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Miguel de Maria -> swing thoughts (Aug. 13 2003 15:09:36)
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A few weeks ago, I posted asking for desperate help with my left hand. Having worked on my right hand for a year or so, I suddenly realized that my left hand was lagging behind and holding me back. Tom and Florian helpefully posted some exercises and advice. Well, I think I am making some progress.
I once was crazy about golf, and golfers have a funny thing called swing thoughts. Like, one, might be "keep your head down" when you swing (this prevents you from coming up and throwing off your axis of rotation), another is "look at the dime sitting underneath your ball" (which accomplishes the same thing). Another might be, "pretend you're holding a bird in your hands" (to prevent you from holding the club too hard). I'm always searching for "swing thoughts" for playing.
So there are a few I've found that are working for me. For the left hand, I've got this one, "stick to the fingerboard." When I'm playing barres or other complicated configurations, I like to feel that my fingers, instead of gripping the fingerboard, are stuck to it, plastered to it, or even an 1/8" under the surface. This seems to help me make the contact, maintain the pressure, without using too much force and tension.
Another handy one is "think the chord change." My changes were really sloppy, but I realized that I wasn't letting my hand/mind complex do its work freely. If, a split second before I change chords, I imagine my fingers in the second position, they will naturally, very accurately move. This works a lot better than micromanaging each finger, or worrying that they will not get there in time.
In Spain, my teacher claimed there are two ways to play rasgueo, "empuzar", push, or "lanzar", shoot (I hope these translations are accurate). Shooting is basically throwing your fingers, perhaps flicking them, at the strings. You hit or strike them. Pushing involves making contact, then pushing through them. Paco Pena, and my teacher, teaches that the push is more controlled and a finer sound. I agree. So let your fingers touch the strings, then push!
Now picado is my true obsession. I have found, one, that almost everyone plays picado differently, one because everyone has a different physiological setup, two because there are more than twenty ways to skin a cat. What has worked well for me is a pulling motion. I like to feel my fingers slightly angled to the string, so that if I pull the string is pushed down into the soundboard. The longer the fingernail, the longer the pulling motion must be, the longer the string has to go to clear the nail. So I "pull fast."
Secondly, when playing quick scales you don't have time to think every motion. Quick scales require a sensation of "pulsing." If you do a drumroll on the table with your fingertips, you can get an idea of the sensation that I feel when playing quick scales. Prerequisites are, probably, playing many hours of scales slow, fast, medium, with dotted type rhthyms. Once you get this under your fingers, so to speak, you may eventually feel the pulse. There is no time to control the fingers, you just feel the beat, this "pulse" and hopefully your training will take over and a fast, controlled scale will result! This pulsing sensations works with both the left and the right hands, it almost feels the same.
While I'm on a roll here, some guys from Paco Penas school helped me with my thumb. At this crazy school, for the first two months you're only supposed to play with your thumb, nothng else. No picado, arpeggio, or rasgueo. You must drain all tension out of your thumb, it must be completely loose and relaxed. Place the thumb on the string. Using your arm (I use my wrist instead), push the thumb into the string. There is a way to push your thumb that uses its bone structure so that you can sound the note without having any muscular tension in the thumb. The thumb is asleep, you're just pushing it. Now do this awhile until it feels fairly normal. Weird, huh? I really like this way of playing though. I use my wrist for all the thumb strokes, and I get a deeper sound and have reduced a source of tension in my hand.
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