In a chapter entitled “It Don’t Come Easy: The Trouble With the Human Brain” (very promising, right?) Marcus compares the cryptic fingerboard of the guitar with the logical one of the piano:

“Guitar, like German, is filled with maddening irregularities. One problem has to do with how the notes are laid out…..What makes all of this particularly complicated is that any given note can be played in many different places. This greatly expands the advanced guitarist’s options in forming chords—but bewilders the poor beginner, who has to learn them all. “

Truer words were never spoken. A lot of your learning on the guitar seems to be down to “rote” memory—i.e. memorizing all ten-to-infinity shapes of D7-sharp-9, for instance. Or trying to remember for the 30th time in a month what that damn note on the 9th fret at the 5th string is. That same basic set of notes that form a single chord show up in many different permutations all over the fingerboard. It’s really overwhelming and quite confusing and takes time to master.

If you want to really go crazy, of course, try altered tunings (also called scordatura Changing your sixth string to D is enough to throw you off if you’re used to the traditional E. But there are a lot of altered tunings that change every single note on the guitar to a different note. Pieces such as Koyunbaba, (and Variations on a Mongolian Folk Song,  which uses the same tuning) are good examples.

When you alter your guitar tuning, suddenly you’re not in Kansas anymore: all the years of work you did memorizing the notes, the scales, the chords, learning how to sight read or even just to pick out a melody disappears instantly. You have to start back almost at square one. It’s like waking up one morning to find that your mouth, tongue, and vocal chords had been somehow structurally altered—and when you say “D7-sharp-9″ it comes out as jibberish, “Silver-cloud-8″ or “R-two-D-two.”

So there’s a reason why music theory is taught on the keyboard, just like there’s a reason most pieces written in alternate guitar tunings can be really beautiful and interesting, but not very harmonically complex.

If you want to develop an innate, musical understanding of the guitar, and make beautiful music confidently and naturally, you need to base your deeper mastery of the guitar not entirely on rote memory of where everything lies on the fingerboard. You need to base it on the mastery of something that goes much deeper: for lack of a better term, I’m just going to call this thing the musical scale. 

When you panic at the complexity of the fingerboard, you may think that what you have to memorize are a bunch of individual notes and chords, so you can jump to the right one at the right time. That’s true, but on a deeper level, what you really need to learn is the deeper musical shapes those notes follow. And these shapes have a lot more humanity to them, they are what we respond to emotionally, and thus they tend to be easier to learn. They have their full power because of the musical scale from which they spring.

Musical scales are like an invisible scaffolding that give rhyme, reason and structure to everything that shows up as music on the strings of the guitar. The notes of various scales show up in every melody you play and they actually give them reason to be where they are, reason to have the emotional meaning and effect they do, they give each note (and chord) a different kind of gravity, a different character, a different tension, a different place of importance within the intricate ecology of the musical piece.

The scale is the soul of the entire musical ecosystem.

And what makes a scale a scale? It’s the relationship between the notes of course:  For instance, a major scale, the most common and natural to our ears, has seven notes, with the following relationship to each other: Whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. But just knowing this doesn’t explain scales.

Why this particular configuration? It’s not random. There’s a cultural and historical component, of course, but at heart, it’s based on how our ears and body and emotions respond to the innate structure of sound waves themselves.

When you hit a really wrong note on the guitar, you know it’s wrong because it feels wrong. And it feels wrong because it didn’t fit in to that deeper structure, the internally visioned scale on which the piece is based. 

On a more subtle level, when you play a piece, you can tell that not all notes have equal weight, or importance.  If you cultivate your ability to listen and feel carefully, you start noticing that every note you play effects you in a slightly different way. This is not just because one note is “higher” and another “lower.” It’s because of the relationship between the two notes and the rest of the piece in the context of some sort of musical scale–some series of notes within an octave. Music is an ecosystem, and the musical scale is the basic set of relationships and rules that keep it balanced and beautiful and in play, instead of flying apart into chaos.

The deeper you get into the simple relationships of the notes of the musical scale to each other, the more you continue to really , really, REALLY understand these relationships, and how they effect you on a visceral and emotional level-consciously and unconsciously, by learning to read notes or not—–the more expressive musical mastery starts to become a given, the more it just starts to just flow from your fingers.

Most music theory books and most systems for learning and memorizing scales on the fingerboard don’t address this very well, if at all. They tell you the how but not the why. They tell you how to learn the shapes but not how to make poetry out of them.

There are many such systems for attaining fretboard knowledge, and I’ve explored many of them. By explored I mean purchased many of them for $19.95 at Sam Ash or Barnes & Noble, worked with them for a bit, and then filed them on my shelf with the rest as reference material. Which is what they often are—-many of them are just encyclopedic listings of fingering patterns that a computer could memorize in an instant but which the human brain needs hours of practice a day for years to “download”

An excellent example of fretboard system overkill that I’ve seen is the Guitar Grimoire series. Pages and pages, volumes and volumes of this:
In the book that I have, just the basic Grimoire, there are 211 pages of this, and all you have to do is memorize them all, and you’ll understand the fingerboard. Then you can start on the next Grimoire, the one with all the chords. After that, it’s on to George Van Epp’s massive three-volume ode to rote memory.

