Erik van Goch -> RE: Exercises recommendation (Aug. 20 2017 15:09:15)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mark indigo quote:
OK, I'm going to disagree with everybody above and say you DON'T need to learn any abstract 'exercises', and in fact doing the exercises presented above isn't going to address the problems here. After 6 months, if you can't change cords and can't cleanly play most 'flamenco chords' (I'm assuming you don't mean barre chords here, since you mention that separately), then what you need is LESSONS, not exercises. After a few lessons you should be able to do this, then it is just a matter of practising until it becomes natural. the OP asked forquote:
recommend some exercises,books, like left hand strength, speed, independance,ligado etc? So you didn't answer the question. You decided they needed something else.... One line of Dr. Phil i really liked was something like "not only do you not know the answers to your questions, you don't even know what questions to ask". So an answer that does not seem to address the original question might still be the best answer :-). Both John Walsh and i once stated that the most important thing we learned from our teachers was "what and how to study" which very much involves recognizing the flows in ones actions and how to tackle them in small manageable steps (it's a fine balance between being in control and challenging yourself and also involves avoiding things that are to much out of reach yet). When i entered conservatory (being part of the first group of students entering Paco Peña's flamenco academy) it turned out that 13 year of self study had cemented so many bad habits i basically had to start all over again. Both me and my class mates (some of who spend years in Spain) tended to lift our fingers way to soon in order to arrive on time for the next note (killing the abandoned notes in the process) and both my playing skills and my critical ear were still highly undeveloped (all i had ear for was melody and harmony and on that field i was second to non, i was even named to have the best ears of the conservatory which already listed over a 100 teachers). Facing the still very amateurish hand management of these first group of flamenco students my father (Paco's right and left hand who gave the weekly guitar lessons, technique lessons and was the teacher of guitar didactics) decided to throw in an extra (read second) lesson hour a week for flamenco students, focusing on general hand management (classical students didn't need these extra lessons because they already received lessons half a lifetime before entering the conservatory). Part of these technique lessons were the exercises i mentioned above. I remember i didn't like them at all and didn't really take then seriously (i entered Paco Peña's school of flamenco guitar to learn to play flamenco, not to do these kind of exercises). I wasn't the only student opposing these exercises and various generations of students past before it became embraced as one of the things to do if you aspire to become a great player. So at first my father had to fight to get some serious interest for his exercises. When Pepe Habichuela gave a concert at RC it turned out he did similar exercises (and so do many profs) which convinced some of the students to give it a try as well. I still didn't like them and as a result i didn'd learn from them as well. No matter how good the exercises, if you only do them to please the teacher or as an excuse to move your fingers without giving it the focus and attention that is required to learn from it they are useless and will only cement bad habits. Meanwhile my father gave me tons of 1:1 instructions of how to deal with the technical and musical flows in my playing, flows i generally was not aware of myself but over time gave me a very critical eye/ear for tonal quality and way better ways to play the guitar as i used to do. We worked on technique and tonal quality for months (playing music was not the first priority) and the first couple of years we played pretty simple music and both the technique and the pieces were build up from level zero up to what you were able to handle which in my case was not a lot yet. Most foto members would not like to play the "simple" music i had to play at Rotterdam Conservatory with teachers demanding total control of every note played. It's far from easy to go back from playing PDL material to playing open strings and the most simple material you can find for months and on top being "criticized" and corrected all the time (which obviously is the purpose of taking lessons although not every student was aware of that). Once our level of control grew we obviously started to play music as well and we averagely learned/added 3 styles of flamenco each year. As ment previously at first the exercises mentioned above were not really my cup of tea and as a result they didn't bring me much good, not because they were useless but because i was not ready to learn from them yet (the exercises are a great tool helping you to learn but only if you do them with the correct mind set/focus which at the time i had not). I soon stopped doing them. A couple of years correction after correction by my father had turned me into a way better player but being more interested in playing chess then in playing the guitar after 4 years i seriously faced danger of being expelled. So i began to take things a bit more seriously and started to do the exercises they asked me to do 4 years before. But i still lacked the mindset needed to benefit from it so again they did not really help me (in retrospect i did them to please the teacher and the clock