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RE: Picado and hand size.
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Erik van Goch
Posts: 1787
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands
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 RE: Picado and hand size. (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
We all know Todd has been jumping on this poor guy but he is basically been saying that the results come from slow disciplined practice. Gabriel has felt the improvement and wants a pat on the back for it from people he respects. I would say he deserves it, but here we are now at the same stage developing a new simple idea. We can blame the length of the fingers or the age we started learning etc, but the truth is we need to be patient with new techniques and not make excuses for not seeing instant results in "a day or two".
That pretty much sums it up :-)
Gabriel, i generally watch your posts with a mixture of admiration (i really believe you have great potential) and a "there we go again" (my teachers eye telling me you are waisting time on things not worthy your attention while cementing bad habits). I totally agree with Todd's view that results comes from (as Ricardo so beautifully resumes) slow disciplined practice, not based on seeking instant results but on studying and cultivating perfection.
A good bass player/teacher ones said "you must make it a habit always to play good" which is the same as "never to play bad". What's the point of playing a suggested ia-picado at full speed within a day if the result is so sloppy? That wise bass player mend to say that by accepting that sloppiness you are basically telling your hands and brain that sloppiness is ok. That ia combination is corrupted before it even had a change to enjoy a fresh start/healthy development, a perfect example of a "i'll perfect it later" attitude in process. You might think filling the preceding hours with more serious study holds the balance, but as long as you are tempted to "i'll perfect it later" actions you seriously obstruct your development and i can tell you first hand "later" is an illusion that eventually runs out of time. I'm 51 now and have the same talents and bad habit's as you have. I could play endlessly better if only i had the discipline "to cultivate perfection on a daily base and stop fooling around"...... but in stead i embraced the "i'll perfect it later" attitude during the past 20 years (if playing at all) with matching results.
I started to play when i was 9 years old. Despite having the best teacher possible i proved to be a very poor student and after 2 years i stopped taking lessons in order to "study" flamenco on my own intuition. I had a lot of fun doing so but totally lacked any sense of quality awareness towards my own playing. When i entered Paco Peña's school of flamenco guitar (after playing the guitar for 14 years) i could only dream playing the guitar at the level you have right now. My 10 classmates all played way above my 1985 level as well. Still we all had to forget everything we learned before in order to start from scratch. The first year we hardly played music but fully focused on biomechanics (how to use your fingers/hand/wrist/arm the best possible way), technical exercises, playing strategies and last but not least proper relaxation. The first couple of years i still did not take these things to seriously (despite being a full time flamenco student) and as a result lacked skills when demands grow. So as a 3th or 4th year student i decided to study those 1th years exercises after all (very simple and monotone exercises allowing one to cultivate good habits and way simpler then the things you practice). Although these exercises were excellent i did not benefit from them at all because i only did them to please the teacher and the clock and the only thing i really invested in it was time. The missing factor were focus and the willingness/intellect to learn from it. Once i put in those ingredients i learned to play the guitar within 40 hours, hardly playing music at all, just focussing on understanding/studying my body, my guitar and training/refining my brain and nerve system (and the interaction input/output).
Todd recommended you to slow down and even to go back to scratch. I honestly believe that is the only way to reach higher levels. Like i said, after 14 years of fooling around i had to start from scratch when i entered Paco's (5 year/full time) flamenco school and after 4 years of professional training (close to final exam) i voluntary started from scratch once again, this time with focus and giving it all my love and intellect. 4 weeks on a row i started every single day with a fresh mind, treating myself as an absolute beginner. Where Paco only asked me to become a baby again, i went back to the womb in stead. And the 40 hours i spend there were the most meaningful hours i ever spent behind the guitar. Every second (2 hours a day) was spent on re-connecting with my body and the guitar, hardly playing music at all but just studying biomechanics/ motion/ energy exchange/ tonal development and the utterly important relaxation, but this time with more depth and an incredible focus/desire to learn from it. I can tell you first hand that 5 minutes of intelligent, full focus study beats endless hours of mindless repeating.
I share Todd's advice to study meaningful material only, at low speeds and with full focus, allowing your brain to monitor/evaluate/understand and guide your biomechanics/ movement/ tonal quality and rhythm wile changing bad habits for better ones. The biggest challenge really is to spend your time well and to find the right state of mind to connect with your body/soul and guitar the best possible way. The "slow" soleares you posted already was a big step in the right direction, assuming you not only play it slowly but use that extra time to monitor and change things for the good. But for me your "slow" is my upper speed when studying. Between two of my notes i have time to heat the water, make/drink a cup of coffee and do the dishes......... actually that is a lie because doing the dishes would obviously corrupt my hands.
