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Micro-positions
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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Micro-positions
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Some of you may know that I have been having some shoulder problems and trying to find more comfortable and ergonomic playing positions lately. I decided to watch the masters and see how they do it. I did searches of Paco de Lucia, Tomatito, and Vicente Amigo in Google Images. Well...of course how much can you really tell from photos? But a few things did seem to emerge. First, especially for Paco there is a very clear demarcation of position between picado and other techniques. For picado he lifts his elbow high into the air, holds his forearm practically vertical, "floats" the guitar on the leg. The RH seems to touch the guitar ony on the strings and perhaps on the inner forearm. For other techniques it seems he tends to rest the arm on the bicep and hang the arm down. It seems they like to play on low chairs, which cause their crossed leg to rise higher and give a better base for the guitar. I also noticed that Tomatito and Vicente seem to rest their RH bicep on the guitar a lot. I have had so many different positions, one of them indeed rests the bicep like that. The only problem seems to be the effort to keep the forearm on the strings. If you were to truly relax, it would just hang straight down. It's hard to play picado in this position because the wrist gets progressively more cramped the higher you get (in terms of elevation, that is the higher toward teh ceiling).
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 15 2006 21:38:39
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nickeyg
Posts: 56
Joined: Jun. 16 2005
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RE: Micro-positions (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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Miguel-The gitano thing might work for you but I think its something else. I used to have alot of pains in my back and shoulder. For that reason I experimented alot with different positions. Lifting the right arm etc.. Turns out that the chair I was using all the time which would probably seem fine to anyone who sat in it for shorter periods of time, was really hurting my body. I switched to a chair where the cross braces are lower and havent had a problem since. Also remember that a non ergonomic computer keyboard and mouse position can definitely contribute to pains which then may be amplifed when playing guitar. In terms of your other comments, I often tried to imitate the vids for hand position, but it didn't seem to work out. So eventually my focus became on being the most efficient with my right hand as possible. What is easiest and what sounds like the records. Once I did this and got better each thing(still have a long way to go), Picado, arpeggio, alzapua, pulgar, turrns out that it looks like what they do. Ricardo, who might remember me from Gerardo's course a couple of years ago, really helped me with his various comments on picado on this Foro which I thought about all the time. Now when I look in the mirror it looks correct but the feeling is totally different that before than when I was just trying to imitate the vids. I think you're doing the right thing in experimenting alot. If you watch the vids they all have subtle variations on hand positions for each technique. Arpeggio is more the claw position with wrist straight or slightly curved, Pulgar is more crane like with wrist raised and the weight of wrist downward. The old vids of Paco you see the movement better and the newer ones he is so subtle you almost can't see any switching. The weird reality is that many of us will probably be using a computer for thirty, forty or fifty years more and hopefully playing guitar that long too and so I think its really important to try and figure out and correct problems now so that they don't haunt us later. Nick
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Mar. 17 2006 2:16:29
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