and not as a tool to learn and develop so results were zero). A bit later, for the first time ever, i felt an incredible urge to get the very best out of myself and my guitar which was paired to an increased level of focus (i'm self diagnosed ADD and find it very hard to focus when i'm not 100% interested, but when i am "100% interested" lack of focus can turn into super-focus allowing me to learn and develop at multi speed). So i finally picked up these exercises with a correct mind set only to discover 10 fingers are more then a hand full to control if you demand total control. So i started to study right and left hand separately only to discover 5 fingers, 6 strings and 9 positions are still way to much to deal with if you aspire total control of the left hand. Fact is the human brain can only focus on 1 THING AT THE TIME so i decided it might be smart to study only one thing at the time as well with excellent results. For a start i recalculated my mayor/minor scales and other melodic lines to 1 string/1 position only and started to practice that so -----------------------------------------4-6------------- ----------------------------------5--7------------------- --------------------------4-6-7------------------------- --------------4-6-7--/7--------------------------------- ------4-5-7---------------------------------------------- -5-7----------------------------------------------------- became ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- -5-7-4-5-7-4-6-7-/-7-4-6-7-5-7-4--5----------------- and ..IV............V.............VII...........IX................................................... --0-4-5-0-/-0-5-7-0-/-0-7-9-7-/-0-9-11-9-/0-12-11-9------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------/12-10--9------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------11--9---- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- would become -0-4-5-4-/-0-4-6-4-/-0-4-6-4/-0-4-6-4-/-0-7-6-4-/-7-5-4-6/4------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- allowing me to give full focus to the finger management first before studying the implications of string walking and positional play in equal detail. After a couple of weeks my brain somehow started to embrace the idea of treating the guitar like it has only 1 position and 1 string (also in actual playing) which made playing way more manageable. Funny enough my reference finger for positional play no longer was my index but my pinky (when i mentioned that to my father he reviewed most string players, like violinists, have their pinky as a reference point). In line of my new approach (studying 1 thing at the time before combing them) i started to study individual fingers/parts of fingers and individual moves/part of moves in great detail with excellent results. I did the same with the right hand, using open strings or simple chords. A very important part was studying natural hand behavior/biomechanics which first of all start with proper relaxation and maintaining the natural lineup arm/wrist/hand/fingers as much as possible (so rather then breaking that finger to reach position simply rotate your underarm a bit which brings that finger there with much more ease). I meticulously studied my personal biomechanics, phalange by phalange, finger by finger, combination by combination, as always working my way up from simple to more complex in small manageable steps (the art of knowing what and how to study). It really pays of to know in every detail how to position/use your arm/wrist/hand/fingers in any given situation in such a way they can produce the intended action effortless, since even very small variations in arm/hand position/rotation and finger curvement can mean the difference between struggling and playing with ease. On top i did tons of tonal exercises and worked on the art of expression (dynamics, rhythm) giving me whole pallet of colors to use/combine while developing a total new way of playing the guitar, building myself up from scratch again, not based on what works for others but what works for me. The way was always first study the separate aspects in full deail and then combine them in increasing levels of difficulty, whether is was mastering 1 finger/movement or a combination of fingers/movements or a musical phrase. The exercises my father gave me became part of my daily routine as well on top of which i added many self invented exercises which went back in simplicity even more (like the twighlight exercises i mentioned). Every day i started like it was the first time ever i played the guitar (i tend to believe cemented habits and even ego can be quite obstructive and prevent you from opening yourself to better ways of playing, an open and investigating mind however can be very helpful) and within 3 weeks i metamorphosed into a totally different player (keep in mind i already played the guitar for 17 years and received proper lessons from the very best for the past 4 years so i had a pretty good idea what to strive for, no idea how this will work for a beginner but i guess it is invaluable for all levels to study these kind of things). I know Paco Peña spend quite a lot of time on studying the smallest details as well. One of his quotes is "wel, you play the first note, after the first note you play the second note and so on and so on". Still i recall one lesson were i did not came further as beat 2 of soleares because he kept interrupting me telling me i was out of compas. I was quite puzzled because how can 2 beats be out of compas already ? Years late i heard that taped lesson again (i recorded all the lessons) and with the second beat i thought "out of compas". The trick was i failed to look