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Good thoughts, Ron...but I do disagree about the doing the same thing for 10 years thing. Positioning is too subtle, IMO, for a teacher to fix it. It's something you have to adjust yourself. It seems to me that you need to have an attitude, almost like a scientist experimenting in the lab. If this doesn't work, why...well try this. Don't get frustrated and grind if it doesn't work, just try to figure it out. If something works, just do it, don't get hung up on preconceptions.
This seems to be the attitude I get from Grisha and other good players I have known do that too. They don't let their emotions get caught up in the technique.
And you notice if you catch him in concert when he's just not in the mood to play - I had that with his last concert...
Yeah John...I had the same pleasure of catching him in that mood too! But it still cost me £36 (pounds UK), a day and a half off work, an overnight stay and a 5 hour trip to and from Edinburgh.
The reluctant genius...treading the boards for £55,000 a shot even though he doesn't even feel like it...
Pure magic!!
cheers
Ron
PS (Although the fee was £55,000, he had to pay the rest of the group members off that and pay for all those plastic Tropical plants to be flown around the world, so I guess that took a bit off it. )
but I do disagree about the doing the same thing for 10 years thing. Positioning is too subtle, IMO, for a teacher to fix it. It's something you have to adjust yourself. It seems to me that you need to have an attitude, almost like a scientist experimenting in the lab. If this doesn't work, why...well try this.
I know what you are saying Mike, but you are reacting in the normal, intelligent, adult way. These days that means if you are not getting quick results, then there is something wrong with your technique that maybe a book or a DVD or a visit to yet another teacher will sort out.
Last month's picado technique doesn't seem to be getting any nearer to Paco's speed so let's re-evaluate it and change the hand position and re-learn again...until next month, when we can try something else!
My lateral speculation was, that perhaps this constant readjustment, which might appear to achieve short-term results and then are lost after two days of not playing, is the wrong way to go? Too many neural pathways created, so the brain becomes confused?
Is it possible that the line of least resistance bears only short term fruits and actually the "hacking" away at something which doesn't initially feel right, or produce instant results, the real way to a secure picado technique?
I don't know..these are only some thoughts.
But I do know that folk brought up on TV, Supermarkets and Internet want instant gratification these days and that could maybe be half the problem? I think some folk maybe accept that they are going to have to do the drudge work and just get on with it, whilst others maybe waste valuable time and effort trying to find clever shortcuts around it.
Just an alternative point of view..I'm not saying which is right and which is wrong in the long term.
Hmmm, this is interesting, because I feel like this is the 2nd time my approach has been described as somehow lazy or in pursuit of instant gratification. I find this unusual since I have been working at this thing for a good 5 years now--not exactly a "learn guitar in 30 days" time frame.
I think we can discard with that idea. I would characterize my approach as trying to find out how it works, and then doing it, not trying to avoid how to do work. Studying and talking to great players and finding out how they did it precisely the opposite thing of trying to avoid doing the work that they did in order to achieve their greatness.
What seems to me to be a more untenable approach is to keep doing something that doesn't work. Doing something that doesn't work for years is a way to describe insanity!
But of course, you don't increase your bench press overnight by learning a top-secret method of learning how to use your muscles, you just have to keep doing it (at a higher and higher weight of cousre). Maybe guitar playing is like that. And I think that some aspects of it are...but in my opinion most of it is not.
One common thread I have noticed is that most very good players showed signs of being very good at an early age. Conversely, I have not noticed too many people blunder along incompetently for 10 years and then in year 11 flower into virtuosity. There are several ways to analyze these facts.
One is that "natural" talent, inherited just like your eye color, is really the most important factor.
Another is that people learn how to work one way, that is learn how to approach the guitar and music and the world one way, and hardly ever change. They become set in their ways. For the virtuoso, this is a good thing indeed. For the blockhead, that means they'll never be good. (political aside--most of the people who voted for Bush once, voted for him again!!!)
