speed
How fast can your right hand be?
Put it on the table and try to tap for a couple of seconds "m"-"i"
or "a"-"i" sequence as fast as you can. Now take the guitar
and try the same on the strings. Some difference in the speed? :) I'll help
you to overcome it!
scratching
Put your hand on your lap and try to scratch it as if you are playing
on one string m-i-m-i-m-i-m-i-m-i-m-i-m-i-.....or a-i-a-i..........
Actually the speed should be very close to that as when you tap the table.
If it is not the case, try it once again and compare. It must not be absolutely
identical, but very close. Now you see that you can move your fingers with
the "tapping speed" and the type of the movement is close to that
on the guitar.
tapping on the strings (nothing to
do with the TAP)
Now put your hand on the 1st. string. Relax ;) . Try to tap with your nails
on the string, just like you do when you tap on the table. The hand position
and nail position to the string should be the same as if you play, but the
light movement of the finger stops on the string when the nail reaches it.
Now try to remember this feeling of light tapping of your nails on the string.
Put your hand on your left knee and scratch it again . Keep the feeling as
if you were doing it with the string. Now try it on the string at last with
sound and keep feeling as though you were doing it with your knee.
I bet, you've got a pretty good speed! But it is still far from tapping on
the table. So we'll carry on.
ti ti ta, ti ti ta ...
Here come a couple of exercises.
I wouldn't use the pictures of notes for such simple things, so watch my notation:
ti = Sixteenth note, ta = Eighth note.
Try it all at highest possible speed:
1. With one finger on one string: ta ta ta ta ....
(that's another way to know your highest speed: with two fingers you
should do it with a double speed, but we'll come back to that later)
2. With two fingers on one (or two) strings: ti ti ta, ti ti
ta,...
3. With two fingers on one (or two) strings: ti ti ti ti ta,
ti ti ti ti ta,...
( you should return from time to time to 1. or 2. and compare the speed of
the eighths, don't stop the movement , just insert in your "ta ta ta
..." some rhythmical groups of two or four "ti". Help yourself
with the hand rotation , specially in "a-i" sequence. By the way,
it's the method of flamenco.
4. Prolong the "eighth"-sequences as much as you can without
losing the speed. Return sometimes without stopping to 1.,2. and 3.
I hope, after doing that you can play both tirado and appayado on the open
strings in temp "a la Paco de Lucia" ;).
But this is only the first step. There is left hand
, too ....
Speed in accords
In the beginning of the previous paragraph we have discussed the upper
speed of the right hand in the passage technique. The procedure of the determination
of the upper speed for playing accords is similar but has some peculiarities.
Let us compare these two things:
1. Tap with only one finger (say i) on the table with maximal speed, the rest
of the hand shouldn't move.
2. Tap now with the whole hand (as if you were playing drums)
You will probably notice , that the second speed is higher than the first
one, so your whole hand can strike faster than your fingers.
What does it have to do with accords ? Well, if you were playing the piano
, your accord speed would be close to that of the whole hand, and if you'd
be playing guitar , alas it would be close to that of one finger ( at best
;). Poor guitarists: even the violinists can play accords with their bows
much faster than us, because they use the movement of the whole hand! ;).
Opposed to this , every classical guitar teacher would tell you: don't jump
with your right hand playing tirando ...
THAT'S WRONG! you may jump! ;)
A promise to achieve the speed of the whole hand in guitar accord technique
would be a little bit unreal, but you can count on something between these
two speeds.
How to get it? For example you play thirds with accords. To move the whole
hand at every accord would be impossible, but you can do it at the first note
of every third . Use "the whole hand movement" to give your fingers
a break and "the only fingers movement" to give your hand a bit
of rest . The analog to this trick for the left hand you can find in
"one finger" scales
mordents
and trills
trills:
Imagine, you have to play a trill at "forte" for 20 seconds. You
start bravely with the first note of the trill at forte and try to keep these
dynamics. After the first 3 seconds you notice , that it's not forte any more,
and after 10 seconds your left hand hurts and the tempo of the trill is not
a trill-tempo... You can make your trill audible and excellently fast if you
play it like a tremolo with your right hand on two neighbor strings. The trick
is to hold your m-finger close to the p-finger on the low string and
the i,a-fingers on the high one. The sequence is that of a standard tremolo:
p-a-m-i. You can hear an example of this trill in "Cats"
before the reprise. You can also practice on Pujol's Bumblebee (begining:
p-6th, a-3d, m-2d, i-3d, and so on).
mordents:
When you play mordents or trills as they are usually played, the first note
is taken with the right hand and the rest with the left one. The timbre of
all sounds will be very different. What should you do if you need to emphasize
the last third note in the mordent and this last note should have a good apoyando-timbre?