Maybe one day they’ll invent a way to download an Iphone Grimoire App directly into your brain. Or maybe you have eight hours a day to practice for the next ten years.

Barring that, here’s what I suggest: start with the C major scale. Learn to understand it. Learn it on the first position, and also up and down each single string. Play it AND sing it. Learn what half steps are (between E and F, B and C) and whole steps are (all the other notes), and learn the difference between them.

If you’re a beginner at sight reading, or have a lot of trouble with it, try the following excercise (this works really well for kids…they start reading music 3 times as easily and quickly when I have them do this)

• As you read each consecutive note, rather than just jump from one to another, think of the melody you’re playing as a journey, a journey that takes a particular shape, with its particular sequence of ups and downs. The notes travel up or down, and they also travel in the following ways: Steps, skips, and leaps.
• A step is when you move from one note to the next. A skip is when you skip over one note to get to the next one, and a leap is anything larger than that. You could leap over three notes or you could leap over ten notes.
• Do it out loud, (“step up to C, skip down to A, Leap up to B”) or in your head, and do it even if you’re not playing single note melodies. Find the shape of the main melody, and say it, sing it if you like.
• Find the shape of the bass line too—this can be incredibly revealing, and often easier: and you’ll learn a lot about the structure of things in that way too.
• You can even follow the inner voices where there are inner voices, and follow their obscure but important steps, skips and leaps.
• If you’re more advanced, and breaking into skips, steps, and leaps is too easy or obvious to you, name and notice and feel the intervals.
• Pay special attention to the difference between half-steps and whole steps. Half steps tend to create a stronger pull to a neighboring note, while whole steps allow you to drift more freely.
• Also, pay attention to what key you’re in. If you’re in D, notice what happens as the notes of the melody and the bass tug and play against that sense of “home base,” the D note. If anything in a melody or harmony draws your attention emotionally, figure out which note in the scale it is, (scale degree 1, 2, 3, 4, etc). Ask which direction it’s headed in, where it’s pulling your attention to.
• If it’s not in the scale, pay attention to what its effect and its function are. Is it drawing attention to a particular scale degree? Is it pulling you into a different scale, to a new tonic, or “home base?”

In paying attention to the shape of a melody, one thing you’re doing here is thinking like a singer. By doing this, you’re getting a look at something that many guitarists, much to their musical detriment, never pay much attention to: the essential emotional shape of of the music you are playing. The soul of the music is in the relationship of each note to each other note. And the scale is the key to understanding that relationship.

As you do exercises like this, your playing will become more and more musical, and you will also start to have a sense of the hidden structure that makes what you play have any sense whatsoever.

Learning music theory on the guitar is crazy. It’s a lifelong pursuit. But staying in touch with the basic meaning of the notes in scale will definitely keep you out of the  Asylum for the Musically Frustrated, which is full of disillusioned guitarists free-floating in an endless sea of scale and chord guides and systems and manuals. It will keep your musical feet on dancing expressively, on solid musical ground. 

In my next post, I’m going to share with you a musical exercise that profoundly changed my way of understanding and playing music by getting me more in touch with all that I talked about in this post.

Until then, leave comments and ask questions!

Jay 

They call it self-expression, but how can you fully express yourself if you aren’t fully connected to yourself or to the music? How can you fully express yourself if everything is clowded out by technical concerns?

In this video, I work with a Villa-Lobos Study, breaking it down into its chord components, because this illustrates the concept very clearly.

But you don’t have to alter the music at all to do this exercise. You also can do this exercise with:

• a very simple, shorter piece
• with smaller sections of any piece
• even with a musical phrase or snippet
• anything that you are reasonably comfortable with and want to go deeper with
• You can even do this with scales or other technical exercises–which forms a new kind of technical exercise:an “inner technique” exercise that develops musical self-expression and understanding.

When you learn to play an instrument like the classical guitar there’s plenty to worry about.

Your hand position.
Your other hand position.
Coordinating your hands (and your fingers) with each other.
Your fingering.
Your sitting position.
Your repertoire.
Your technical exercises.
Your practice regimen.
Your sound quality.
Your sight reading ability.
Your grasp of music theory.
And of course, your fingernails. Oh joy, the fingernails.

D0n’t forget, your career as God’s next gift to music.  

I’m just scratching the surface here. Entire books—entire libraries, really—have been compiled about many of the things on this little list.

Where do you start? Are you ever finished? What ties it all together? We all know there’s more to learning music than all of this stuff. Most of it is mechanical, theoretical, technical.

There’s something else going on here, something deeper, something important. But what?