But seriously, once i realized the meaning and power of real focus i soon discovered that 2 hands were way to much to deal with (your brain basically can handle only 1 thing at the time). So i began studying left and right hand separately only to discover that 5 fingers are still way to much to handle if you demand total control. So i ended up studying individual fingers, phalange by phalange, studying every single move and action at microscopic level. I was not longer focused on playing music but on creating a perfect understanding/control of my body, energy transposal and tonal quality/development Once i had that understanding/ control i could play my pieces effortless without any further practice (this kind of studying really sets your technical/musical control on a totally different level). The best advice i can give is "the smaller the object of your focus, the bigger the result" (assuming you are able to recognize the bad/good and cultivate the good). To me the biggest challenge was getting in the right state of mind for this adventure because it is very demanding mental wise. Once you become thrilled by surging for perfection, working on a single phalange/finger/note/sound can be equally thrilling as playing highly demanding music and on top it is way more productive because you don't upgrade 1 falseta or a piece but your complete system.
That 40 hour just shows how quick things can go if you pair talent and incredible ambition to personalized training (at that period of time i would have prefered playing 1 perfect open note over receiving 1.000.000 dollar, that's how motivated i was). Obviously i was extremely lucky that when i applied this way of studying i already had received numerous excellent lessons of the best of the best and as a result had a reasonable understanding of basic flamenco techniques and the correct musical interpretation. As a result every second could be spend on understanding/controlling my brain/body and guitar. Once you have that level of "control" the sky is the limit. Unfortunately i can also tell you first hand that you can lose it as quickly as you gained it if you abandon it to soon and lack the motivation to continue playing/studying like that. Becoming good is one thing, staying good and getting even better a very different one.
You seem to have a lot of potential .... hate to see how good you might become when you really get in control of every aspect of playing :-).
Ps I generally start with placing/plugging the involved right hand fingers simultaneously. So i probably would start with placing i and a on the same string fallowed by plugging the string with both fingers at the same time, just to study how to hold/shape the hand/fingers/nails to become a unit (they should glide of simultaneously when applying equal pressure). This might help to level out the difference in length between the fingers. You are not fixed to that position but it might be a nice starting/reference point for future investigations (i always like to start with a reference point).
Also i like to add that critic can be a bad and a good thing, depending on the context. Many students of the conservatory were used to be admired and highly praised before they entered the professional teaching scene and now suddenly all the focus is on what is wrong with their playing :-). Some could not cope with that and did not appreciate critical notes of the teachers. But what is the use of paying your teacher lots of money if he don't use the time to focus on your flaws? Funny enough they often applied their advice later on, thinking they invented it them self. It is a fact you can only see/ benefit things if you are ready for it. In a way it took me 4 years to re-invent/benefit the first lessons, after which i processed the next 4 years in 40 hours :-) Also not every road fits everyone, we all have to find our own best route.... but sometimes altering that route can be very rewarding (on the long run :-).
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Date Feb. 8 2014 22:06:18
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guitarbuddha
Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007
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RE: Picado and hand size. (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Miguel de Maria
The human brain is very good at creating connections, but very bad at breaking them. I have come to believe that the very first reps are the most important. Unfortunately, these first reps are usually the worst, since we don't know exactly what we are doing, we are sight-reading, or we try to play it too fast. When my daughter starts a new piano piece, I have learned to be very strict about going very slow and precise. If she does something wrong once, it often remains and many painstaking repetitions are needed to paper over the error.
I think there is a fundamental error there Miguel.
It is quite possible to break the cycle but to do that you need to be able to stop. Pause and relax on the note before the one which is giving you trouble. REALLY stop. Stop and think about exactly how to get to the next one.
The method I mentioned in my previous post is basically doing just that on every note.
Never ever paper over the cracks.
When sightreading play from the second note of the bar to first in the next. Keep perfect time while counting a whole bar of rest and then pick up the next bar on the second note playing to the first beat in the next.
If you make a mistake in a bar immediately solve the problem. Never ever repeat it until you have solved it.
You will know exactly where the problems are this way. This is much better than finishing a piece and thinking,
' I know I made some mistakes and I get the feeling I almost always make the same ones but I'm not quite sure where they are.'
Also if you have a memory lapse in performance you can pick up from pretty much anywhere, because that will be a skill which you have practiced.
I really wish my first teacher had taught me these things but he was, unfortunately, a buffoon.
D.
