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picados and strength
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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picados and strength
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(yes another picado post) I have recently read a few things that kind of changed my ideas about how picado works. First, Grisha said that you needed a strong forearm to have a strong picado. Ricardo said that stamina was a limiting factor for long picado runs. And Todd believes that Sabicas' picado was great because of the great power he could bring to bear. It doesn't seem a coincidence that these three great players all mention strength to be an important factor. Now, my experience is dovetailing here because I am starting from a position of weakness. For almost a year, my middle finger was sore and I didn't use it for picado at all-- I switched to ia. Now, in the last couple months I have been gradually switching back to im and trying to build it up. First I noticed, that a lot of runs that I used to be able to get through were stopping. Always on an m as it rose (toward the ceiling). I also noticed it just seemed to take a lot of energy to get through the string sometimes. Also, some bad habits of tension, gripping, curling up unused fingers occured. And finally, I noticed that after awhile, my hand would get tired and performance would deteriorate. It seems to me that this experience corroborates the earlier comments. Now, it's not really a great discovery to say that if you don't play with your m figner for a year then it's going to be tough coming back quickly, but to me it was the way it was difficult. These symptoms are ones that happen to lots of people and inhibit them from playing good picado--whether or not they have been injured. Luckily, my improvement has been quick. My procedure is to play two octave scales, quite slowly and with a relaxed hand. I attempt to get the i and especially m fingers to slide over the string without much resistance. I do about 12 of these, then switch to a couple in-position runs. Starting very slow. Within a couple weeks, I was getting up to pretty fast speeds without the bad habits that had been dogging me. So it seems that the strength can build up pretty quickly.
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Date Jun. 12 2006 17:43:59
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Francisco
Posts: 879
Joined: Jun. 13 2005
From: SW USA
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RE: picados and strength (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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I'm not sure if it applies, but I remember reading about 2 general types of muscle fibers - red and white. If I remember correctly, the red muscle fibers are slow (?) twitch, and the white are fast (?) twitch. I'ts been a few years, and i'm going purely by memory here. The way it was explained was that the red fibers don't produce much speed, but can function for longer periods. On the contrary, white fibers are fast, but contract only in short bursts. With this logic, a guitarist with a fast picado has encorporated more white muscle fibers into the technique. The challenge to a fast picado would then become how to encorporate more white muscle fibers. Not trying to dispute what the experts here suggest, as I'm sure if they say forarm strength is important, then it probably is. Just a thought.
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Date Jun. 13 2006 15:17:00
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: picados and strength (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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Okay, thanks for the clarifications. So we actually have _limiting_ factors for picado. 1. strength - the ability to get the finger through the string without the finger collapsing (and perhaps, without throwing the hand out of alignment) 2. stamina - how many times this can be accomplished without significant performance degradation 3. reflex speed - the ability to recharge and reset the mechanism So it would seem that to increase picado efficiency (ease), you would want strength, stamina, and reflex speed. Stamina could be increased by increasing the duration of scales that are practiced, I would assume. Reflex speed, perhaps, by stacatto practice and speed bursts (that's the theory at least, right?). Strength, perhaps by practicing closer to the bridge, or on guitars strung with higher tension than the one you play on? It seems that Jon's definition of power is strength + reflex speed? Kind of an athletic definition, because if you're as strong as an ox, but only move at it's pace, that's not going to help speed. (by the way, John, the strength test for the NFL is to see how many times you can bench press 225 lbs. The guy from the Dallas Cowboys always wins it, I think with around 44 times. Anyways, stamina is in there somewhere I think. Myself, I could only do it once!) So, if we can bring this discussion back to my original framework, would increasing effective strength, stamina, and power in the picado mechanism eliminate some of the telltale signs of breaking down such as tension habits, and thus lead to greater ease (and speed). Part of me believes that we are all built with a certain level of speed in our muscles, and our job is to arrange things so that it can be released. After all, you can't turn a normal person into a sprinter or a jumper.
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Date Jun. 13 2006 16:42:40
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: picados and strength (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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Jon, the only reason I brought up strength was because I heard Grisha and Todd talk about it (although perhaps I misinterpreted it). And also because the weakness of my m finger, caused by a low level of use, seemed to cause problems. Grisha, thank you for that clarification of what you meant. I am wondering, how do you become stronger in the hand to accomplish this? Would playing loud scales do it? Do you think switching to a higher tension guitar might be worth it? Exitao, maybe one way to isolate for speed would be to play rest strokes way up near the soundhole. The strings there are very soft, and don't require as much muscular force to more. Is the sensation sort of like running down a hill, where you feel sloppy as if you have lost control? Just an idea...
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Connect with me on Facebook, all the cool kids are doing it. https://www.facebook.com/migueldemariaZ Arizona Wedding Music Guitar
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Date Jun. 13 2006 18:14:36
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