Theophrastus Sharp (AKA Phrastus)

In my novel-in-progress, The Adventures of Theophrastus Sharp, a music-obsessed boy, Phrastus, meets a mysterious musical magician and teacher.  The teacher, Dr. Firgus-Fortuna Zelfrumzinger Bones (aka Dr. Bones), commutes from another universe. In his universe music is an elemental force of nature like gravity, or electricity, and these properties of music start leaking into our universe.

Dr. Bones teaches Phrastus how to play his instrument, the viola, but that’s only the beginning.

"Your own self is the true instrument you must learn."

He tells Phrastus something even more  important: ”Your own self is the true instrument you must learn.”

Do you believe him?

Look at this in a different way: What good is your guitar without you?

Without you, it just sits there looking pretty, and its strings shiver a bit imperceptibly whenever someone’s voice strikes an E, B, G, D, or an A.

The guitar doesn’t get memory slips—you do. The guitar doesn’t get stage fright–you do. The guitar doesn’t bring music out of itself—you bring music out of yourself, through it.

My guitar, sitting there looking pretty.

You may think you’re learning to play guitar, but you’re actually learning yourself, through the guitar.

Your guitar needs you. It needs your vision and your heart and hands and mind, in order to come alive. It needs you just like it needed the vision and labor of countless craftsmen throughout history in order to show up in the world in the first place.

Your guitar needs to become an expression of  you, an extension of your inner vision, an expansion of your passion.

Phrastus experiences the magic of bringing his inner world forth through the viola for the first time when he’s sitting on a rock by the Hudson River with two friends and a bunch of geese:

With each stroke, he felt a strange feeling in his chest, like a feather tickling inside, and at each tickle, there appeared a bright thread of sound, shimmering in front of him, stretching out over the water like one strand of a rainbow. Where the sound-thread started and where it ended was impossible to tell.

What it was made of was impossible to say.

That it appeared each time he played a note was impossible to deny.

Like a strand of dream that had broken into waking life, it was inside of him, in his heart; and outside as well, unfurling in front of him, alive in the atmosphere, playing with the wind and with the river. He was seeing what should only be heard, hearing what should only be felt. And his two companions saw and heard it as well.

As did the geese.

Don’t just play guitar. Play yourself through your guitar. You’re already doing this whether you realize it or not.  You couldn’t stop even if you wanted to stop. Start doing whatever you can to become fully conscious of this fact.

How do you do this? A few hints:

• tune into your own sensations: your hands, your fingertips, your breath, your entire body. Get used to doing this. Make a practice of it.
• tune into way the music makes you feel as you play it: if you are not emotionally impacted by what you play no one else will be.
• tune into your imagination as you play: what does the music evoke? What story does it tell? Who are you while you play the music? If you don’t develop your inner musical vision, all the technique in the world won’t save you from being drop-dead boring.

When you truly, consciously learn to play yourself through the instrument, the things on the list at the beginning of this post start to work out of their own accord.

And you begin to create magic. It’s undeniable, and gets noticed.

Even the geese might notice.

 Read my next post for a video demonstration of one effective way to practice these concepts, every time you sit down to play!

Music theory was required for music majors—lots of music theory—and it always felt like I was cramming a toolkit into my brain that my brain didn’t quite see the need for—-the tools were for fixing airplane engines and when all I was planning to do was hang out and glide through a few tunes. I could get through the music just fine just by feel. Why learn the inner workings of an airplane engine?

Eventually, I discovered that I could can only get so far by feeling things out.

Ultimately, music theory is worth the trouble. The trick is to connect music theory to your ability to feel things out musically.

I still mumble and stumble a bit with music theory terminology, but that’s because my inclination has always been towards the feeling side of things. I think in the language of feelings, not jargon. I always ask myself, in a very visceral sense, what does this bit of theory mean, in terms of how the music sounds, in terms of how it feels?

So why should you care about music theory? What does it do for you? And what does it not do for you?

Here’s the key:

Music theory provides you with a map of what is going on.

It’s not what is actually going on.

Similarly, Google Maps tells you where the nearest Starbucks is, but it’s not to be confused with actually sitting in a Starbucks, enjoying the community of “those getting jacked up on heavy-duty caffeine.”

In other words, music theory helps you navigate the territory but it’s not the territory.

What this means, if you’re willing to give it a bit of time and effort, is that music theory gives you options.

It keeps you from always traveling the same pathways. It shows you where all paths are—those less travelled by, as well as those worn deeply into the psyche—and it shows how they all connect to each other and how it might be nice to try this one for a change.

In this video I make my first attempt to make music theory relevant to a guitar player. If you watch it to the end, you’ll hear me play a piece while the screen follows the score and little colored arrows jump around. That alone should make it worth your time.

Let me know if this video helps you, and if it brings up any questions for you, by commenting in the comment box below.

Jay

Right now I’m in Amish Country for my Kauffman family reunion, driving past quilt shops and horse-and-buggies, but wanted to answer a question or two right now.

Here’s an Amish buggy we passed on the way:

And here’s an interesting two part question on right hand technique:

“1. How do I make my right hand ring finger “a”strong?