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Date Feb. 9 2014 15:34:12
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Erik van Goch
Posts: 1787
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands
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RE: Picado and hand size. (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: guitarbuddha
quote:
ORIGINAL: Miguel de Maria
The human brain is very good at creating connections, but very bad at breaking them. I have come to believe that the very first reps are the most important. Unfortunately, these first reps are usually the worst, since we don't know exactly what we are doing, we are sight-reading, or we try to play it too fast. When my daughter starts a new piano piece, I have learned to be very strict about going very slow and precise. If she does something wrong once, it often remains and many painstaking repetitions are needed to paper over the error.
It is quite possible to break the cycle but to do that you need to be able to stop. Pause and relax on the note before the one which is giving you trouble. REALLY stop. Stop and think about exactly how to get to the next one.
If you make a mistake in a bar immediately solve the problem. Never ever repeat it until you have solved it.
This to me is one of the pillars of studying. Even at conservatory level most students simply repeat a difficult phrase over and over again, making the same mistake over and over again. And every time they make the mistake they shout "s.h.i.t", start in front of the bar, play a hole bunch of notes they can already play (waste of time) until they reach the part were they produce/shout s.h.i.t again and they repeat this over and over and over again, hoping the problem solves itself just like that. My father always called that "the s.h.i.t method" :-)
"S.h.i.t method" is indeed a perfect description. Do they really think the problem will solve itself just like that? In reality all they do is rehearsing making mistakes. Obviously a way better approach is to analyze what is going wrong, solve the problem and then start drilling the solution. Then every second is spend well. All my students can dream my "never repeat something that is not worth repeating" which equals Davids "never repeat it until you have solved it".
Once you can play that difficult part fluently it's time to integrate it in the piece. But don't do that immediately and don't play to fast, after all you are reprogramming your brain/actions and old habits are still lurking around the corner. Select a tempo were you can pair the right thoughts to the right actions. All the experts tell you to slow down because that will give you the time to intercept bad habits and to cultivate good habits. It might take a few days or longer before it becomes part of your system and funny enough time seems to be equally important as practice.... that new concept that is still highly demanding for you right now might already feel more natural when you look at it again later, despite the fact you didn't gave it another look in between.
Playing fluently means pairing the right thought to the right action. If things go wrong you have to check those 2 parameters. Quite often something that seems to be a technical problem can be solved by a different way of thinking or by improving the communication between your brain and your fingers. Numerous times i witnessed "professional" students playing lines of music with very unnatural flow and accents. Generally i was able to make them play the same passage correctly within a minute without letting them even touch the guitar. All i would ask is "sing it to me". Released from their "unwilling" fingers they generally produced a decent line of music with correct accents and flow. Obviously they can only sing the main line with it's natural accents and not all the supporting layers of music..... but isn't that exactly the line you want to stand out and flow when playing the actual music? After i asked them to sing it again and again and again i would tell them them "now play it exactly like that". And every single time they played it correctly in 1 take. Obviously this only works when your fingers are trained well enough to fallow your minds instructions. In my opinion the difference between natural players and normal people is that the natural ones seem to have an undisturbed input>output flow while with most people somehow a lot of translation mistakes occur between what they think they express and what they are actually expressing. Restoring the communication between brain and hands is another pillar of good studying and switching between singing> playing (comparing input/output) is an excellent way to do so. With singing i mean hearing the melody in your head... as a matter of fact feeling the flow and dynamics will do equally good... i used to think "how would i sing this" and now i tend to think "how would i dance it". If you can tell a good story with rhythm/dynamic only, how wonderful will it sound when you add beautiful notes on top of it as well :-).
So it's all a matter of input/output and 1 minute of mental visualization can beat 1 hour of mindless playing. A concert pianist ones told in an interview he always visualized/practiced new pieces in his head first before playing it on the piano. "In my head my fingers always have perfect motion but on the piano they sometimes do unwanted things when i study new material.... by playing the piece in my head first (with perfect finger moves) i can imprint perfect motion, avoiding mistakes later on". Obviously this virtual perfect motion is the result of endless hours of studying biomechanics and basic playing strategy (one of the other pillars of studying).
It is indeed proven that thinking about a move triggers the same nerve response as doing the move for real. In my 40 hour rebirth sessions mental visualization played a vital role. When i go for the gold (study wise) every action i do on the guitar is preceded and fallowed by mental visualization (obviously i'm talking studying single notes/fingers and manageable note/finger groups here).
Obviously i'm preaching to myself as well :-)
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Date Feb. 9 2014 19:41:40
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