Erik van Goch -> RE: Creative ways of practicing (Aug. 19 2012 20:44:45)
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Actually i did get my best results practicing like this and i can tell first hand that this kind of exercises (studying left and right hand separately and especially playing mentally without the guitar) is superior to normal practice. So i did it out of free choice and not forced by conditions. Everything was done with full concentration/awareness and my first goal was finding and adapting a perfect tone and technique. I started doing very "simple" exercises like lifting a single finger and add/release 100% controlled doses of energy/pressure. It helped me to find, understand and appreciate every bone, nerve, muscle and cel worth knowing. On top i did excessive tonal exercises, investigating the possibilities (and limitations) of the guitar in a similar way. As soon as i found myself some new insights i started doing them mentally as well. So as soon as i knew how to lift a finger i drilled the movement in my mind only (not moving the finger itself) and as soon as i knew how a well played note developed it's sound i re-lived it's vibrations in my mind only as well. I started with single notes and strokes, than simple and more complex combination exercises (like the ones you shared) and at the end of the line i was able to play a whole pice in my mind, feeling every single aspect of real guitar playing. I could feel myself bringing my guitar and hands in playing position, i could visualize AND FEEL my fingers producing the notes and i could visualize AND FEEL the string vibrations and the guitars response. Everything felt 100% like playing the guitar for real but in reality i only played it in my head. And yes, whenever i piked up the guitar for real everything came out exactly like that, time after time after time. I did a lot of discoveries in that period of time (80's and 90's) and most of them are confirmed by science and other experts over the past 20 years like these facts: * Running true an exercise mentally gives the same nerve response as doing it for real. (even seeing someone else doing it generates matching nerve response in your body) * Mental excercises (building up from lifting a single finger over and over again in your mind to extremely complex things like playing a complete pice) works like mantra/meditation.... it unites body and mind and it can bring you in a higher state of awareness. If you are extremely lucky it can also open the door to your subconsciousness, which is the gate to what i consider to be duende. * A couple of weeks of (30 minutes) meditation on a daily base (like the mental exercises we mentioned) does physically change your brain... your body will produce more grey brain matter which can be measured by science. * After the first set have a break of at least 6 hours! ...* If you had a GOOD first set you need at least 6 hours to restore energy anyhow. ...* Your brain needs 6 hours to evaluate the first set as well. ...* Studies on university level confirmed my discovery that repeating the same set within 6 hours is contra productive. .....(but you can do something completely different if you like, so vary your exercises) I also find out another funny thing... sometimes the fingering in my mind was different from my real fingering. Those happened to be exactly the places were things went wrong in the pice itself as well. As soon as i changed my real fingering into the fingering suggested by my mind all problems disappeared instantly. Somehow your subconsciousness has a blueprint for producing the goods and as long as you act accordingly you will experience that playing the guitar is very easy. I guess natural talents have a natural ability to connect body and soul. Other human beings can only experience that feeling on certain moments when they have "a good day"or more likely "a good moment". The exercises i promote can help you to improve the connection between body and soul and "having a good day" can become "normal procedure". But it requires lots of focus, building yourself up from scratch on the base of not accepting anything that is less than perfect. That means severe 1 finger exercises to start with (both physical and mental) and find your way from there.....with the blueprint i mentioned it basically is a matter of hacking. Take some serious time to study the laws of hand/arm dynamics, energy generation/transposal and physical/mental relaxation in order not to waist time and energy to things that don't contribute, like wrong movements or putting in more energy than needed. Personally i had to change basically everything i learned in the previous 18 years, but it was worth it. Unfortunately ones i knew "how to play" i soon get bored with it (how stupid can one be, but to me the voyage somehow was more exiting then the final arrival) and after abandoning the guitar for a couple of weeks i lost everything i gained and could start all over again. I repeated this circle 4 years on a row (with consisting results) only to find out i somehow get bored with it as soon as i arrived the "final station". As a result i decided to give up my live as a professional player and to become an amateur once again. I struggle playing the guitar ever since because the amount of concentration/energy exchange needed to reach/maintain that level of playing is so demanding that i haven't been able to face that demanding way of studying for the past 20 years. But as soon as i put in 1 hour of "super study" i start noticing the difference so i guess it still works for me if i want...in my good years i needed 40 hours to rebuild myself, postulated i was in the right state of mind. Finding that right state of mind is in fact more difficult than learning to play the guitar once you've found it and most of the time it did cost me a couple of weeks or even mounds to struggle myself to raise even 5 minutes of "powertraining". But as soon as i was able to find myself the right state of mind (after weeks of surging) i was able to study for an hour a day, raising to 2 hours in the second week and 3 hours in the thirth week. So in my opinion you are doing an excellent job with good chances to come out even better than when you were still studying "full throttle". (the story goes Mark Knopfler couldn't buy or use an amplifier at first and deprived from a full sound developed a very relaxed way of playing....the same happens when i apply your spounge, i will soon play more relaxed and more rhythmical after a wile. The trick is to remain that relaxed approach ones the spounge is removed and not to fall back into bad habits once again). One of my best flamenco moments ever was in the Netherlands when i was part of the audience at a flamenco performance. I was very early and preceding the concert they played some very inspirational tracks from Camaron and many others. I rolled up the paper program and used it to produce a series of righthand flamenco rhythms, fitting the music into detail. Although i never heart the majority of songs before i really did a marvelous job, finding exactly the right strokes/rhythms, matching every single copla, falseta and llamada. My body, soul and the tracks somehow seemed to became one. Just before the real show started an elderly man approached me and whispered in my ear "muy, muy bien"...that compliment was worth more to me than every applause i ever received for my real playing.
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