2. For “i”,”m” alternation will the ring finger”a” move along with “m” ?”

Part 2 is easier to answer. Yes.  The “a” finger will move with the “m” finger. In fact the pinky will move with the a finger as well. The “a” might move a lot, or it might move just a little. There is no reason to keep it from moving—In fact you’ll cause A LOT more tension if you try to keep it from moving. Just keep the hand relaxed, move from the large knuckle, let the fingers do what they need to do.

Don’t worry—your fingers are still capable of amazing independence. If there is an arpeggio or fingering (or strumming/rasgueado) pattern where greater control over movement/non-movement is necessary, then you can practice that in and of itself and your fingers will be able to handle it.  But there’s no need to over control every little thing the fingers are doing if they are not getting in the way. Here’s a little video I made (away from the guitar) that demonstrates this.

Now let’s get to part 1:

“1. How do I make my right hand ring finger “a”strong?

The “a” finger is often a bit weaker because guitar music tends to favor (or more often feature) “p”, “i”, and “m.”  There is often an easy and stable fingering solution that uses i and m and lets the “a” finger get away just hanging out in the background.

But when you need to use “a” you really friggin’ need to use it! It’s got to be well developed and capable of independence from the “m” finger. And it’s got to be fast.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Technical Studies

Guiliani 120 Studies

You can download them free at the above link. There are a lot of great ones for developing “a” finger independence and strength, and I’d suggest starting at #11 or 12 with this purpose in mind. Play steadily with the metronome, see which ones slow you down the most, and focus on those.

—Play #s 18-24 with more follow through on the “a” finger, thus making it more prominent, bringing the e string out musically.

—#38 is especially good for the “a” finger!

There’s a lot more you can do with these studies to strengthen and polish “a”‘s capabilities. Just be sure to keep the hand relaxed, move from the large knuckle, and keep the knuckle nearly over the string being played.

Watch my video on the Bouncing Hand Syndrome to review some tips about right hand position and use. Another one to watch is the one about Rest Stroke vs. Free Stroke. These exercises should be done free stroke.

2. Using arpeggios and patterns from the repertoire:

Intermediate: Try Francisco Tarrega’s Study in E Minor. It’s a gorgeous little piece and not difficult if you have basic technique down. Be sure to focus on making the “a” finger sing. Romance de Amor is more famous ( and more advanced for the left hand) but basically the same thing for the right hand.

Brouwer Study #6 is an awesome little piece, worth working up, and gives your “a” finger a workout.

Advanced:The arpeggio in Villa-Lobos Etude 1 is legendary for its “a” finger improvement potential. If you can’t play the whole piece, you can get a start on the arpeggio pattern but just practicing it as an exercise with a few chords—Em -Am-F etc.

Postscript:

The “a” finger is capable of a lot. There was a fellow in my graduate guitar program at Cincinnati who was missing most of his index finger. His “m” finger became his “i,” and his “a” finger filled in for the “m.” His pinky was the new “a”. He was able to get these three to do pretty much the same thing that we expect from our i, m, and a!

Until next time (when I get back to a real guitar instead of a pitchfork)

Jay

Why would anyone choose to play classical guitar in specific, when there are so many other options?
I don’t know about you; for me there’s only one real reason, and it’s pretty simple. I love all kinds of music and I’ve tried many different kinds of guitars and guitar playing. For instance:

But classical guitar is where it all started for me.

I love to play classical guitar.

I love the feel of it, the challenge of it, the sound of it, the music I get to play and experience and even create. Learning classical guitar has been one of my greatest lifelong sources of pure enjoyment.

Of course there are secondary forms of motivation when it comes to learning classical guitar. One is simple accomplishment.  I get a real sense of accomplishment (and amazement) when all the work I’ve put into memorizing a difficult piece of repertoire has resulted in my ability to play it well. How the heck did that happen? This piece started out as a frustrating mess, and now, a few weeks later, it’s rolling along nicely. Yes, with some glitches. A few more weeks, and it’ll be more solid. Those bits I once found impossible are actually getting comfortable. A few more weeks, and much of it will be second nature. What did I do to deserve this miracle of brain, heart and body?

Another secondary motivation for me is competition. It’s actually embarrassing for me to admit this because I was trained to be humble and non-competitive by idealistic parents in idealistic times. But I admit it: I get a tweak of satisfaction when I see I’m better than someone else, or a whole bunch of someone elses. I get satisfaction from the recognition and respect that comes with it. It’s kind like the satisfaction I get from overtaking someone on my bicycle while pedaling up a hill…..hah, get in shape, dude!

But these are absolutely secondary. Competitive satisfaction is fleeting, and very relative. And the overall sense of accomplishment builds as you accomplish more, but it’s also fleeting, because new challenges arise constantly.

But there’s no way around the sense of sheer enjoyment I get out of playing classical guitar and learning classical guitar repertoire, every time I sit down to play! If playing classical guitar was primarily about carving out my place in the pecking order, or about racking up an impressive repertoire list, or pushing my scale speed into hyperdrive, or some other secondary motivation….then playing would be ultimately empty. Actually, it would be drudgery. It would be torture.

