hamia -> RE: how hard to play, physically? (Oct. 19 2015 16:21:21)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: turnermoran Opinions vary widely on the subject of technique and the body, so I don't expect we will all agree on the subject, but I am of the opinion that guitar playing is a more holistic activity then we often think. I didn't mean to suggest that the shoulder muscles are what make the fingers move but I would put forth that if you sit at a table completely relaxed with your forearms on the table and wiggle your fingers you can clearly see that your shoulder may have little or nothing to do with that movement. But if you lift your arm in the air and do the same thing you can feel a variety of muscles engaged to lift your arm. Personally, from this point I can choose to make a mental separation between the stomach, shoulder, pectoral, back and upper arm muscles engaged in lifting my arm, all being separate from what happens from the elbow to the fingers, but I prefer to try to feel connected to all of these muscles and tendons in the way to disperse the work load and remain in touch with the interconnectedness of the human body. And as we know, there are many techniques in guitar playing in which you can lift your upper arm or otherwise engage it versus leaving it relaxed on the rim of the guitar. Another variable… Adam Del Monte makes an excellent point in an article on Picado technique he just wrote for the new digital flamenco magazine put out by Ben Woods. He basically says thatlifting the upper arm will necessarily create some amount of tension but we should be realistic in practice and performance of picado, and bear in mind it should not last longer than 8 to 10 seconds. (This is another quandary of mine: if the act of lifting the arm is a negative in the scope of guitar playing or if it can be used positively as a source of power. But anyway, this is all getting a little off subject from what I intended on asking. My question should've been something like: Consider how loud you're able to play when you play slow passage of music. When youplay it at the fastest tempo you are able, do you still play with the same amount of volume and force? If you play a little quieter do you play more accurately? Lifting the upper arm is not really very comfortable but the discomfort, and any tension, is in the upper arm or shoulder area and not connected at all with the muscles in the forearm needed for picado. So apart from feeling uncomfortable it has no adverse effect. And as you point out it's not raised for a long period of time. One of the hard things with this raised arm technique is controlling the movement of the fingers up and down the strings (1st to 6th string and back). You need a smooth motion. A key piece of advice I recently gleaned from a Ruben Diaz video (can I mention that name?) is not to anchor the thumb when practicing. Let the fingers themselves work out how to move across the strings. It's very good advice and I've improved a lot in the past 6 months. Of course, when not practicing you can anchor the thumb for extra security. To address your question. The slower you play the louder you can play. But it's an irrelevant point. You can play fast and loud (enough). And of course when I say fast I mean fast with control. And control is got through practice, scales, speed bursts,etc. For the first couple of years I played I used really excessive force. I thought this would increase strength - and it did in fact. But it didn't help at all with speed. When trying to play fast use moderate to light strength (at least at first) and use speed bursts. Work up from 3 notes to 5 to 7 etc. And include string crossings with various right hand and left hand fingers. Another tip. Get a small practice tool or 'silent' guitar and practice when doing other things, eg on a plane, watching TV, etc. You can do i,m on string 2, and then i,m on string 1 and repeat for 1 hour. And make up various patterns. It's very useful.
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