Erik van Goch -> RE: Flamenco Playing and Practice Time (Dec. 23 2012 6:40:07)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Prominent Critic quote:
I wish I knew how many hours the masters practised when they were young... I have my own theory about practice – not for early learners or intermediate, but once you’ve reached a reasonably high level of proficiency. Which is – don’t. At least not practice as such. I never do scales, or any kind of technical exercises whatsoever. I only practice actual music. Think about it. Any well rounded repertoire is going to include everything that you would practice – picado, arpeggios, tremolo, rasgueado, etc. So what would be the point of practicing these separately as a technical exercise when you will get all the practice in the world for these playing actual music, and you get the benefit of sharpening up that music to a high degree as well. Ramon I expressed my feelings about the subject various times before (in long posts about the art of studying) and i partly agree and partly disagree with your "the music offers all the exercise you need" approach. I never took technical exercises very seriously myself, not even when i entered the brand new Paco Peña University school of flamenco guitar in 1985 to study the subject on a professional and full time base. My father was 1 of the teachers and confronted with the extremely bad hand coordination of his new "reasonably high level of proficiency" students he immediately decided to include extra lessons focussing on technique only (on top of the usual 1 hour a week lesson 1th year classical guitar students received were technique was indeed integrated in there performing repertoire). So, dude to my fathers technique lesson we were forced to do a variety of exercises (at least during the lesson)...... i even did the exercises in my spare time (a bit) but didn't benefit from it "at all"....not because they were useless (they were great), but i simply was not ready to learn from them yet. I did them because i was told to do so but lacked the mind, the focus and the attitude to benefit from them. On top i was addicted to chess at the time and on every hour spent behind the guitar i spent at least 10 hours behind the chess board (if not more). After 4 years of University school "training" i consequently became in danger of being kicked of dude to lack of progress (we had to do exam every year to pas). So i began to take my guitar study a little more "seriously", confusing making long hours (repertoire as well as exercises) with actual studying...it obviously didn't help me a thing. But 1 day something strange happened...for the first time ever i began to love the art of studying and spending time behind the guitar became spending QUALITY time behind the guitar. I spent huge amounts of energy in studying the art of studying and soon discovered that playing (parts of) pieces is WAY to much information to handle when you surge for ABSOLUTE CONTROL. So i started to do the exercises i learned 4 years before, only to find out those "stupid" and "simple" 1,2,3,4 fingering scales were way to much info to deal with as well if you demand absolute control. So i went back even more, studying single fingers, parts of fingers, bio-mechanica, brain-muskle coordination, total relaxation vs controlled energy input, tonal development vs. meticulously studied input/output experiments, mental visualisation....you got my drift. Playing an open string, focussing on tonal development, energy control and exploring every single cel in your guitar and your body can be a 1.000.000 times more difficult, intense and meaningful than playing a piece of the masters......if you do it with focus. To make a long story short, after studying the guitar like this (with complete focus and the right state of mind) doing exercises that are more simple than you can ever imagine i reached "total" musical and technical control in both my exercises and my repertoire in apr. 40 hours. 40% of that time was spent to exercises, 40% to mental visualisations and only 20 % or less to studying the repertoire itself. After i gained total control i soon got bored with playing the same pieces over and over again (with nothing left to improve) and went back to the chessboard.... Obviously i lost everything i gained as quickly as i learned it....to benefit from it for live you have to add numerous hours of mindless drilling as well which simply is not my thing. The last 4 years of my university training i spent most of the time behind the chessboard once again, restricting guitar study to 40 hours of power-study in the mount preceding the yearly exam...in those 40 hours i went to hell and back to (re)find total musical/technical/mental control and after a power-training like that i could basically outplay students studying falsetas 24/7 (most of them played falsetas over and over again but were also making the same mistakes over and over again, which is a very contra-productive way to "study" because you basically program yourself to make mistakes that way....my approach was the complete opposite, i focused on the mistake only, trying to find out what went wrong and caused the problem...once i found the solution i started to practice/program that solution....slowly, focusing and not integrating it in the falseta right away but merely making a separate exercise of it one way or the other). If i learned 1 thing in those days it is that good study focus on a very small subject, giving full attention to only a very limited amount of data (preferably 1): things don't improve by mindless repeating hoping the problem solves itself, you have to sit down and study/alter/improve everything that is not 100% to your likings, demanding absolute perfection....the SMALLER the object of your focus, the BIGGER the result....not everybody can do it (most can't), and i often failed myself.... quite often it took me weeks or even mounts to find the right state of mind/focus needed to challenge myself and the guitar to that level. ...but once i did find that state of mind 40 hours was all it took to upload myself to maximal levels. I guess that AFTER i passed my 40 hour workout successfully (reaching maximum musical and technical control) a couple of warming up exercises on a daily base (on top of playing my repertoire) would indeed have been sufficient to maintain that level of professionalism, but every time i reached that level of perfection i got bored instantly because there was nothing more to improve....if yo can throw a perfect set with darts it's nice the first times, but if it becomes so easy you can do it blindfolded it is very hard to practice it 2 hours a day just to be sure you can also do it in a championship..... the last time i had the will/focus to get the best out of myself was 20 years ago and i don't have any illusions about my present day level...right now i restrict to playing falsetas when i feel inspired (which is not very often) and suffer the consequence by often feeling like an almost empty battery...and you don't structurally fix an empty battery by using it more often, you fix it by recharging it the correct way... until i get that 40 hour power boost i will completely depend on the mood of the day which varies between 1-100%.
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