So let’s get our priorities straight. Practicing is not supposed to be torture. Learning classical guitar music is a pleasure. Simple as that. There’s a piece of music that you love sitting on your music stand, and your fingers are itching to play it.

Why am I making this point?

When you are practicing music, you’re also practicing something else.

You are practicing flow.

Flow is a very real thing. It’s a state of mind, a heightened one, that has been extensively researched.
And it’s important to have something in your life that inspires you so much that you enter a state of flow in order to engage in it. Entering a state of flow as often as possible benefits you and it benefits those around you. It improves your life.

Playing music that you love is an ideal way to get into a state of flow. It’s a particular brand of flow that, research shows, is especially beneficial. It involves developing mastery over a rich variety of challenges all at once, and it is very broad and far reaching in the positive effects it has on your development as a human being. The more you do it, the more benefits.

Scientific studies are backing this up: A new study, described here in the Freakonomics blog and summarized in Science Daily, illustrates the benefits of achieving this sort of musical flow:

“New research shows that musicians’ brains are highly developed in a way that makes the musicians alert, interested in learning, disposed to see the whole picture, calm, and playful. The same traits have previously been found among world-class athletes, top-level managers, and individuals who practice transcendental meditation.”

And although, as we all know, practicing can be frustrating at times and doesn’t always quite get there, achieving a state of flow as often as possible is also really the best (and fastest) way to practice and learn classical guitar.

Here are some elements of flow:

• Effortless concentration and enjoyment
• Complete immersion.
• No contradictions or conflicts in your awareness
• In comparison to the rest of your life, it can feel like a flash of intense awareness against a duller background
• Effortless action that stands out as a model of the best that you can do and be
• Athletes call it “being in the zone.” Artists and musicians call it “aesthetic rapture.”

Basically, flow is an altered state in which more things are possible, and indeed great things are possible.

That’s why an experienced teacher can help so much. An experienced classical guitar teacher can greatly increase the flow and get you into the habit of achieving peak performance at your level of accomplishment. If this starts happening when you practice, it will greatly increase enjoyment and your rate of improvement.

How can a good classical guitar teacher help you to achieve flow in your practice and playing?

• Flow happens when your skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable. A good classical guitar teacher can help you to know what’s really manageable and what’s wishful thinking.
• Flow happens when you are stretching to acquire a new skill, while using all of your previously learned skills, supported in an appropriate way for facing the challenge. An experienced classical guitar teacher can provide this refined support.
• Flow happens when you focus on goals that are clear and compatible. This means knowing what is the most important thing to work on right now and knowing whether this is accomplishable or too hard for you (hence too frustrating, and putting you out of flow) An expert classical guitar teacher can be essential in setting appropriate goals for you.
• Flow happens when you are doing something that provides immediate feedback. Once again, you are in a state of listening and feeling and attention, so that you can get a productive and satisfying loop of feedback and response leading to improvement. An accomplished classical guitar teacher can model and teach the best ways to respond to what your guitar and your fingers are telling you.
• Flow happens when clarity of the goal creates a “self-contained universe.” It’s the job of an expert classical guitar teacher to provide clarity in the goals that you tackle.
• Paradoxically, when flow happens, there’s a black and white quality to things…in other words, the parameters are simple: good tone or bad tone. Clean shift or not clean shift. Sloppy or clean playing. Expressive or boring. There are a lot of these and who knows what is the most important to focus on at any given moment. A good classical guitar teacher knows, and can show you how to choose for yourself as well.

The best classical guitar teachers can see the larger picture. They can see where you’re going, where you’re improving, where you’re stuck, what to do about that, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and what your strongest gifts are and how to cultivate them.

He or she can then set a course for how to get where you want to go without wasting years of your time in frustration and confusion, trying to figure it out. They can also keep you from giving up.

Put more simply, it’s the job of a good classical guitar teacher to worry about the big picture so you can focus on what needs to get done right now and get into a state of flow with your practicing right away, and experience all the benefits of as well!

Technorati Tags: classical guitar lessons, classical guitar teacher, learn classical guitar, play classical guitar, practice classical guitar

FIlm editors, as far as I can surmise, put a lot of careful work and thought into transitions and connections. Every moment needs to connect flawlessly and effectively to the next.

On the classical guitar, you need to spend a lot of time connecting the parts of your piece together. This is a very specific mode of practicing that you need to enter quite often: I like to call it “working on connections,” or just “connecting.”

As you are playing through your rough draft, start out with getting smaller snippets–musical phrases—into focus. Then work to connect the smaller phrases into larger sections. Look, listen, and feel for places that don’t sound like you want them to sound—glitches, slips, mistakes. The ones you notice are the connections that you need to fix.

Don’t just go back and play them once or twice and convince yourself that you’ve dealt with them.  In this mode of practicing, you are not allowed to gloss over something if you notice it.

Here’s a key piece about how to effectively fix these mistakes and turn them into solid connections:

Be sure you go back far enough.