I think the second description is more accurate...but your mileage will vary. I don't think anyone should expect to progress to a high level of general playing with minimal practice time.
Personally, I'm always very impressed with Errol's (flamencoguru) picado. It's not super fast, but always seems very, very positive, solid and clean. If I was learning picado, I'd use that as my model/target.
I think the second description is more accurate...but your mileage will vary. I don't think anyone should expect to progress to a high level of general playing with minimal practice time.
I guess things are relative. What is an "early age" for you? Under 12? When did you start playing guitar Miguel, as an adult? Nunez started at 12 and had no flamencos in his family, just some guitar teacher in Jerez like all the other kids that turned out not as good as him.
John Williams is at a high level, but put in minimal practice time. No more than 30 minutes a day he says. But he describes his practice time as efficient.
I think you simply have to love what you do and not look at playing the guitar as undesireable work. Grisha uploads chromatic scale excercises because he likes to play them. I certainly don't like them, but I have other little licks I like to play. In my experience, I can tell a good player who loves to work by the way he "noodles". You know, like when the song is over but they just can't stop playing SOMETHING.
I have this video of Al John and Paco in concert. In between the songs you hear this amazing cacophony of the 3 guys noodling away, fast scales arpeggios, whatever, like they just can't stop fiddleing with the thing. Most of the good players I have met are like that.
I do like all of your thoughts. I just want to add one or two things. I was always thinking of the way to improve my alzapua, changing the hand position, the angle, and so and so..One day I decided that my alzapua was not so bad, and I must say it is not so bad..I concentrate more on the sound I want, and no more on the technical aspect. with Picado I am always thinking to the best way. Sometimes, after 8 hours of playing, I have the sensation I got it, and that true, I play faster and lighter, but I am afraid to go to sleep because I know that it will be over the day after. So I write on a paper: the secret with picado is to be relaxed, or the secret is to keep that distance betwenn the wirst and the guitar or everything else...But the sensation is gone and sometimes it comes back after 1 week...And during that week I try a lot of techniques...A friend of mine has a phonomenal picado and he just told me picado was never a problem for him...A last thnig: I practice some jazz licks with band in a box, not thinking to my picado, just to the music and my picado is far better then when I go back to flamenco because I play music, with variations, accents, and my goal is no more rapidity..rapidity is the last thing to look for if you want to catch it...And you know what, I am sure it is the better way...Our approach is sometimes to more intelectual, just take the guitar and play.
I don't know if this is applicable duende121, but I think it has to do with muscle memory and attending to physical processes.
When I used to fence, we would have special workshops every so often. The process always worked so that we warmed up, did some relevant exercise to the technique(s) we were working on and then worked on the technique until we felt comfortable.
Then we'd do some other (physically demanding) exercises and return to the technique(s) of the day (TotD). We'd work on the technique and go back to the physically demanding exercise (usually ones that stress everything and particularly the muscles used in the technique of the day - if there we any applicable exercises). Then we returned the TotD and so on until we were trembling and it required every bit of concentration to maintain form, looseness and accuracy.
This style of practise really enforces mental and muscle memory.
Interestingly, both pastimes are similar in that minimalising movement leads to mastery... I'll have to ponder this...
ORIGINAL: Miguel de Maria Good thoughts, Ron...but I do disagree about the doing the same thing for 10 years thing. Positioning is too subtle, IMO, for a teacher to fix it. It's something you have to adjust yourself.
You know Mike, I have aways thought that you would benefit from lessons and yet I know from your posts on the subject that you dismiss the idea.
Its nothing to do with your level of playing, or indeed the amount of work you put in, its just that you seem, to devote an enormous amount of time searching for that elusive 'something'. You put a great deal of effort into the philosophical question of what makes a virtuouso and spend a lot of time studing the habits, outlook and motivations of virtuosi. But the real question is, how much time did THEY spend thinking about all that stuff?
Personnally, I believe that 'something' is inside you, and a good teacher would help you recognise it and develop it.