over the beat to that important beat nr, 3 which would have given those first notes meaning and direction which was not the case the way i played it. That's an other aspect of studying, knowing the relation/flow between each note in great detail. As you might notice the lines i recalculated to "1 position/1 string only" (sublimations of actual playing material) are quite like the systematic left hand exercises i mentioned before and there purpose is allowing you to focus on that aspect of playing without being distracted by other aspects of playing to much. And all the other aspects i studied separately and full focus as well and/or added them layer to layer (like i said the brain can only handle 1 thing at the time so if you want big results in a short time study 1 thing at the time only). One of the reasons i managed to metamorphose into a way way better player in a very short time (aside of having ADD) was that i did not allow a single note/action to pass unnoticed/less as perfect (dude to my "feed the brain 1 thing at the time" policy) and on top did not fall for the temptation to play for fun after spending some quality time with my instrument focusing on changing bad habits for better ones (obviously when you spend an hour to imprint your brain and hands/fingers with new ways of playing you don't want to corrupt/cloud that reprogramming by falling back in old habits, not even for a second). Taking lessons, working on individual notes, chords, technical and tonal control before/while combining things in a growing scale of complexity is all part of the game. As far as taking lessons is concerned, i received lessons from my father between the age of 9-12. Despite having the very best teacher one could ever wish for (Tino van der Sman and others name him as their most important teacher) i proved to be pretty unteachable and at the time showed no interest in technique, tonal quality, reading notes etc but was only interested in melody and harmony which i proved to be able to process and understand at a very young age (my father studied classical guitar when i was born and that was the first language i ever learned, at a very young age i could sing the complete repertoire of classical guitar including the Bach Suites). After 3 years i stopped taking lessons and became my own teacher. 10 years later when i picked up lessons again i had to start from scratch again. My father on the other hand only received 1 lesson in his life, then his parents run out of money so he could not afford any more lessons. So he learned to play the guitar from a little book in a time the Netherlands only hosted a handful of good guitar players. Despite being completely shelf thought he became one of the best players in the Netherlands. When he entered conservatory as a classical guitarist his teacher initially wondered what the hell they could teach him since he mastered the instrument so well already but his aim was mastering himself in musical theory and on top he needed the diploma to teach at the local music school. It never came to that because after his graduation he was appointed to become head teacher of the classical guitar department of the Rotterdam Conservatory. So one can become great without ever having received a lesson and one can struggle despite having lessons for years from the very best, it all depends on your character and mindset. Again, the most important thing i learned (aside proper technique and interpretation) is the art of "what and how to practice". It's not the amount of practice that makes a different, it's the effectiveness of your practice that makes a difference. It's all about instructing/training the brain and fingers and the more effective you can do that the bigger the result. If you know how to train the brain and fingers effectively you can make a meaningful exercise of basically everything and whenever i run into a problem in my repertoire i generally break it down into manageable parts that can be practiced/digested separately and/or layer by layer with optimal results. In general the way i separate/layer the more difficult parts equals their musical importance so i start with the accented melody note, next i ad the notes that precede or follow that melodically (without loosing that secure dropping of the main note) and then i cover the notes that color that melody which might be split in multiple layers as well. As a result all events happening are layered in their natural balance of importance so al the colorings do not inflict the bigger picture and flow. Obviously it helps if good teachers can show you what to strive for and what not. For me what did most for me was studying each aspect of playing separately, often switching between the bigger picture and minute study of 1 small aspect. Again the mind can only focus on 1 thing at the time and (re)programming the mind is most effective if you feed it only 1 thing at the time (the smaller the object of your focus, the bigger the result). I pretty good bass player/teacher once stated "you must make it a habit not to accept a single bad note to escape your instrument". So if you screw up a certain part time after rime, don't play it over and over again hoping the problem will solve itself but spend some quality time investigating WHY it goes wrong and how to fix that. Once you found the answer drill the solution. One of my quotes as a teacher is "repeating only has use when something is worth to be repeated" in other words if it is not worth repeating fix it rather then excepting it to happen a 3-th, 4-th or 5-th time because all you do then is practicing making mistakes.
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