It has been said "virtuosity is in the mind". That is true. However, it is also true that virtuosity is in the body. In practice, we must know how to use the mind to train the body, as well as how to allow the body to train the mind. We will look at a way of doing both.

 

In "The Principles", I have defined practice as "knowing the right thing to do, and making sure you do it", and that is a true and most useful definition. But it is a little like defining how to win a football game as "getting more touchdowns than the other team". It is mostly good for letting you know to look out for whether it is happening or not; it doesn't quite tell you how to do it! Both parts of the definition of practice pose enormous challenges; figuring out the right thing to do, and then getting our fingers to do it! The Foundation Exercises in The Principles begin the process of educating the fingers as to the right way to do the most basic functions on guitar. As we progress on guitar, we find ourselves in an ever expanding series of playing situations, in many of which we find we have no clue as to the right thing to do! Our only choice then, is experimentation and analysis, and/or seeking help.

 

The person beginning to learn "The Principles" learns many fundamental concepts that serve as the foundation for more sophisticated practice procedures. Two of these are "stress points", and "awareness points". A "stress point" is a discrete move within a passage that causes us physical tension, with its associated mental tension, withdrawal of awareness from the body, and the stopping of the breath. They are what most people simply call "the hard parts".

Hitting them during playing is like hitting a pothole while driving; hit one big enough, and you might very well be stopped dead in your tracks (and in guitar playing land, potholes are all over the place for everybody!) In any case, going down the same road and hitting the same potholes gives you a pretty shaky jalopy after awhile. There are two remedies for this situation: either find a way of repairing the pothole, or find a better road to take that still gets you where you want to go.

With correct practice, we repair potholes in playing by replacing "stress points" with "awareness points". We do this in a variety of ways. If we are lucky, we may untangle the knot of tension in a stress point by the simple expedient of practicing slowly, with extreme attention to the body, and working the passage up through the tempos using the Basic Practice Approach ("The Principles Of Correct Practice For Guitar", p.74 ) Very often, and especially for those new to the process, playing problems will magically disappear as unfelt tensions become conscious, and replaced by a new, relaxed way of moving. The reason it happens often with players new to correct practice is because most of their problems are caused by tensions locked into the muscles through all their time spent playing with unawareness. So, stress points are relatively easily replaced with awareness points.

Finding a New Road

However, there are also many times when the problem is not occurring because of how we are doing what we are doing on the guitar. Often, the problem is occurring because of what we are doing -- we are simply doing the wrong thing! This is when we need to find a new road to take. The way we have arranged our moves, our fingering, the exact configuration of forces that we are bringing to bear on the strings, right and left hands, is not sufficient or appropriate in order to obtain what we are attempting to obtain, at least not at the speed we are attempting it. And so, all of the movements and conditions of the playing process must be examined and re-evaluated to determine where the trouble is coming from, and a new approach must be developed, applied, and evaluated.

In "The Deeper I Go, The Deeper It Gets", I explained that a player must regard a note differently than a listener. To a player, a note, in addition to the actual sound we hear, is also the entire set of events that are "causes" of the "effect" we call the note. When we are having trouble it means that we are producing unknown causes, and those causes are creating unwanted results. We must strive to make all of our "causes" known, and to learn what "causes" will produce the effects, or notes, we desire. If we can do that, and then train ourselves to produce those causes when we play, we can solve any playing problem we come across. A master player is simply one who is proficient in this process.

Creating Coordination

Most people are familiar with the meaning of the word coordination, and we would pretty much agree that coordination is a good thing to have if you want to play the guitar! Coordination means to bring into alignment two or more "ordinates". An "ordinate" is a specific point in space and, when it comes to the movement process of playing the guitar, it means a specific point in time as well. Finding the right ordinates, in space and time, and bringing them into alignment, is what practicing is all about. In fact, Eliot Fisk, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, classical guitarists in the world from a technical standpoint, has said " I tell my students that the secret of great playing is timing. Just look at Michael Jordan play". This statement indic

ates much more than the usual meaning of the word "timing" in music. He means the precise timing of all the movements that go into making each note. However, that tells us nothing about what those movements should be, or how to train ourselves to do the movements with the precision timing required. We can "just look at Michael Jordan play" all day long, but that hardly means we will play basketball like him at the end of the day!

So how do we train ourselves to move with coordination, to move in a way that brings into alignment the various ordinates of a particular note? There are many parts to the answer, many of those parts are in The Principles.

 

So how do we train ourselves to move with coordination, to move in a way that brings into alignment the various ordinates of a particular note? There are many parts to the answer, many of those parts are in The Principles. Right now we will look at a more advanced technique I call "coupling". Coupling is the bringing together, into one playing moment and motion, of two or more events necessary to produce a note. It is done by intense focus on the tactile sensations of fingers on strings during the movement process, and this focus is reinforced during repetitive practice at various levels of speed, from no tempo to slow tempo to performance tempo.