I agree with you about the process of self evaluation and experimentation, but its very easy to end up going round in circles with that approach, you end up chasing your tail. A good teacher is much more than simply an 'expert' who tells you what to do. It should be more like coaching, IMO.
i agree with you that there is something that a teacher can help you realise, or it could of course be realised by yourself. if you think about it everybody is different. some people are born with longer ligaments in their legs so they become runners, some have a bone structure that is broad and so they are good at sports like rugby.people are born with different sensitivty to sounds and pitches of sounds.. you can see where im going with this.
if someone were to be referred to as a virtuoso, i think its because their bone structure, the little things like flexiblity of hands, their natural musical ear and all the other things that all people differ from, are just right. you get some people who just have that right mix of these things, maybe coincidence maybe certain qualities go with others but when someone has just the right anatomy for it, they're born for it. i dont think the 'something' is elusive although that seems the natural way to look at it. the almighty mysterioso! everyone's different, some have the great luck to have the qualities that make them a great musician, virtuoso even
Sometimes, after 8 hours of playing, I have the sensation I got it, and that true, I play faster and lighter, but I am afraid to go to sleep because I know that it will be over the day after.
I think this is a very good point. I know this too and have had it often.
You’ll also generally be best at what you do most often. My tresillo is dead-on no matter what time of day whether I’m warmed-up or not because I accompany so often. Dance instructors usually groan at flashy, fast picados, so I have to compensate. Similarly, my English speech has slowly but surely gone down the drain since I moved to Germany 13 years ago because I rarely speak it.
Concerning the improvement after ten years of playing – compare Manolo Sanlucar’s “Recital Flamenco” with one of his newer albums. He was a virtuoso then, but has improved – it’s not only the recording quality. You’ll hear the same with Sabicas, Paco de Lucia and especially with El Nino de Pura. The improvement slows down over the years, but it’s always there.
I’d never shoot for being a virtuoso if I’m old enough to wish for it. But why is it so important? There’s something to be said for hard work paid off, as well. In the end I just want to play, and it’s be great if I could earn money from it. I’d just as much aspire to be in the position of Paco Cepero (not a virtuoso but a deservedly well-respected flamenco guitarist) as in the position of Paco de Lucia. I’m happier enjoying playing and having to work at it than being a born virtuoso and despising it.
My English speech has slowly but surly gone down the drain since I moved to Germany 13 years ago.
Sometimes, after 8 hours of playing, I have the sensation I got it, and that true, I play faster and lighter, but I am afraid to go to sleep because I know that it will be over the day after.
i have experienced the same too recently but i also found that i had been playing so much i was suffering from fatigue, you know that feeling when you just wake u and you cant clench your fists. a bit like that. i had bout a day not really playing and in the evening my picado was more accurate and faster than when i had been practicing for ages. im sure everyone knows wat i mean.. a good feeling..
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I’m happier enjoying playing and having to work at it than being a born virtuoso and despising it.
definitely! i dont despise at all, i dnt even think about it. if i did i wouldnt devote so much time to working at it so hard!!! its half the fun of it!!!!!!
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I got this in the email from Jamey Andreas, the internet guitar guy...
-- A final consideration for those wishing to move powerfully in the direction of skill is this: improvement of fundamental skills does not occur through the process of repetition of procedures, it comes from the continual upgrading of procedures. This is a finding reported in scientific studies of those individuals who have acquired "expert performance" abilities. Here is a quote from "Expert Performance: Its Structure and Acquisition" by Ericcson and Charness (first appearing in American Psychologist, Aug. 1994)
"Hence, individuals do not achieve expert performance by gradually refining and extrapolating the performance they exhibited before starting to practice but instead by restructuring the performance and acquiring new methods and skills. In the final section, we show that individuals improve their performance and attain an expert level, not as an automatic consequence of more experience with an activity but rather through structured learning and effortful adaptation."
--coincidentally, the Ericcson and Charness study was pretty influential on me too.
