Ring-a-Ding-Ding

Taken from Flickr

I'm very pleased with the progress I'm making so far with fingering and hitting the chords so they sound as they should and properly ring. It's starting to get a little easier and I'm playing the pieces a little faster and with more facility.

My teacher said he noticed more flexibility in my left hand.

I've been practicing for about 45-50 minutes each time, not pushing it. I may try to up the time a bit, though, so I will continue to stretch my limits.

Making Progress

By Vyacheslav Mishchenko

Well, my lesson went surprisingly well last time. I was able to play a duet with my teacher (almost) smoothly and he even commented on that, saying I seemed less nervous than previously. I agreed that I was, though I couldn't explain why. Perhaps we were both in a better mood for reasons unrelated to playing. That's how it goes sometimes.

I said that I noticed that I played better after not playing in the afternoon and he suggested I try taking a day off once a week. I was reluctant, but I did try, though I ended up playing anyway each day, though for less time. I'm not sure that helped, but I found I was afraid I would get out of the habit which seems to be what is sustaining me right now. Now, however, I've gotten into a habit of playing less time which is not so good.

Despite that, I'm improving, and find I can now play some of the chords that were quite difficult a few weeks ago. So I've been working on that--fingering--as well as coordination, another challenging area for me. Things are coming along--slowly.

One-Buttock Playing

Okay, Nervous Nellie's getting a little out of hand. I'm starting to feel anxious about my lessons instead of looking forward to them, and that's a recipe for disaster for me. If the anxiety gets too great, I'll quit. I don't want to quit because it's important to me to find a way to persevere with this. So what to do?

So, here's where the rubber meets the road, isn't it? What good are my theories when they don't produce a tangible result?

Today is my lesson day, so I have to talk to myself. I like the music, I'm having some incremental success, although going slower than I expected, or no--I expected nothing since I've made no progress in 50 years. I ought to be grateful for any progress in that case.

I've been working on those chords that involve some stretching and I find that I can do them just a little bit better. I think, though, that I need more time to recover between practices and so maybe I shouldn't do two practices a day, or maybe those practices should allow more time between one day and the next for recovery.

But I'm still afraid my teacher is displeased and that makes no sense at all since his job is to assess my progress and help me with what I'm doing, not to be pleased or displeased. If I were his coach and he were my writing student, and he were to tell me how anxious he was about writing in front of people, I would tell him to write to yourself first, please yourself first. I would ask: what do you want to say?

So that's a question I should ask myself: what do I want to say with music? Right now I'm drawing a blank. I don't know what I want to say. But I want to be able to express the music, to have it flow out of me, through me. Isn't that what all musicians want?

To hear the music was my original ambition. I just wanted to be able to hear it. Of course, these days you can hear any music you want on YouTube, even if it's not live. I wanted to feel it, too, though. Guitar is intimate that way--your body is in contact with the sound like few other instruments. Even the violin is only in contact with your hands and your chin. The cello is also an intimate instrument. I wonder if Yo Yo Ma sees it that way?

What do I want to say, though? For instance, what do I want to say with the piece by Bach? It's a fugue, which means it expresses the same musical idea in various ways in counterpoint.

I listened to a TED talk by Benjamin Zander, "The Transformative Power of Classical Music," that referred to "one buttock playing"--in other words, playing as if the music carries you forward with it, moving with the notes. So, can I learn to play that way? That is the way I want to play. Is it something that comes later, or can one do it that way all along? A fugue is a precision piece, isn't it? Well, maybe not entirely.

I need to pay attention to the other "subject" in the fugue that I am learning to play. The teacher suggested I be aware of it, but I haven't been up until now. I've been concentrating on my own part, trying (and failing) to play it perfectly. So what can I do instead? Can I find the flow in it? Can I discover what the piece is saying? Or what I want to say with it? What might that be?

Well, if I think of the idea of a fugue as being a subject being introduced, then reintroduced, then another subject being introduced and then reintroduced, then the first subject being introduced in a slightly different way, and on and on, I think immediately of a conversation. Here is the first idea, then the second, then back and forth until the conversation is finished and everyone can have tea.

It's a lot like a poem, a sonnet for instance, where the theme is repeated in various ways until the end, when there is often a surprise twist. Can the fugue I'm learning be all those things, or is it too simple?

