What I think about when I think about slow practice

Who hasn’t at least once been told something along these lines: slow practice – slow practice is king – slow is smooth, smooth is fast…and other such platitudinous maxims?

As a young guitarist (or any sort of musician), young in either experience or years or both, there comes a point beyond which brute strength, stamina, and talent are no longer enough to nail down the ‘big’ pieces one takes on. At this point, it’s important to start learning how to practice scientifically. One major component of this is mastering the art of slow practice, and incorporating the approach into the time one’s hands spend pounding the increasingly familiar pathways of muscle memory, so to speak. It took me some years to understand how to really benefit from the act of slowing down, and I have come across many who at least initially approach slow practice the way I first did, which is to say, ploddingly and without much understanding of what they could be gaining from doing it right. So here’s my little reinterpretation of the exhortation to slow down.

The thing is, slow practice isn’t quite just that. It’s ever so much more than playing what you play slowly. Slow practice (in the sense of literally playing your piece slowly) is what you look like you’re doing when what you’re really doing is ‘deep’ practice. Of course, it’s important to always play with attention and intention, but in a regular rendition of a piece you know well, your fully engaged mind is actually multitasking. You’re stretching and shifting and tensing and relaxing your left hand, moving your right in all sorts of ways, perhaps shifting your balance with your instrument, and breathing one way or another, while keeping the tension out of your feet, legs, shoulders, jaw, and everywhere else – to name a few. When you engage in slow practice, you’re not multitasking, but focusing deeply on one element of all the demands a given piece makes on your technical ability. Putting a conscious spotlight on an aspect of playing that you usually execute unconsciously requires you to reduce the speed at which you play – hence the term – but need not seem slow in the sense of being tedious when executed properly, because your deeply focused mind needs as much time as you’re giving it to consciously maintain perfection in the task at hand. The extent to which you need to slow down to make this effective does, therefore, depend on the goal of a slowed down practice session. Practicing legato shifts with your left hand may require relatively less of a slowing down than does practicing the unloading of tension in your a finger immediately following a stroke when you’re working on the quality of your tremolo in Recuerdos de la Alhambra. This is not by any means a definitive list of all the things you could think of when you embark on a slow practice session, but here are few things you could focus on in slow practice – one at a time, that is. Since I have already alluded to everyone’s favourite tremolo study, you might recall it where necessary to contextualise my suggestions:

• Left hand relaxation at all times, while holding poses.
• Left hand smoothness and accuracy of shifts.
• Getting the slurs and/or ornaments right (using the big and little knuckles of the left pinky, and figuring out which two fingers you’re playing with on the right hand for that particular little bit.
• Uniformity of tremolo in time, tone, and volume.
• Making sure your right hand is stable, and not dipping from side to side as you play.
• Relaxing your right hand fingers immediately following every stroke they play. This is most easily accomplished by consciously shifting your attention from the finger that has just played to the one that’s playing next. (learning to do this, more than anything else, will automatically give you speed)
• Realising just how much range of motion your thumb has, and that you really don’t need to move your forearm/wrist to hit the 5th & 6th strings.
• Deciding if you’re breathing in or out at a given point in a piece – this is most applicable to fast scale runs.
• Playing with a metronome at different speeds – even if you can blaze through the piece, it’s beneficial to learn to have control over your right hand at all tempos.

I hope this helps you add quality to your practice. Thanks for reading, and play on!

The T-word

…or perhaps I should call this some obligatory pedantry on the subject of tremolo.

Obligatory, because tremolo seems to be the one right hand technique that every classical guitarist thinks about, talks about, looks for in other guitarists, and – yes, I do mean everybody who runs up blogs, books, method books, papers etc with the intention of trying to help – writes about. Pedantry, with its associated cynicism aimed squarely at yours truly, because I recognize that my telling you about what works for me doesn’t guarantee it working for you. I don’t profess infallibility or an understanding of The One Right Technique, and my approach and suggestions here are not meant to particularly challenge any of the pedagogy that’s already out there. This is what works for me, after I learnt to play one way, then experimented with every other suggested approach out there, then came back to this, and in case you haven’t yet found what works for you, I submit that you give it a try.