This I definitely agree with. Doing the same thing over and over everyday won't help, although when it comes to speed I think to a certain degree the brain also needs to keep trying certain things over and over until it flows.
Maybe there are two elements. The above deals with psychology but there's the physical aspect, too. Things like picado and rasgueado require strength, and no matter how perfect you have it down, if you stop for a month you have to invest some time into it again.
Maybe in doing repitition the brain will also automatically try to restructure the way the fingers move based on how the fingers feel and how it sounds. In learning things like instruments, languages and martial arts or sports, I know repitition does play an important role, whatever it may be...
"Hence, individuals do not achieve expert performance by gradually refining and extrapolating the performance they exhibited before starting to practice but instead by restructuring the performance and acquiring new methods and skills. In the final section, we show that individuals improve their performance and attain an expert level, not as an automatic consequence of more experience with an activity but rather through structured learning and effortful adaptation."
Miguel, This sounds very interesting, but I'm not clear on what is being communicated here. Would you please explain this a bit more with references to guitar practice? Thanks!
Ramin
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What we are today comes from out thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind. -Buddha
This sounds very interesting, but I'm not clear on what is being communicated here. Would you please explain this a bit more with references to guitar practice? Thanks!
Ramin
I think the long and short of it is, you can only get so far, unless you really monitor your performance, ie, pick your own technique apart and build it carefully. This applies to alot of things i suppose.
Ramin, the work in question was regarding expert performance, supposedly in a cross-disciplinary context. Hypothetically, the conclusions would apply to guitar playing, although not bulb changing (I would defer to an engineer such as Ron on this account).
As far as the specific application, I think Todd has hit it on the head (and his playing speaks for itself!).
True Miguel, still there are two factors here in my opinion. One is the basic technique itself. If you practise arpeggios with the same stiff wrist and fingers for months and months and years you’ll never get it down. On the other hand, just because you can play the first Bach lute suite perfectly doesn’t mean you can play the other three perfectly off a sheet of notes without allowing your fingers to go through them for a couple of weeks very slowly. Of course there are a few people on this earth who can do this, but if one of us were one of them, we’d have noticed by now. Classical players will sometimes spend months on one piece.
For your fingers to understand what you want them to play, you need to take them through a piece slowly, as if teaching them for the first time. The way you do this will change with every new piece over time with your experience, so indeed you are adapting your technique – still the repetition is important as it is not an active search for the perfect technique after which all of a sudden you can play everything perfectly without having to practise anymore. Your fingers will adapt themselves with correct repetitive practise.
John Williams said his practise time was about 30 minutes, but I’d like to know how much he played everyday after practise. I’m sure he didn’t just put the guitar away after a half an hour. Todd, how much do you practise and how much do you play everyday?
ORIGINAL: Miguel de Maria I got this in the email from Jamey Andreas, the internet guitar guy...
I remember Jamey first appearing on the Internet years ago. He used to post long, long, long essays on practice/technique development into newsgroups, plugging his book. H emanged to self-style himself as the guru of guitar practice, and found a real niche by introducing rock/pop players to a whole bunch of fundamental principles that have been around a while in classical pedagogy.
I agree with a lot of what he says (most of it aren't his ideas anyway and can be found in the CG literature) but he does take an awful lot of words to say something obvious like "forget mindless repetition and adapt your practice as you improve".
He once posted this 1000 word treatise on rhythm and timing, the upshot of which was basically 'it pays to practice with a metronome".
Jon, I agree... and he has stated that his goal is not to make great players, but to just help bad players have the opportunity to get good--a laudable one in my opinion. His unwavering optimism are endearing enough to make the borderline dishonest self-promotion palatable. But it's all good. He sends out a newsletter and I get something out of his essays, so it works for me.
John, this subject is so hard to talk about that I'm not even sure if I agree.
