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RE: road to....?
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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 RE: road to....? (in reply to Ricardo)
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I would like to bring up the idea of "emotion in music", as pink has alluded to several times. For example, complaining about his bland, "emotionless" tremolo. Perhaps this is just a semantic issue, but it might not always be helpful to think in these terms. If you listen to music and you feel emotion, that doesn't mean the music itself had emotion. If it is bland, neither is that necessarily meaningful. It's not like the human voice which automatically conveys the singer's mental state without even trying. There are a lot of players who think they are expressing incredibly deep things, and are feeling that, but it doesn't come out at all. I have found it helpful to listen carefully to "emotional" recordings and try to understand why they make me feel that way. It comes down to refining your hearing and your map of dynamics and rhythmic nuance. The goal is that hopefully it eventually becomes natural and then your feelings about the music will automatically be communicated. So an exercise in listening that seeks to objectively note minute and tedious details wil become a vehicle for your highest artistic and emotional expression.
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Aug. 3 2013 16:46:48
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Erik van Goch
Posts: 1787
Joined: Jul. 17 2012
From: Netherlands
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RE: road to....? (in reply to pink)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: pink
I've had to start again which has meant trying to undo all those years of bad habits too. At 47 years of age that's a big ask.....and I guess I was wondering, if I read, and had that mathematical structure to what I do instead of relying on those things from the 3rd layer ,would I be in a better place with this new road?
Also Rui i am hyper critical of myself....especially when it comes to playing guitar....my Achilles heel I guess.
This sounds very much like my story and that of my father. In the 40ties my father received 1 or 2 lessons from a member of the Ramblers (one of the big names over here at that period of time time). Unfortunately that was all his family could afford so he was forced to learn how to play the guitar from of a little book in stead. At the age of 22 he quit his job (being a very talented decorating painter) in order to become a professional musician ..... a risky thing, income wise. Fortunately he wasn't out of work a single day since, especially since his band had a temporary contract and soon became one of the most popular bands in the Netherlands in that period of time (50ties-60ties). Nowadays you have big discos with famous and very well payed disc jockeys, but in his time you had even bigger dancings and all music was performed life by a house band. His band was the best of all and as a result was contracted by the hottest clubs in the country. He worked over 12 hours a day and performed 6 hours a day on stage 363 days a year over a 10 year period..... that's over 20.000 hours of public performing (probably more than the 4 Beatles added together... they actually met and jammed when some of the Beatles enjoyed the nocturnal hotspots of Amsterdam after there only Dutch performance).
The growing popularity of television ended that area in the midd 60ties and my father had to find other means of living. He soon found employment as a guitar teacher at the local music school in combination with studying classical guitar at Rotterdam Conservatory. So AFTER he played the guitar for over 20 years with over 20.000 performing hours on the clock he finally received his first guitar lessons at the age of 30+. As far as playing the guitar was concerned he had to start all over again (partly getting writ of bad habits, partly learning better ways of playing the guitar, insights that he could have used very well during his previous performing years). For musical theory he was allowed to skip a couple of things because he used to be the composer/arranger of the band and had lot's of experience in understanding/annotating numerous types of music. Despite his demanding and time consuming job at the music school he skipped a year and graduated cum laude within 4 years. His teacher insisted that my father would be the one taking over his position as main teacher of classical guitar and guitar didactics at Rotterdam Conservatory. None of the parties involved ever regretted that he accepted the job.
Like i said my father learned how to play the guitar all over again when he became a student of Rotterdam Conservatory at the age of 30+. And that was not the last time he radically had to change his way of playing the guitar. Soon he specialized in early music and had to adapt to specialized instruments and specialized ways of playing again and again (in the same way flamenco and classical guitar use different right hand techniques).
Speaking about flamenco, when Paco Peña was asked by Rotterdam Conservatory to start a University School of Flamenco Guitar he agreed on condition my father joined in as well (they had worked together previously and both admired each others qualities). My father decided to face the adventure and at the age of 53 picked up the challenge to learn how to play the guitar all over again, this time the flamenco way. His huge biomechanical/didactical insights, incredible working drive (still working 12 hours a day 363 days a year) and his unrestricted access to Paco soon made him an expert on that field as well.
At the age of 22 (after playing the guitar for 15 years and ear playing all Paco's records for years) i became there first student. As it turned out i had a good ear for melody and harmony but i basically had to learn how to play the guitar all over again. Unlike my father (who only had to learn/perfect the right hand flamenco techniques) i also had to learn how to handle the left hand from scratch. For both hands i had to forget everything i learned before (to many bad habits) starting playing open strings again for mounts (the same happened to the other 10 students). Rebuilding my technique did take me 3-4 years, partly because unlike my father i was extremely lazy (or better said very active in an other discipline....playing/studying chess all day).
At the end of the 4th years i was in danger of being kicked out of the institute dude to the my lack of study (results). So i decided to take my study a little more seriously. Restudying my fathers exercises seemed to be a good start (never took them very seriously before) but i soon realized that no exercise in the world would made me play any better as long as i only did them to please the teacher, the clock or as an excuse to move my fingers. That's how i became interested in studying the art of studying. Having my fathers genes (and a previous education in animal anatomy) it soon became pretty serious and "studying the art of studying" for (flamenco) guitar soon became my first (unofficial) scientific study with me as guinea pig. I closely studied my studying habits, taking notes of everything (eating/sleeping habits, resulting energy levels/fluctuations, moment/durance/content/outcome of my study hours and so on), using my scientific mind to evaluate/understand/refine the effects of my experimental exercises. I soon realized the brain can only handle 1 thing at the time so i had to start with studying single fingers and parts of fingers. Once again i decided to forget everything i (thought i had) learned before and to start all over again from scratch... I closely studied biomechanics of finger parts, fingers, hands, wrist, arm and shoulders, tonal development of strings, nerves/muscles and there interaction, i started to apply mental visualization and so on. After weeks/mounds of extremely intense observation/deducting/training (1 -3 hours a day full focus) i was able to understand (and use) the underlaying mechanisms which allowed me to study 1000 times more effective and on top completely changed my way of playing. The fallowing years i returned to the chessboard 48 weeks a year (falling back into old playing habits on the guitar) reinventing myself (and catching up with the others) in the 3 weeks previous to my yearly exams.
In my opinion the ability to read notes and knowing (a bit of) musical theory doesn't hurt (on the contrary), but it doesn't make you a better musician/performer (both Paco Peña and Paco de Lucia can't read a single note and know nothing about musical theory but they are more then a match for most players that can). What you need is someone to show you what to study/how to study (from simple to more complex etc.). Some people have more talent to find the wright tracks then others. The natural players find there way almost without help with there instrument as there main teacher, many others need to be told the same thing over and over again without results. You can only learn someone to play the guitar to a certain extent or like someone else once put it (and you'll probably like this one)
"i can't teach you how to play the guitar, but i can teach you how to teach yourself"
That's also the reason why good exercises don't work if you only do them to please the teacher, the clock or as an excuse to move your fingers. They only work when chosen well and when done full focus and with a deep wish to learn from them or like Grisha said "you have to pay attention". I like to ad "the smaller the object of your focus, the bigger the outcome" (that's why i often study left and right hand separately, as well as individual fingers/phalanges etc.). Being hyper critical can be a Achilles heel in some situations, but it is also essential in order to get the very best out of yourself because improving begins with noticing/disapproving/chancing imperfections.
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Date Aug. 3 2013 22:44:20
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