Mistakes have their seeds before they actually fully blossom. Your brain is always looking a bit ahead of itself, aiming forward, as it were, when you play. If you miss a shift, or play a wrong note or go to the wrong chord, there will inevitably be a place somewhere before that..a few notes earlier, a measure earlier, or so….where your brain starts to trun in the wrong direction. Often there will be a fingering, or a thought, or a fear, that is preparing the way for the mistake, and “causing” it.

• Helpful Hint: for a lot of mistakes, you’ll notice that as your body anticipates a difficulty it starts to tighten up in fear.  You might get a feeling in your gut or your chest, a sort of “oh no, hear it comes.” Where does this happen in the piece? That’s a good place to look for the seed of the mistake, and ultimately, you’ll find that fear point relaxing itself and you’ll know you’ve got this one handled.

So every time you want to fix a mistake you need to go back far enough to really fix it, usually a bit further than you think you need to go back, and make sure the seed of the mistake has been dealt with as well.

To Summarize:

1. “Working on Connections” is an important practicing mode
2. When you’re in this mode, stop soon after you notice a mistake that you want to fix
3. Go back a few seconds and find where the “seed” of the mistake is
4. Figure out what to do to fix it by playing through it several times: Ask questions like: “how does this feel?” ” “what’s going on here?” “what’s causing this?”
5. Plant a new seed: change the fingering,  change your intent, play it slowly enough that the mistake doesn’t happen, relax from your fear or tension
6. Repeat this new connection until somehting “clicks.” Until you feel a little “aha,” a surge of “that’s it!” energy. Then repeat it again if this feels right.
7. Don’t overdo it. Trust your brain’s ability to create these kinds of connections. It gets pleasure out of overcoming difficulties, solving puzzles, and that pleasure is a sign that it’s learning to do something in a new way. Relax and move on to the next splice.

Jay

Do you have any questions about playing classical guitar that you’d like answered?

Where else in your daily life do you do all the following:

1. At the drop of a hat, repeat a lengthy, extremely challenging sequence of physical feats…..
2. …expecting it to come out perfectly, over and over…..
3. ….expecting it to sound spontaneous, expressive and effortless….
4. ….doing this under pressure: in front of an audience, in front of a microphone, a videocamera….
5. …and all the time feeling that the tiniest physical or memory slip is going to be heard as a mistake by an audience that already knows how it “should ” sound?

?

Let’s just say that bringing classical guitar music to life is an extremely high-level task.

It involves the coordination of many, many aspects of your being. Not only are you putting in a lot of artistic effort akin to that of artist or a writer or a film-maker.  You are also training your body to internalize all this creative effort, and then recreate it, over and over. Your work is never really done.

I’m not saying this to discourage you from trying, or to make it sound impossible, because it is possible to do really well, and it can be incredibly satisfying. I’m saying this to make you realize that even if you’re not happy with how well you’re able to memorize and learn repertoire, even if you’re making mistakes left and right, what you’re already doing is still freakin’ amazing.

I’m also convinced that the way you deal with mistakes when practicing is a powerful key learning to play well, and that’s why I was attracted to the wonderful book ,“Being Wrong,” by Kathryn Shulz.

In it she reminds us that memory is not a “single function.” deal. Our brain isn’t a recording device or a wax tablet. Memory involves “multiple distinct processes,” depending on what we’re committing to memory.

And the most important thing to realize is this: what we think of as a “memory,” stored somewhere in our brain, is actually REASSEMBLED,  or RECREATED, each time we call it to mind.

My takeaway? Basically, you are creating the music anew each time you play it. And the more parts of yourself that you enlist in the task, the more solid your ability to recreate this will be.

A lot has been said, in fact, about the many different kinds of memory, or musical intelligences, that are woven into a musical performance: tonal intelligence, harmonic intelligence, muscle memory, body awareness, visual memory:

Memorizing and internalizing music on the classical guitar is similar to creating and editing a film—-you’re pulling in a lot of different elements, weaving them together so they line up seamlessly (and miraculously) into a finished product that is hopefully awesome.

We tend to live great films as we watch them. They enter us like our own experiences, live in us like our own memories.

And effective films have been intensively edited and spliced so that happens.

When you recreate music on your instrument, you are actually living the music. In order to really kick-ass at this, you need to go through a process as intensive (or more intensive) than editing a film to perfection.

When you memorize music, even if you’re not really creating a bunch of permanent tracks in your mind, it FEELS like you are. It FEELS as though you’re laying down elements of a movie that you want your fingers to flawlessly reel out in the form of notes on the guitar.

The problem is that lot of people “practice” as if that film is already pretty much finished, polished and edited, and all they have to do is play it over and over until it gets imprinted in their minds.

And a lot of teachers will say “tssk tssk” to this: “You’re practicing in mistakes!”

But I say, “You’re not merely practicing in your mistakes. You’re practicing in an unfinished film!” You’re running a very rough draft of your film, full slog, and hoping that it will somehow magically come together into a finished masterpiece if you just do it over and over.