No, if a poem cannot be too simple than a piece of music cannot be too simple. If a haiku can convey a complete and complex idea, then a one-page fugue can too.

I'm going to explore that idea today and try to see if it will help me with my anxiety.

Nervous Nellie Strikes Again!

Today's lesson was a little discouraging, I must admit. I was so hoping I could actually play the pieces I've been working on, but once again I got all fumble-fingered and made a hash of things. I'm not really sure what to do to make it easier for me to play in front of my teacher, but I'm going to try to come up with something. Maybe memorizing would work.

I'll try memorizing and then performing one piece for my family. It really makes me nervous even to think about it, though.

I should perhaps set aside an extra period of time just for learning the piece. Maybe an extra half hour a day would do the trick. I was able to memorize "Joy to the World" once upon a time. If I can do that, maybe I can memorize an additional tune. But then playing it for someone will really make a difference. If I can play it perfectly, then I will feel a lot better, I think.

Like Sands Through an Hour Glass . . .

I think I'm going to have to eventually bump my practice up to two hours a day if I really want to make progress.

For now, though, I'm content to stick with at least an hour which I can expand if I feel able to press on.

It's becoming more and more important to me to find time for my practice.

Putting My Finger On Progress

Practices have been going well with my new arrangement. The last few days I have been going past the 1/2 hour time limit by about 10 minutes, which means I'm at about 1 hour 20 minutes per day.

I'm experiencing some real gains in the pieces I've chosen to work on. I've also upped the number to 6 pieces so that I'll always have one or two pieces I'm just beginning to learn, one or two in the intermediate stage, and one or two that are nearly complete.

Most of the trouble I'm having with pieces these days has to do with difficult chords. Making my fingers span the neck of my guitar is pretty tough right now, but it is getting easier. I keep working on the fingering in the technical portion of my practice.

So, things are looking good for continuing this practice arrangement.

Two-Timing the Music

Well, I've been using the two-time-a-day method of practicing for five days now and it seems to be working out quite well. After a half hour, my fingers start to get a little sore and so when I take a break they have time to recover before my afternoon session.

I also like dividing up the activities between detail work and through-play. Working on the little segments of the pieces satisfies my desire to pay close attention to the music and it helps when I play the piece all the way through because I can get past those road blocks more quickly and easily.

One advantage I was not expecting is that I find myself wanting to go beyond the 1/2 time allotted for practice. Usually I don't go too far, because I don't want to overdo it and make it harder the next time.

So I guess this practicing thing really works!! Who knew?

The Music Inside Me

Today I continued with my plan to practice technique in the morning and practice play-through in the afternoon. It worked out quite well. I was practicing one particular piece in both parts. It's a piece I was having considerable trouble with as recently as Monday. But after working on the individual measures and then playing it over and over in time using the metronome, I am getting it very close to perfect.

One thing I noticed as I was trying to play the piece through without stumbling, is that it became quite a bit easier when I closed my eyes and tried to play it from memory. When I did that, I noticed for the first time that I could feel and hear the natural progression of the notes. It relaxed me completely, which was very helpful and quite satisfying in a way that I can't quite explain. It's almost as if the music were inside me and I was letting it glide out of me. I didn't write the piece, yet somehow it became something I knew intimately. Kind of freaky, but very nice. I wonder if that's how musicians experience this?

I decided to look it up, and found this quote from Ray Charles:

Practicing Practice

I've been talking with my teacher about "practicing practice," as he puts it. He told me I should play a piece through a few times and then work more specifically on challenging parts and particular fingering techniques with smaller segments of the piece.

I've decided these two approaches might best be assigned to different times of the day. And since my brain is more alert in the morning, I'm going to practice the technical aspects then. In the afternoon, I'll practice the through-play of the pieces.

So I'm planning to practice 1/2 hour in the morning and 1/2 hour in the afternoon. I'm hoping that will allow me to recover from the physical strain of the morning's technical practice and make it easier for me to play through in the afternoon.

I tried it today and it seems to be comfortable, so we'll see what happens.

Bypassing the Conscious Mind

The classical guitar pose with the pillows seems to be working out fairly well, and my teacher seems to agree. Anything that makes it more comfortable for me to play is a good thing, he says. So that's what I'm doing. And I'm still practicing every day at least 1/2 hour and sometimes an hour or more. I'm glad about that and it's starting to be enjoyable. I look forward to those times when I will not want to stop playing when an hour has passed.

