Erik van Goch -> RE: How can I survive boredom while practising guitar exercises? (Jul. 18 2013 22:57:59)
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ORIGINAL: FredGuitarraOle quote:
Some of you suggested I should practice musical exercises and pieces instead of pure technical exercises, but that's what I've been doing for the last 7 months. It works to a certain extent and it helps maintain a decent technique, but by now I realized it won't take me to the next level. .........Technical exercises is what seems to work best for me, so that's what I'm focusing on right now that I'm on vacations. Exercises for endurance and strength are also on my list, because these are probably the two things I lack the most. I had the same problem of not getting results (despite doing normal exercises) but reached incredible results in an incredible short time when i started to study extremely small elements of playing with full focus. So on top of the usual exercises i closely studied individual fingers/part of fingers and individual motions/part of motions. My focus was to fully understand/exploit the nature of biomechanics/biodynamics (how do individual body parts work/cooperate and what are the most effective ways to generate/transpose energy). How does your finger react on string interaction, how does this interaction inflict the individual finger phalanges, the complete finger, the hand etc. and vise versa how can i generate /transpose energy the best possible way to the string in various situations. When you understand/control all the elements you will discover that a completely relaxed hand (most of the time) is the best assurance for optimal nerve response/energy generating/energy transposal, pairing minimal input to maximum output.... relaxed fingers generally also produce the best sound. When i applied my additional micro studies for the first time they soon gave me a completely different understanding/appreciating of my body and my guitar. My main weapons were intelligent experimenting, observation, deduction, conceptualization and mental visualization...i tried to study "in my mind only" as much as possible and when i became better in it i could play complete pieces "in my mind only" as real as real can be (feeling every cell involved, the string/finger interaction, the string vibration and the sound). The main reason for my incredible successes with those micro studies was probably that i only applied them in the very rare periods of my life that i really, really, really loved the art of studying and loved getting results more then anything else. But i'm pretty sure that my approach to give full attention to extremely small elements of playing, leaving out everything that was not part of my focus contributed a lot. Leaving out distractions mend i studied left and right hand sepparatly. For both hands i developed a series of exercises based on touching/gently pushing/holding a string halfway (without plugging the string or making full fretted contact) focussing on studying/understanding/appreciating the energy exchange between string/finger at cell level. The right hand exercises i partly published before, the unique left hand exercises i hope to reveal soon (most are based on putting a finger on string, press it halfway starting position and the fretboard, hold it there for a wile, add a little more energy, hold it again, add a little less energy, hold it again etc.). By moving/holding the string slowly between it's starting position and the fretboard for a couple of seconds/minutes you constantly challenge your brain, nerves and muscles and your body will respond by making new, specialized and very refined brain/nerve/muscle connections totally fit to meet that challenge. Another big advantage of those simple exercises and the combined mental visualization is that it works like meditation which (over a period of weeks) changes your brain and brings you in a higher state of awareness. So, while your brain starts to function better the new and refined pressure/interaction exercises trigger the production of new and very refined nerves, muscles and blood vessels in both your brain, hand and fingers and after studying 2 hours a day over a 4-6 week period you end up with a completely new and highly improved/sensible wiring. quote:
About getting bored with guitar practice, perhaps I wasn't very clear on that, I think some of you didn't understand what I meant. For example, I want to do about 1 hour of rasgueos everyday, spending 7 or 8 minutes on each type. After doing rasgueos with muted strings for 15 minutes, it is inevitable that I will get bored. Same thing with repetitive endurance and strength exercises for pulgar, picado, ligados, etc. They get boring after a while (at least for me) and one needs to keep entertained in order to keep the spirits high. That's why I posted this question, to see what you guys usualy do to help "pass the time" in this situation. By the way, I have no intentions of becoming a musician or something like that, I just want to make a better use of the free time I have right now in order to improve my playing. For that reason i hardly ever spent more then 10-15 minutes to any specific exercise. But giving full attention to minute elements (leaving out everything that was not the object of my focus) the 1-2 hours i spend exercising a day were way more effective then playing scales and/or falsetas 24/7 (and at least as demanding as far as energy exchange is concerned because if you do it well studying like this is extremely exhausting but also incredible effective).
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