 

Making It Real

Let's make all this theory real by looking at an example. Here is the opening riff to Arlo Guthries "Alice's Restaurant". It is a traditional Travis style picking pattern on a dominant 7th cycle pattern in the key of C. I have detailed 4 places where the ease of playing will be greatly improved by "coupling" two events into one playing moment. These "coupling" actions are of three types:

playing a note with one right hand finger while at the same time touching another string with another right hand finger

touching an unused string with a finger of the left hand while playing a bass note with the thumb

touching a right hand finger to a string while using the thumb

I discovered these moves after a careful analysis of the music, and now they must be trained into the fingers. Internally, we will focus on the tactile sensation which occurs at that playing moment, the feeling of the fingers actually touching the strings, and that feeling will be our experience of that playing moment when we play the music. These are all example of what I have described elsewhere as "tightening the action" (Deeper, p. 14)

"Deeper" contains essays that give a profound insight into the inner, and subtle dynamics of playing and practicing that can bring you to a powerful new level of playing ability.

Can the music be played without making these moves? Yes it can, but not by everyone. People with enough natural talent will often be able to overcome the extra difficulty of playing with less than optimal technique (until they try something sufficiently complex). By optimizing the movement process in the way we have, anyone can learn to play this passage easily, and those that could play it without doing these moves will play it even more easily, and the easier something is, the more our musical selves can come through the music. Most importantly, by learning to think in this way, and practice in this way, anyone can continually improve the level of their skill, and master increasingly complex music, and as music becomes more complex, these approaches become increasingly necessary.

Always look for ways to streamline and optimize the movements your fingers make to create the notes. If you look (and if you know how to look) you will almost always find them. It will often involve the grouping together of two or more events into one playing moment, with one or more of those events serving the purpose of preparing for upcoming notes. The discovery of these events is achieved through an intelligent analysis of the music, and the combining or coupling of these events is trained into the fingers by systematic workups using the Basic Practice Approach ("The Principles Of Correct Practice For Guitar, Chapter 5).

 

 

 

 

 

Q&A: Do You Have To Be Born With A Good Ear?

 

Dear Jamie,

I was talking with my friend who has been playing guitar for 8 years, and two others who have been playing guitar for just as long as I, a little more then a year. We were watching the most experienced of us play and they joked at me because I didn't know the chords to stair way to heaven.

I said I didn't think the song would be hard if I could see the voicings. He said "why don't you learn it by ear? every one learns stairway by ear!" The other two who had played the same amount as me and they both said "psh ya i did"...

Is it odd that I can't figure out songs by ear at my level, I don't think I have ever really sat down and tried it. My friends said you can't develop it, you are born with it. My questions are:"Should 1 yr Guitar players be that good at figuring out songs?"
"And you are born with an ear for music or not?"

This was distressing and embarrassing to say the least,

Thanks if you can help,
Chris

 

Hi Chris,

Your friends are wrong. Anyone can develop it, but like everything else, some people will develop it faster than others. There are way too many factors involved that determine the ease at which you will learn to figure songs out by ear, however, there is ONE most important factor which you kind of touched on. It is this: you must sit down and do it!

The most important part of learning how to figure out songs is sitting down and figuring them out. Keep on doing it, and don't get discouraged. Your ear and your brain, like the muscles of your hands and arms, must get the workout in order to develop.

Now, that being said, there are a couple of other practical matters. The more playing experience you have, the better. All the songs you hear out there are using the same chord patterns over and over, and same scale patterns over and over to form the melodies and song riffs. As you accumulate a large repertoire of songs, I mean like hundreds of songs, you will simply start to see and hear the same stuff over and over again. That is a big help.

Along with that, the more theory you learn, the better. Understanding how chords are made, and the usual procedures for chord movement is a tremendous help.

Here is another big tip: always listen to the bass! Figure out that bass note, most of the time it is the root of the chord. If the bass note is an A, the chord is very likely some kind of A chord, major, minor, dominant 7th, or something.

Learn all the scales you can, and SING THEM. Try to sing everything you play. All of these things I have mentioned mix together and will emerge as the growing ability to translate what you hear to your fingers to the strings. But, like I said, you must keep trying to do it.

Also, try to pick out simple melodies. Try to pick out "Happy Birthday" on one string, or anything like that. That is actually how I started doing it, almost the first time I picked up a guitar.

Keep it fun! We always want to keep distress, agony, embarrassment, and nasty things like that to a minimum! After all, we are guitar players!

 

 

 

 

Q&A: How Do I Learn How To Relax While Playing?

 

Getting To The Bottom Of Your Practice-You Need The Principles DVD's!

Jamie,

I really appreciate your newsletters. I haven't seen anything so far that even comes close to your great advice and teaching.

I have read the Guitar Principles book several times and do my best to follow the recommendations. I do enjoy trying to learn the guitar but I feel that I cannot make any headway because I can't relax. No matter how hard I try, I find myself clenching my teeth (all the time), my right arm and hand are as tense as they can get and because of this I miss many notes that should not be difficult.

I have tried the no tempo and slow tempo system and I am certain that this helps, but even then I realize all my muscles are as tense as they can get. Maybe I am missing something and don't know it. If you have any other suggestions regarding relaxing in another newsletter or some other medium I would be grateful to hear about them.