Broadly Speaking
It’s important to first understand what tremolo is, and especially if you’re one of their number, why most listeners enjoy it particularly, and why so many developing guitarists work so hard at perfecting it. Beyond being a technique that plays four notes over and over in quick succession, tremolo on the classical guitar presents the listener with two distinct voices – the melody, which comes from the repetitive i-m-a, which could well be a voice or strings section in a larger arrangement, and the accompaniment, which comes from the ‘harmony’ notes played with the thumb. Or, as John Williams once put it, the effect of a mandolin playing melody with an accompanying bass instrument. This presents an auditory offering that is replete enough to be a basic melody-harmony duet, and yet simple enough for what amounts to easy listening, unlike a brilliant and substantial fugue, for example. Having that ‘duet effect’ as an objective helps to manage the music you’re making when you play tremolo. Depending on the piece, it’s possible to present the bass notes as the melody and the tremolo itself (the repetitive treble notes) as the accompaniment – but either way, it’s handy to remember that tremolo is the teaming up of one fairly constant voice played on the treble notes (and with the right hand’s fingers), with another voice played largely on the bass notes, with the thumb.

Biomechanically
In strictly physical terms, tremolo involves playing a note with the right thumb, then working each of your three relevant fingers in opposition to it, most often in the order a-m-i. Moreover, each of these fingers works independently of the one that went before it, even though they ideally follow each other at quite a clip. So m does not arc down with a, and slightly behind it, and all three fingers follow each other independently, and return to the starting positions that would optimize their playing if they were working without the other two. Also, each finger, and the right hand in general, must be relaxed. After all, one finger playing one note at a time doesn’t necessitate any great expense of power, and so should not occasion any tension in the hand, right? Further, the only way to execute a quick tremolo is to keep your fast-moving fingers relaxed and in control – with that objective in mind, training the right hand fingers to make small, fluid, relaxed plucking movements is essential. The foundation for a good tremolo is best laid in slow motion, playing one note per second, or even per two seconds at first, with especial attention paid to the elimination of any tension in the right hand, and to making sure that when a finger that has just played returns to its starting position, it doesn’t settle too far away from the strings.

Musically
The point of playing tremolo is to give your listener – yourself or anyone else – two smooth voices that accompany each other through one song.

There’s a lovely saying that could and should guide the practice of all music, and it is particularly applicable to training tremolo – slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Which could also be reduced to the simple maxim: legato rules. When practicing tremolo, it is important to listen for evenness in both tone and volume, and to work on getting each note to follow the other smoothly. This smoothness is possible at any speed, even at your initial learner’s one note per second. If at first you find yourself struggling to play smoothly, imagine that you’re in a video, and playing faster – and the video is being played back in slow motion. It follows, from what I have suggested, that all notes be played free stroke – no need to resort to rest stroke, planting, staccato, because when you speed things up, the pace of your playing – and each finger following the other on the same string – will leave you wanting more sustain if anything, not less. I’ll go a step further, too, and warn you off impatience in practice: it is a quirk peculiar to tremolo, that if you can’t play it smoothly slow, you won’t be able to play it smoothly fast.

Functionally
By many accounts, tremolo pieces often feature on the classical guitar student’s bucket list, partly because they are often very pretty pieces, and partly because the unique demands tremolo places on the right hand make them uniquely challenging until the technique is properly figured out. For those that have the basic technique down, but are yet uncertain in and about their execution of it when playing, either for themselves or for an audience, here are some suggestions:

– A successful tremolo may be fast or – who am I kidding here – faster, but it absolutely needs to be smooth and accurate to work. Each finger must follow the other, and must not ‘jostle’ the one ahead of it. The time spent working on right hand legato, tone, volume, and spacing in practice is what makes or breaks it when you play at speed. Remember to be smooth – slower smooth tremolos sound better than really fast choppy ones. The point is to create an effect for the listener – and you don’t have to tear through it at any great speed to do that, even though that seems to have become the fashion in the past few decades. (the classical guitar has also become less and less widely known in those decades…hm! You’ll find my pontifications on a general sacrifice of musicianship for technical accomplishment elsewhere.) As a guitarist as well as an avid yet exacting listener, take it from me that anything faster than andante in 3/4 with 6 bass quavers is really just for critics and other guitarists. (am I alluding to our dear yet often remarkably unloved ‘RDLA’? Yes, naturally.)

