Keeping Discipline

I’ve been told that I practice a lot and often students and colleagues ask how I do it day after day. So how does one stay disciplined?

The truth is that this aspect of your playing needs to practiced on it’s own with guidance. Just like the metronome guides wobbly passages, you can let the alarm clock or kitchen timer guide your practice session. Set it in short increments of 25 to 30 minutes until you reach your desired goal for the length you want to practice.  You will reach goals faster with a time deadline and you will know exactly how much time you have spent with the instrument. Over time, you will find yourself heavily involved and even lost in the music without a need to measure the minimum time spent. You’ll find yourself consistently practicing a lot. This is a good thing.

Shielding Yourself from Performance Anxiety

It’s okay to worry about important performances. This is normal and every musician I’ve ever known has performance anxiety to some degree. What now? Well, start by coming to one conclusion: thoughts of panic by themselves do not produce good results. Instead, try making a list of things that worry you. Be as specific as possible.

“I’m afraid that I will screw up… the long scale run at measure 77. My right hand always tenses up towards the latter half of that passage”.

Okay, now try to overcompensate in that area by isolating the right hand until it is completely relaxed. The passage should  feel easy to you both mentally and physically. Work on this for awhile until the fear subsides and you might even look forward to the passage. Now measure 77 is fun for you to play.  Move on to your next fear and act accordingly.

Train Weaker Fingers for Right Hand Speed

Train your “m,a” (middle and ring) finger combination on a regular basis with scales. I don’t mean every once in a while, but often, and treat as seriously as your” i,m” (index and middle) scales.  Make it a point for this awkward combination to be reasonably fast, loud, and even. When you switch back to “i,m” scales, you will thank yourself.

Why does this work? When you pair the middle finger with the ring finger, the middle finger has to work with the weakest link. Now “m” has to lead since “i” is out of the mix. When you return to regular scales, you have made your middle finger equally as strong as your index for quicker and more even alternation.

Nine Inch Nails

To have longer guitar fingernails on your right hand you need to get your body to produce more resiliant tissue at a more rapid pace. For this, Biotin is very important. If you like salads, try to include tomatoes in your diet a few times a week. They are high in Biotin and this will be less demanding than shopping for nail-strengthening supplements in your local pharmacy.

Strength Training and the Musician’s Hands

There are definitely some myths surrounding muscle-building and its dangers for the hands of a musician. Yes, it could potentially be dangerous but improper practicing and even typing on a computer keyboard have also caused severe injuries. It’s all about misuse and overuse when your talking about danger.

As a musician, you are, believe it or not, an athlete. Your body must be in reasonably good shape to be resilient to the physical and mental stresses of being a performer. Working with weights can improve posture and also relieve spinal curvature that may result from sitting in the same position on a daily basis. It can also release a lot of the nervous energy that may come from a hectic performance schedule, upcoming audition, etc.

Most people think that to have an athletic physique that you need to work with very heavy poundages.  Not quite.  Try to go for lower weight but very long reps in which you control the weight for it’s entire duration. Everyone makes a huge effort to bring the weight up but then they let gravity bring the weight back down. Instead, resist gravity in the negative portion of the rep. This will make more moderate weights seem heavier to your body and you will great an amazing workout.

Try this very basic exercise for your bicep training.  As you do dumbbell or barbell curls bring the weight up in 1-2 seconds and bring it back down in 3-4 seconds. Never lock your arms, either at the top or bottom of the rep.  Each rep will feel like the equivalent of 2 or 3 faster reps, maybe more. This is called training with negatives. Micro-trauma (muscle tearing that causes delayed onset muscle soreness-and later hypertrophy) occurs during this phase of the movement.

What Happened?

When we underperform, whether it be in a lesson, masterclass, audition, or concert, we always ask, “What happened?”. Why was the performance so different from how it sounded at home? It was almost like you forgot everything you had worked on. You wish that the conditions for this performance were the same as your conditions at home.

I touched on this briefly in the post called “Obstacle Course” a few months ago. This is right, you SHOULD bridge the gap between playing in your comfort zone and playing under stress but the work that you must do is the opposite of what you might think. You will never be as comfortable on stage as you are at home. The space may be new to you. The temperature, the time of day… all different than your optimal conditions. Try instead to vary these conditions at home and be able to adjust. This is what a great musician must do – adjust.

Try playing in a room thats a bit colder than you’re used to.  Within reason, of course. Avoid injury but try to see if you can still remain calm even if your fingers are not quite comfortable. Take notes of passages that struggle under these conditions. What adjustments do you have to make in order for them to work in a cold room?

Tremolo (Part 1)

One aspect of tremolo that is over looked is that tremolo pieces often have the melody appearing in a variety of positions as well as open strings. Be able to react to drastic changes in string tension. Not only do melody notes voiced in the lower positions of the guitar have more string vibration than the notes in the higher positions but open strings are generally brighter and louder, regardless of their role in the melodic hierarchy of the piece. What I mean is that sometimes you may want to decrescendo from a closed note to an open note, but because the open note is more difficult to control it actually becomes louder.

Make up chord voicings that involve the various extremes in tension, such as chords that are fretted in the higher positions but also have open strings. Make sure your successful in maintaining a clean and even tremolo as it appears on all of these strings.

The Giants

In your path to finding your own voice, analyze those who came before you who did something great. Originality can only stem from the initial exercise of imitation and understanding of previous ideas. Watch the development of the guitar over the ages to present time. Specifics like hand position and the concept of “good tone” have changed from the historic recordings of Llobet, Barrios, Segovia to contemporary artists. Don’t dwell on the past but find beauty in the discoveries of the masters and from here you can make discoveries of your own.

How to Approach Technical Excercises

Keep the majority of your exercises simple and easy to remember. I like the idea of having hundreds of exercises available at my disposal without having to look through a binder of sheet music to remember them. This is particularly useful when your warming up backstage and you have tons of other things to worry about.

Here is a very basic but effective exercise for strengthening left hand legato. When you get good at this one, try alternating per string (for ex. 1-2-1 on the 6th, then 2-4-2 on the 5th).

Avoiding Mindless Repetition

While repetition is invaluable for learning music, more repetitions of a short passage do not equal success. After we repeat a fragment more than 3-4 times we lose our attention and begin to process the music on a purely subconscious level. If our ultimate goal is to prepare for performance, subconscious learning will not help us get there because it is usually our conscious thoughts that we battle with in performance situations. Our doubts about our technique, accuracy, and memory all play a role in “psyching” us out during periods of nervous tension. Knowing your right and left hand fingerings consciously, for example, will serve as an auto-pilot while our subconscious muscle-memory fails.

If you feel insecure about this area and really insist on more repetition, change the way your repeating the passage. See if you can play the passage with just your right hand on the open strings. If you feel your left hand getting tense, play the passage “etouffe” (muffling the strings).  Keep your head in the game and avoid going through the motions.