Newsflash: that won’t happen. Practicing is editing. That’s how you grow your piece into something amazing.

There are a lot of ideas for how to practice more effectively that can flow from this one metaphor. Stay tuned, because I’ll be sharing some of them with you very soon.

I want to start of this post with a disclaimer. I have a theory about why classical guitarists are always watching their left hand, and it’s just a theory. It may be true, it may be conjecture. It’s probably a little of both. Even if you’re not a classical guitarist, I hope you do at least find it entertaining.

I also have begun to develop a fresh and effective way to help guitarists (not just classical guitarists) understand, develop and conquer the technical challenges of the left hand. While there are some interesting theories behind my approach, it’s NOT a theory: it’s a set of practices based the most effective approaches that I’ve been able to come up with for myself and for my students, ones that actually work.

Without further adieu, take a look at a few top-notch classical guitarists, and see if you can catch the one thing they’re all doing:

David Leisner

What stands out for you?  For me, it’s the fact that they are all focused on their left hand, with a hint of obsession, as if it was the most important thing in all of existence.

I have had trouble finding pictures of performing classical guitarists who are not looking at their left hands. They do exist, but usually it feels like they’re posing, or like the photographer managed to capture a rare, inspired moment… or else they are looking at their right hand (the second greatest obsession of classical guitarists)….

All the greats are doing this…there must be a really great reason for  this, right?

Here’s  where my personal theory comes in. I’ll share it with you:

All classical guitarists have delusions of grandeur. It goes with the territory. It’s inherent in the nature of the task.

Classical guitar is not an easy instrument to master, and this is because it tries to do what we call, for lack of a better term: “EVERYTHING”

The bass, the chords and harmony, the rhythm section, the melody, the counter melody, the counter-counter melody, the entire tonal palette…EVERYTHING, all at one time… on an instrument which was not originally conceived for such a purpose.

If we just wanted to enjoy ourselves we’d get a folk guitar, learn a few chords, sing a song or two and perhaps master a cool lick, and call it a day.

If we wanted to make a splash and attract a bit of attention, we’d get an electric guitar, turn the amp up to 11, touch the strings with a pick, and show up on an earthquake meter somewhere in the vicinity.

But we choose nylon strings, pay thousands of dollars for subtly built masterpieces of instrument making, eschew amplification, spend hours filing our nails and practicing seamless shifts. What’s with this?

At the very least, being serious about making good music, you think we’d want to join a band or a group, or form one, so we could cast off some of the burden and share more of the joy of music making—with other musicians….

But beneath the modest, mellow exterior of all classical guitarists, there lies masked a huge ambition: To filter the ENTIRE MUSICAL UNIVERSE in through the strings of one tiny, delicate, unassuming, wooden guitar.

Here’s a modest looking guitarist, Kazuhito Yamashita. Study his face carefully.

An ordinary, unsuspecting citizen might walk by as he’s playing Lagrima or Bourree, and say “oh, that’s nice…very pretty!”

But no true classical guitarist is thinking “I want to sound nice and pretty,” and Yamashita is no exception to this rule.

The true classical guitarist is thinking….

Who needs a rock band or a singer or a voice, or an entire orchestra, for that matter, when I can DO IT ALL?

ON.

ONE.

SINGLE.

GUITAR.

Yes, Yamashita, the unassuming, has entire orchestras eating his dust.  Even though he might be secretly playing trills with his nose when no-one is looking, he has manifested his magnificent vision with great success.

Not many classical guitarists can make that claim.

But this does not mean that ALL classical guitarists don’t harbor similar, fantastical goals.

Admit it. If you play classical guitar, if you want to play it, if you try to play it, if you wish you could play it….deep inside, you are a noble explorer, a Don Quixote, in pursuit of a remotely tangible impossibility, driven to conquer something larger than the humble capacity of your noble instrument…

Don Quixote, challenging the known musical universe:

The classical guitar is your wooden horse:

All you have at your disposal to fulfill these big ambitions are six strings and two hands. Of these two hands, the left hand is the most visible, the most athletic, the most quixotic, the workhorse, the dancer, the leaper, the grabber, the challenger….

Really, the left hand seems responsible for EVERYTHING.  It had better not slip one iota, or the entire universe will crumble!!

That’s a huge responsibility. And what tends to happen, in my view is that the left hand (or any technical or musical obsession, for that matter) often becomes a windmill that we are always chasing after and never conquering:

We get distracted from our true purpose and continually get caught in its infernal clutches as the wheel goes round and rown…..

Check out these NON-classical guitarists: a jazz fusion master:

A flamenco master:



Sure, these are promo shots—Flamenco has a lot of difficulties in common with classical guitar, and I’m sure that Paco does peek at his left hand occasionally (and could even be doing so here!)—-but there’s some honest representation here: With jazz and flamenco, and many other types of guitar playing, one’s body and one’s ears have to be tuned to all that’s going on around, and this liberates you. A great jazz guitarist and a and a great flamenco guitarist have learned to be part of a larger whole, and that the left hand is not the center of the musical universe.