I used to think that there was such a thing as basic technique, in that if you practiced your 101 arpeggios, scales up and down, hammers, etc., that after a few years you would have "mastered" "basic technique" and could then spontaneously and easily apply it to Bach Lute Suites and Paco de Lucia. In fact I spent a couple of years primarily practicing scales and technical exercises a la Ricardo Iznaola's Kitharalogus.
One time I mentioned this philosophy to another guy, saying I wanted to master technique and then learn to apply it to music, and he boldly said, "Do you really think it works that way?" Well, I did... But the further I go (and judging from your bulerias, I am not as far as you and keep that in mind), the more I think that this is a reductionist fallacy.
This came from the fact that although I had good arpeggios, pretty good picado, and could do barre chords, etc., that I played pieces quite sloppily and never really felt in control of them. I now believe this is because the "basic techniques" are only the barest facsimile of the actual music. In certain cases you can "plug them in" to a piece, but in most you cannot, and end up learning, in effect, a new technique for each song.
Chang's book on piano technique (google it, it's free online and very good), supports this belief. It certainly matches my experience, despite a couple years of basically pure technique practice, when I started to play Torre Bermeja, Recuerdos, Capricho, let alone Panaderos., etc., there is a sense of starting over after a very rough level.
I now believe that the technique of playing real music is far too fine and varied to be covered even by a book of 500 exercises like Kitharalogus. Although perhaps "pure technique" does have a minor place in that it can help develop certain important motions in isolation and can be used as warmup, the best technique practice is just working on songs, probably in ascending order of difficulty.
If you look back to skill acquisition in music, you see an idea of graded difficulty music--etudes such as the Sor lecciones followed by the Etudes. In flamenco there is the way of learning falsetas, each one encompassing a technqiue or two to master, and of course with the simultaneous rhythm/ear training of playing along with the maestro at the dance academies.
What does this have to do with Bach? Well, first I think more people can sight read it than you think. Todd told me he saw Elliot Fisk do some ridiculous sight reading, and he is hardly one of only one or two great guitarists in the world. Second, all the scales and arpeggios in the world are going to get you only so far in playing Bach, but if you thoroughly learned a couple Cello Suites and a couple Lute Suites, how hard would the next one be? I don't know, but I do think that you might have picked up enough "basic technique" mastering these incredibly varied pieces that you might be able to sight read it!
Yeah, you can just picture me there after every paragraph going "mm, hmm"...
quote:
more people can sight read it than you think
This I know, and I've been aspiring to get going on it for years, it'll probably never happen... (*sigh*)
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the best technique practice is just working on songs, probably in ascending order of difficulty
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if you thoroughly learned a couple Cello Suites and a couple Lute Suites, how hard would the next one be?
Yup, I think we're thinking the same thing. This is why I don't practise scales or bare technique at all anymore, only pieces. For example, my very most comfortable technique is the tremolo, after having learned so darn many for classical and flamenco over the years there's almost no progression I haven't learned yet and can't have down the same day...
This in part makes my argument above a bit shakey... I think it's called "being wrong"
I think I said this before, a quote from my 6th grade snare drum teacher: "Practice does not make perfect, practice makes PERMINANT!"
You have understand what is the correct thing to do and do it a lot. Otherwise you have to "unlearn" which takes a lot of time.
Not sure why some folks have rhythm and some don't. That is the key to me, if you have rhythm you learn fast. The more advanced players IMO have better rhythm. Playing the notes or doing the proper hand position or running scales is not the key. It is simply understanding the way a specific rhythm feels, and learning how to execute it. Metronome is important, but I have heard people practicing wrong with it. I have not heard someone who had really exceptional rhythm, that was a bad player or had trouble learning quickly.
The drummer in my rock band when I was a teenager, was able to pick up this guitar riff much faster than I could, even though I could play "circles" around him with my scales. He had no real guitar technique, but could learn guitar music faster then me! It was at that time I realised how important it was, and what separated good players from GREAT players.
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This I know, and I've been aspiring to get going on it for years, it'll probably never happen... (*sigh*) 
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