Another things I've been working on is what I call "automaticity," where you play in an automatic manner, which means the fingers translate the notes into sound, bypassing the conscious brain.

It's very much like touch typing, which I mastered many years ago. I very seldom have to think about what I'm typing (a bit more now that I'm getting older); I just imagine the word and the fingers do the rest without my having to think about what I'm typing, one letter at a time.

I've been working on that this week with playing guitar, and find that with the easy pieces I can do it for a short amount of time. It's coming along and I can hear the improvement.

So far, so good.

Pillow Fight

Well, I've found that the fingering is easier with my pillow-classical-position solution, but now my back is starting to hurt after about an hour. That's not good. I'm going to bring it up with my teacher next week to see if what I'm doing is more harmful than helpful. It might still be better than the standard foot rest that you can buy.

VS.

Physical Considerations

Well, I talked to my teacher about these physical challenges, and we worked on a couple of the pieces in my lesson. After that I felt better and thought I might be able to manage the fingering after all, with some work.

Since then, I thought I might try for two weeks to use the classical guitar position. Instead of a stool or one of those fancy leg raisers, though, I opted for a pile of pillows, a more comfortable choice, I've found. This position seems more comfortable for my hands, too, although my arm gets tired from being held up higher.

I've been working on thumb position for both hands, too, and have concluded that playing guitar is a very physical activity. Who knew?

Fretting about Fingers

Well, yesterday I tried out some of those new pieces and unfortunately, some of them are currently beyond my capability--my fingers can't make the necessary configuration. That's kind of discouraging because I'm not sure there's a workaround for that. I may end up having to buy a different guitar. Ah, well, I'll see what my teacher says this week.

Future Looking Bright

Looking ahead to some of the pieces I will be learning in coming weeks, I'm happy they are going to be pretty and somewhat complex. Just what I need to be learning!

There is, for instance, a nice Bach fugue and a Prelude in A minor, both pretty and fun to play.

My Right-Hand Man

Yesterday I worked on the right hand exercises my teacher gave me. They look simple--various kinds of arpeggios--but they are actually somewhat difficult to play because they require coordination of fingers. I think, too, that they require an automatic action, as typing does: doing it without thinking about how to do it, relying on muscle to react quickly. Because such an exercise increases quickness, I think.

I found a YouTube video of an unknown guitarist playing the exercises, created by Mauro Giuliani, who lived and worked in Italy in the early 19th century:

Below is his portrait, and the link to a website dedicated to him: Giuliani. The site contains sheet music for all his works and audio/video performances of some of the pieces.

Mauro Giuliani

Notes Without Rest

This week, I learned I need to land on the notes at exactly the right time so as to give the maximum value to the previous note, to let the resonance continue for the full duration. This diagram (below) of note values does not really convey the sound of a note. After playing the note, the listener should hear it for the length of the time the note dictates. That means that the player must allow the note to reach its full length before stopping it. Stop the note prematurely and you have essentially introduced a rest, which means you have changed the notation and the sound of the piece.

So, for instance, a half note, which normally looks like the note on the left, would, if its length were depicted, look like the one on the right.

What that means in playing the note is that once you play it, you shouldn't stop its sound prematurely. I was doing that by putting my finger on the string prior to playing it, in order to be prepared to pluck it at the appropriate time. Wrong! Putting my finger on it silenced it until I sounded the next note. So what I have to do instead is to prepare to pluck it without touching it, to pounce on the string at the last moment. Not easy, but more effective. I've been working on it and it's coming along.

Music Happens Between the Notes

Picture of item for sale on Etsy

My guitar teacher said this to me yesterday when we had our third lesson: music happens between the notes. It's not an original observation, but I think it's very true, nonetheless. The notes are kind of a blueprint or an outline or a framework. It's up to the listener to connect the dots that are the notes, to fill in what's missing, to complete the picture, to give it meaning.

Thinking about music in this way frees the mind to stop dwelling excessively on precision, correctness, pitch, rhythm--the dots in the score. Putting the parts together perfectly does not a piece of music make. Only the perception of what those parts together create is music.

So playing the notes, even if perfectly, is only part of what is needed. The rest must come from the musician's sense that she is making something out of those dots. Being aware of that makes playing more profound for me. I plan to use it when I practice. We'll see what happens.