Thanks for your help and keep up the great work.

Bruce B

 

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for the kind words Bruce, I appreciate that.

Now, for your situation; you are in that group of people who cannot become aware of their unawareness, at least you cannot with your current way of going about things. What I would like to know is exactly HOW you ARE going about things. You say "no matter how hard I try I find myself clenching my teeth". Now, that is an interesting statement. Obviously, you are not trying hard enough!

You say "I have tried the no tempo and slow tempo system", but you need to realize that you do not have a deep enough grasp of what that system really is. I will guarantee you that if you were sitting in front of me during your practice, I would show you that in reality, what you think is slow, is way too fast. I would point out to you how you are stopping breathing at various places (this always happens, partially or completely, when we tense). I would point out to you how you are in the grip of what I described in my essay "Confront Your Confusion", from my book "The Deeper I Go, The Deeper It Gets", where I make the point that physical tension induces the withdrawal of awareness from the body, and a contraction of attention in the mind. All of this is what is really happening, but all you are aware of is the end result, which you experience and describe as " no matter how hard I try I can't relax".

I'll bet if I were standing next to you with a gun pointed at your head, and told you I would blow your brains out if you clenched your teeth, I'll bet then you would be a little more focused on whether or not your teeth were beginning to clench! Or, (to use positive reinforcement instead of negative), if I told you I would give you a million dollars if you played through a particular passage without clenching your teeth, and you could take it as SLOW as you wanted to, I'll bet you would do it then.

I have often said these things to students who tell me they "cannot" control the reactions of their body during playing (I haven't actually done either one yet, though). I am trying to make the point that you are not paying enough attention, which is natural, since many guitar students have never paid attention to anything with the intensity that I am demanding of them in practicing. But, nonetheless, it is the way it must be in order for you to get what you want.

You are simply not getting to the bottom of your practice, your mind is not focused enough during practice. Every time your teeth clench, your mind is not where it should be, which should be two places: with what your fingers are doing, and your jaw (since that is the present location of your most noticeable tension reaction). You are not using the tool of "following" as described in The Principe's. It is important to realize this.

Before you play a note, stop, breath slowly, and focus on the breath. Release your attention into your body, and imagine your breath moving throughout your body, and keep your attention on your whole body as you bring your hands to the guitar. Maintain that awareness as you play, go slow enough so that your attention is able to be split into a few areas, what you are doing with your hands, as well as your body's reaction to what you are doing with your hands. Catch yourself as soon as you start thinking of something else, or feeling negative or anxious thoughts. I guarantee that this is happening constantly when you are practicing.

Another area to examine is this: when you have a problem of this nature, where tension seems to occur "by itself" in reaction to the demands of a particular passage, you must follow the advice of another essay from "Deeper"- "when you can't put it together, it's time to take it apart". You must take that part, and in addition to super slow no tempo practice and posing, you must break it down into smaller component parts. If there are ten notes involved in the part that makes you tense up, then

"Unfortunately, I cannot personally teach everyone, but that is why we made The Principles DVD." "It is the best chance anyone can have to overcome this most common obstacle to growth in guitar ability."

practice only the first two notes. Say to yourself "I will play these two notes super slowly, while I fasten my attention on my jaw. Use posing and catch the beginning of the tensing. It has a beginning point you know, you are just not there where and when it is beginning.

Achieve this with those two notes, and then do three notes. Examine the movement process which comprises those notes, and break it down. Especially on the guitar, a single note is most often composed of many constituent movements, so there is a great range of things that can be causing the problem with any particular note. (These specific techniques are taught in great detail in my book "Beyond the Basic Practice Approach: Strategies For Higher Levels Of Achievement On Guitar"

There are many people who have the same problem you have Bruce, I see them all the time. I always bring to their attention what they are not able to become aware of by themselves, and once that happens, they are able to perform the problem movements without tension. Unfortunately, I cannot personally teach everyone, but that is why we made The Principles DVD. It is the best chance anyone can have to overcome this most common obstacle to growth in guitar ability. They are the best chance anyone can have of being brought to the bottom of their practice, to achieve the kind of intense self awareness we need in order to train the body to learn the intricate movements involved in playing guitar in a way that allows those movements to be performed with ease, fluency, and speed. These things, especially in your case, need to be seen as well as read about.

"Beyond The Basic Practice Approach - Strategies For Higher Levels Of Achievement On Guitar" The most powerful collection of advanced practice strategies in print! When it comes to continuous growth in playing abilities, these methods will serve you well and faithfully throughout your lifetime as a guitarist. "Beyond what is in "The Principles", these are the methods I use myself, and teach all my students ".... more info....order info.....

When you see me sitting there doing the Foundation Exercises from "The Principles" the way they should be done and need to be done, it will be a revelation. You will see what "do it slowly" really means; you will see what "focused practice" really means as I describe what my mind is doing while I am performing the various movements.

Do not feel inadequate because of all this, it happens to everyone to some degree. For some it prevents them ever getting started with the guitar. Get The Principles DVD, that is my best recommendation, and of course, work with them (just getting them won't do you any good!)

Good luck!