speed
The importance of gradually parsing tension when building speed.

Rethinking Speed Bursts
Speed bursts are often recommended as a way of developing speed. Maybe they shouldn’t.

The Nitty-Gritty
A discussion of “micro-breaks.”

The irony of thinking I have something to say about speed when I can’t do speed isn’t lost on me. But in finding a worthwhile approach, attention must be paid to those who can’t do speed. After all, who better is there to define the dimensions of the problem? Those who can often don’t adequately fathom those who can’t. If nothing else, my experience may point to a better way.

Progress is often built on the wreckage of failure. I’ll never be the statue. But there’s something to being the pedestal.

Rising from the Ashes

No, I’m not dead, although you might be forgiven for thinking so. My last post was November 18, 2012. Shortly thereafter, I became frustrated with my lack of progress. So I threw up my hands—both left and right—and quit.

Nonetheless, from time to time I’d experiment with i and m alternation. Usually the results were dismal and didn’t inspire me to continue. But lately I’ve been at it again. The results are more encouraging.

I’ve no desire to repeat myself, as I felt I was doing toward the end of this blog. So I’ll quietly continue working at it. If I get anywhere, I’ll report the results.

“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]——