How can you stop chasing windmills, get your left hand working for you so you can move on to those musical heights you originally set out to conquer?

Most people don’t have all the time in the world to practice, and when and if they do, the left hand seems to be what’s holding them back more than anything else. There’s a long way to travel on the road to mastery, but the left hand is this huge windmill, planted firmly in the center of the road, distracting the hell out you, and bottlenecking the entire thing.

It’s frustrating, because whether you focus mainly on trying to fix it, on trying to get it right, on trying get by it so you can  express the music, or just enjoy what you play, you still keep running into it, and making far too many curse-worthy mistakes and…sounding less than stellar. The ambitious musical universe you are trying to create often barely gets past its first big bang (or small its first small pfizz, for that matter)

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, coming at it from many different angles, delving into a lot of sources. In this process I’m finally beginning to help my students  (and myself) to solve this problem in what I feel is a fresh, and uniquely effective approach.

I’ve broken it down into four deceptively simple keys: Sensing, Resonating, Expressing, and Coordinating. Ignore any of these categories at your own peril.

All are equally important to having any hope at getting l—as well as one of your idols (or better than one of your idols) And most of what is taught in traditional guitar pedagogy pretty much fits into the last category….Coordinating.

The hard part, which I’m also working on, is to figure out how to make this available in a way that is accessible online and that will help you significantly, wherever you are and whoever your teacher is.

I’m in the final stages of putting together my first trial run at this, which will be focusing, you guessed it, on using these principles to develop an awesome left hand technique!

It will be free, so stay tuned!

All the best, Jay

In a guitar lesson, we’re working on something specific….how to play a bar chord, how to interpret a piece of music, how to finger something, how to get a shift cleanly. How to get a note to sound. Often there’s not much room in a lesson, or time, for abstract explanation.

But I’ve found that through subtle suggestions, and creative, on-the-fly explanations, I can often give the student an “aha” moment, after which I notice a change in their approach and a shift in their ability.

For instance:

I was teaching a first lesson to a 7 year old the other day, and the tendency of 7 year-olds is to want to look at their hands and their fingers as they do something new. The guitar ends up being flat on their lap—you could serve a meal on it—and as a result they can see their right hand but they can’t really use it! Your right hand is useless to you if it has to reeeee-ach around and under the neck of the guitar.

The other issue that 6 and 7- year-olds tend to have is called “ouchies.” They press the string down and their fingers feel sore. They will hold them up to you and complain, or stick their fingers in their mouth to soothe the pain.

Older students, take note: I think these two tendencies are but exaggerations of things we all tend to do. More on that in a minute.

There was a time when I would have told her to “just sit up straight and hold the guitar right,” and that “your finger will get used to it….it develops calluses, you know!”

But I know better now. She was frustrated that she couldn’t press hard enough to get the note she was trying to play. Her finger hurt, and she didn’t want to hold the guitar right because she needed to see the finger. ( Often I’ll see kids, holding the guitar in such a way that makes it impossible to play in the first place, make it even more awkward by trying to use the other hand to put the finger down in the right place.)

I connected the two problems—-and in one fell swoop solved them both in her mind. I explained: “Your finger is very sensitive to how you are pressing the strings. It’s a lot smarter than your eyes, actually.  It’s so smart that it knows how to make the note sound really good, all by itself. You don’t even have to look at it—just feel what it’s saying to you. You want to try that?”

This made sense to her. I got her to move the guitar upright again, which solved her awkward hand position, and she stopped trying to use “eye-to-hand” coordination and tried out “finger-tip-to-fret” coordination. And of course, her notes started sounding, and…she forgot about her ouchy. For the time being.

.

Adult guitarists do exactly the same thing, but in a much more subtle way. We don’t want to feel anything in our hands or our bodies that is remotely uncomfortable, so the default habit is to try to solve everything with our eyes. As a result, we become unaware of our posture, positioning and the lengths to which we are going to simply avoid a process that is actually natural and can often solve things for itself.

I do it myself. I still catch myself looking at my hand, out of a need for reassurance that it is going to make it to the right place. Which effects my posture in a subtle but tension inducing way, and effects my ability to drop in to the music, by keeping my attention on the surface of things. When I allow myself to drop into the sensation of my fingertips and the sensation of the shapes my hand is making, things get solved on a different level, and I have more access to my own self-expression.

This is why I’d like to knock the phrase “eye-to-hand coordination” off of its pedestal. There are so many other kinds of coordination happening when you play a musical instrument, and our tendency to focus on “eye-to-hand” obscures them all into insignificance.

Next time when you are practicing, try out one of these:

“finger to sound coordination”

“guitar to body coordination”

“melody to heart coordination”

and “fingertip to fret” coordination.

There are plenty of others. See if you can come up with some of them. Then go ahead and indulge in some “eye to hand coordination.” See if it feels different as one tool in a much, much larger toolbox