You push both notes on neighbor strings just like it was described in the
previous paragraph and play them with the i-m-m sequence whereas m-finger
slides up (down in the tone) on the neighbor string and so you can take all
the 3 notes of apoyado in mordent! With some experience you can do even 5-
or 7-notes mordents apoyado: i-a-a-m-m or i-m-m-a-a. It sounds smoothly and
equally. It's useful especially for playing in an ensemble (from my quartet
experience).
one useful exercise
Russian "Zek"s ( convicts, criminals ) often play the following
game with a knife. They put their left hand on a wooden table , the knife
in their right hand, and stab with the knife between the fingers into the
wooden table. They do it pretty hard and very fast. If they miss , they hurt
their finger. What's interesting for us here is the sequence in which they
change the knife position, which is:
1,2,1,3,1,4,1,5,1,6, 1,5,1,4,1,3, 1,2,1,3,1,4,1,5,1,6,1,5,... and so on. Here
1 means knife position down the thumb, 2 - between the thumb and the next
finger (I don't want to call it the "first", because it's actually
the second:) and so on, 6 - next to the little finger. The cycle repeats until
the first error. No, you don't need to try it for playing guitar. :) , but
if you use this sequence for tapping on all the strings with only one finger
of your left hand, you'll get your hand warm very soon and you'll have a good
feeling of the finger-board. Do it with all your four guitar-fingers in turn,
1st finger on the 1st fret 2nd on the 2nd fret and so on. Then do it in higher
positions . You can start with the 6th string, too: 6,5,6,4,6,3,6,2,6,1,
6,2,6,3,....
These exercises help if you have a concert in 5 minutes and you weren't able
to play for a couple of hours (e.g. if you have just arrived), or if you have
to play at a concert on somebody else's guitar (which normally shouldn't be
the case).
gentle fingers
It is no excuse , that your left hand does all the hard work compared
with the right one:
It has to stay SOFT. Make your callosities thin with the pedicure grater.
Wash your hands after playing too. Ask your girl/boy-friend , touch
of which hand is for her/him better...
If she says - right, then you have lost something with playing guitar, try
to improve this situation ;) .
So GENTLE means: soft and sensitive.
When you practise, learn sometimes only the left hand, it helps especially
in the scales (see below).
Tapping on the table (or smth. else) with your left hand fingers is good,
too.
If you have any doubts of aesthetical nature about using it , see chin in "newTechnic" , or listen to Organ Preludium by Bach in which the whole part of feet is played with the chin. I think , the chin technique can be useful for jazz improvisation, because you can play the bass with the chin without thinking about your left hand. For old music (Baroque and earlier) it can be useful for "bezifferten Bass" improvisation: once learned bass with the chin you can change every time your cords and figurations.
Here are some exercises for this STRANGE "playing limb":
(this chapter only deals with guitarists who want to
play classical music)
Go to a piano teacher.
Of course you need a guitar teacher too , but only as far as the guitar technique
is concerned.
One needs a good school tradition for playing music, and that has any instrument,
but the guitar.
Why do I recommend piano? Not only because of my own experience and not only
because piano
is a universal instrument. Piano and violine have the best world school that
comes down the centuries.
Piano has more polyphonic posibilities than violine, and piano has a lot of
things in common with guitar.
(e.g.: on both you cannot influence the sound volume after striking the key
/ string , which is the case on the violine).
What a regular guitar teacher cannot give you :
1. LEGATO in the common musical sense.
2. PHRASING in the common musical sense.
3. Playing polyphony with keeping good LEGATO and PHRASING.
4. Good FORM SENSE.
5. Good musical TASTE (in the common musical sense :)
The list can be continued if we get into details.
You are not a regular guitar teacher if you can at least one item of those
listed here ;).
The best way to get a piano teacher is to learn playing
piano and learn it very seriously. You can't help it . ;)
By the way: playing the piano is very good for your hands (in guitar sense
:), it makes your hands soft and sensitive.
The ideal situation would be: you come to your piano
teacher with the guitar and you work through your guitar pieces together.
If he refuses to do it with guitar , don't be confused, just play the piano.
You need to work through a couple of Bach pieces on the piano if you want
to play Bach on the guitar, and you need to go through sonatas of Mozart if
you're looking forward to playing Sor works ( understanding the original is
important for understanding an imitation ;) . Just listening to great pianists
won't help you much: you'll hear only what you can do yourself or you'll listen
and ask yourself: "how is this guy doing it , that it seems as if ...."
and so on ... The piano teacher helps you with all that.