– When playing, pick one voice as dominant, and sing it in your head. Often, it’s the bass line that lends itself best to this. Following it along helps to give a flow and evenness to your playing.

– Actively work on relaxing your hand, particularly the a finger. Whenever you find your tremolo getting choppy, focus on eliminating the tension that you’ll doubtless find creeping into your hand via that finger.

-Lift your wrist up, so your hand angles in towards the strings a little. This will increase your hand’s stamina.

Happy birthday, Francisco!

If the guitar had a patron saint or two, Francisco Tarrega would surely be one of them (Antonio Torres the other, perhaps?). More of us would remember him a lot better for a lot more than we do now, and that’s saying something, considering that a number of his compositions are widely posited in various classical guitar repertoire top 10 lists. But since it’s the great man’s 164th birth anniversary today, and I’m a little too far away from Barcelona to lay something nice on his grave, here’s writing a bit about him instead.

Francisco Tarrega was born this day in 1852 in Villarreal, Spain. His father played flamenco, and was supportive of Francisco’s early endeavors in music. A true prodigy by today’s standards, he was playing in coffee houses by the age of 10. Yet, in spite of reasonable support at home, he felt artistically stifled. He ran away from home three times before the age of 18, each time in search of greater engagement with the world through his music. One of those times the juvenile Tarrega joined a band of gypsies, with whom he played flamenco until he was discovered and taken home, presumably against his will. Another of those times he fell in to a ditch, as a consequence of which he lost his eyesight for a number of years thereafter. A bit of a wild child, perhaps? And talk about having an itch to perform!

By age 20, he was a conservatory wunderkind, a seasoned performer, and perhaps the best thing to happen to Antonio Torres’ career in lutherie. Having been an astute student of both the guitar and ‘formal music’ (read: the piano) for much of his life, our hero now fed his burgeoning skills and unprecedentedly capable instrument (the newly evolved classical guitar, broadly as we know it today) on a steady diet of his own adaptations of major composers’ works, including some of the better-known compositions by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Vivaldi, and more. Many of his arrangements of these romantic era and even earlier works remain a guitarist’s first choice for musicality, when looking for arrangements of pieces by the afore-mentioned great composers.

By age 30, Tarrega had seen enough of life to start penning some great music of his own. He had also grown into the prodigious whiskers and mop (and baggy suit) you can see in a few sepia photographs on Google Images. Though he would doubtless have had a stellar career on his merits alone, we must be grateful for the fact that he knew the value of networking and seeking out patronage, because he wrote a lot of his most famous works with the support and patronage of Conxa Martinez, a wealthy widow who appreciated his compositions and his playing. It was her support that gave him a retreat where he could sit and write in Barcelona, and her support once again that took him to Granada – for a retreat that is now fateful for his having written Recuerdos de la Alhambra, perhaps his most famous and celebrated work.

Throughout adulthood, he performed widely, preferring smaller, intimate settings to traditional concert halls. Many have wondered about this, and speculated that his preference for small venues and audiences was a consequence of childhood traumas, or a preoccupation with his instrument’s volume…personally, I think it’s because he understood that the magic of the guitar requires an intimate setting to really work.

When middle age came on, the consummate performer and profound composer – and by this time, the undisputed grandfather of the classical guitar – mellowed gracefully. Beyond giving back through performance and composition, he also paid it forward by teaching many of the next generation of maestros.