It helps not much, either, if I would have now precisely
described what good LEGATO or PHRASING is, or if you found it and read in
the whole pile of theoretical books. You should go through it note after
note, phrase after phrase with your good piano (or violine/viola/cello)
teacher. After that you simply can't play badly any more. ;) There is musical
culture and there are guitarists that do not belong to it now. If you don't
believe me, ask your piano teacher. If he tells you , that Segovia was very
temperamental or even a great musician, that's OK , but if he tells you, Segovia
is a high cultured musician, I don't recommend you this teacher. (There are
always exceptions in the rule: after the concert of Segovia in Moscow conservatory
one famous violinist and pedagogue said to his students: you should all learn
from this genius-guitarist to play the violine ! )
Trimming fingernails:
The working edge of nails should be polished with a smoothed stone (marble,
e.g.).
It's not enough to do this only with a nail-file. The surface should be absolutely
smooth. It improves both the sound and the speed.
The working edge of i-m-a fingers should have convex form everywhere and p-finger
--not concave form. Every concavity, even a little one, makes a double attack
which of course should be avoided. The curvature of the edge shouldn't change
abruptly. So in mathematical terms the function of the surface should have
first 3 smooth derivatives. :) There is one old simple principle about i-m-a
fingers: the form of the nail repeats the form of the finger.So if you hold
your fingers in the perpendicular plane , the form of the nails looks like
the form of the finger edges. It does not mean that the visible (from this
point of view ) length should be the same. You can correct the length of each
nail by trying different exercises for the right hand and watching the equality
(both rhythmic and dynamic) of sounds.
With p-finger the matter becomes complicated because of big differencies in
the form and hand position. It's very individual ,so you have to find it watching
what your p-finger and p-nail do while you play. Make a very very slow apoyando
and tirando with only p-finger and concentrate on interaction between the
nail and the string. Don't be afraid to make absolutely strange forms of p-finger
, seek and you will find! There is one more subtle trick that can help you
to find a good sound for all fingers: if you start the contact with strings
at the left side of the nails (which itself is strongly recommended), you
can make the slope of the right side steeper, so that after releasing the
string by the sound attack it wouldn't take any contact with the nail.
I recommend 5 fingerigs in "one position" for natural major scales:
| strings |
from 1.tone
|
from 3.tone | from 4.tone | |||||||||||||||
| 6. | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | |||||||||
| 5. | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | |||||||||
| 4. | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | |||||||||
| 3. | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 4 | ||||||||||
| 2. | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 | |||||||||
| 1. | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | |||||||||
| strings |
from 5.tone
|
from 7.tone | ||||||||||
| 6. | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | ||||||
| 5. | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | ||||||
| 4. | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 | ||||||
| 3. | 1 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 | ||||||
| 2. | 1 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 4 | |||||||
| 1. | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4 | ||||||
Play it "up and down" with "m"-"i" or "a"-"i",
thirds: a-m-i. Play it with figurations:
1,3,2,4,3,5,...and so on. OR: 1,2,3,1,2,3,4,2,3,4,5,3,... and down 8,7,6,8,7,6,5,7,6,5,4,6,...
and so on.
With thirds: 1,2,3,2,3,4,3,4,5, ... and down 8,7,6,7,6,5,6,5,4, ...
(figures here mean tones of the scale)
That helps you significantly to read the notes and develop improvisation skills.
Invent your own figuration sequences.
! Don't forget to play it with the musical feeling ! One of the posibilities
to do it: play UP - crescendo, DOWN - diminuendo.
In sequence 1,2,3,1,2,3,4,2,... watch the intonation in every "fours"-group.
"one string" scales
Playing scales on one string helps to develop jumping technique and horizontal
fret feeling.
"one finger" scales
Play the same using only one finger of your left hand . There is one trick:
make the first jump with the hand shift and the next one with the arm turn.
So you alternate the movements and can get a good speed. Oscar Peterson can
play quick passages with only one finger on the piano, why shouldn't we be
able to do that on the guitar?
| strings |
frets , numbers are fingers
|
|||||||||||
| 6. | 1 | 4 | ||||||||||
| 5. | 2 | 4 | ||||||||||
| 4. | 1 | 4 | ||||||||||
| 3. | 2 | 4 | ||||||||||
| 2. | 1 | 4 | ||||||||||
| 1. | 2 | 4 | ||||||||||
It is very convenient for the right hand too, because there are exactly two
notes on each string, and for apoyando it's ideal.
Change finger pattern in the left hand , and you get all possible arpegio
figurations. (you can stretch you hand so , that it will cover 5-fret patterns)