Well, that’s his story, albeit very briefly. For sharing’s sake, and because the people-emotions-compositions-music-emotions-people chain, that links us who play today to the likes of him, is both impossibly impersonalized by intervening time and space on the one hand, and extremely personal on the other, I’ll tell you about the time his story first crossed mine: he came into my life, sans preamble, with Recuerdos de la Alhambra. I was 14 at the time, and had been playing for about 6 years. I had never heard tremolo on the guitar before, but followed the score my teacher gave me. Paradise is most truly appreciated by a child let loose within it, without being told where he is – and so it was for me with Recuerdos. I don’t suppose I’m anywhere near being alone in counting Francisco Tarrega amongst my greatest inspirations in music, and when I did first hear a recording of the piece some years later (John Williams’ masterful rendition), it was like discovering it for the first time all over again. It’s still one of my favorites.

Mil gracias, Mr Tarrega – and here’s to you on your birthday. The world continues to be blessed for your having passed through it.

Image source: http://gitaraplus.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Francisco_Tarrega_4.jpg

Turn the lights out

Do you ever practice in the dark? You should give it a go sometime, if you haven’t yet. It focuses your ear on the sounds you’re making to an extent you wouldn’t expect. And, more importantly if you’re feeling self-indulgent, like I am, it lets you enjoy the music so much more.

It was too late tonight for me to really get anything else done, but I did want to play a little more. So I took the one piece I could never do without, turned out the lights, and worked on that legato. Recuerdos de la Alhambra in the dark. Slowly, at first, listening to everything that tremolo has to tell, then fast even though I had planned not to – because hey, how could I not?

Like anything intimately sublime – great food, lovely wine, a kiss – it lingers on in thought and consciousness long after it’s done. Tired, practiced out, and content as I am, I’m primed for more, my energies are refreshed, and I can’t wait to get up and practice tomorrow!

I should do this more often.

Score!

There is a personal story to this piece, which I thought I’d share, as it captures the initial bit of chance that pointed me in this direction. Back in the early 90s, I was a boy of less than 10, and was just starting out on the guitar. At the time, my grandmother, who was among other things a Carnatic musician, lived with us. She used to sing, and play the veena. One afternoon, I came home from school and walked into the room we shared, and found her picking out a tune on my first guitar (sweet little 3/4 a luthier in Calcutta ran up for me for a song). I was intrigued of course, but my grandmother was bashful, and as soon as she became aware of my presence, she put down the guitar, and I never managed to get her to repeat what she had been playing. Some years later, other early musical influences in my life led me to learn that the tune was a song from the Carnatic tradition – a fact that I processed, and then put away. The ABRSM arbitrated the music in my life back then, and I suppose I lacked the development to define – or even to want to define, or know that I could define – my own path, even for a project. Now, as I have been in India for a little over a year, perhaps the music of this country is finding its way into my head by osmosis – I definitely can’t claim to have sought it out, and I can’t point to what it was that led me to dig back through my memories to this tune. Consciously at least, the past year has seen me focus on building a program almost exclusively based on late Romantic and early Modern music… Nonetheless, it came back to me, and as a classical guitarist firmly rooted within my own technical tradition, I felt the need to make sense of it. So here’s the original score…performance notes and a cleaner manuscript will follow soon, of course, sometime between now and publication, but I thought I’d share the basic tremolo study. The covetous ways of our times require me to swear to conjure up much misery and unpleasantness in the event that I suffer infringement or plagiarism, but playing it is another story – if you play it, I hope you enjoy it.

Kamala’s Song or Vara Veena

Kamala’s Song or Vara Veena

Kamala’s Song or Vara Veena

Kamala’s Song or Vara Veena

The project I mentioned earlier, as I see it, will involve my traveling to the heartland of Carnatic music, discovering the melodies of that tradition, and in an exercise that I hope will patently not result in ‘fusion’ music, bringing those beautiful melodies back to the world of the guitar in a manner that is at once guitaristic and faithful to the spirit of the Carnatic original. ‘Keep you posted on that as it develops. Meanwhile, here’s offering up the first iteration of what I hope will become a new song cycle for the guitar.