Beginning to improvise

As a follow up post to my last one (where I segued into the challenges of improvisation) I thought I'd write a short post on - wait for it - how to get started on improvising!  This is something I'd like to be able to do - I still go to guitar jams/singalongs and there is always that break when people with mad skills are able to effortlessly improvise over the chords we are playing.  Not to mention it's a component of the certificate course I'm planning to take next June.   I'm still in the dark about how to get to the right notes before they actually happen, despite having been through some of the instructions on improvisation on classicalguitarcorner.com.  It's just not sinking in.  So I thought I'd branch out into the acoustic world (where improvisation is all part of the genre) to see if there was another way I could approach it.   I came across a site I thought I'd share - it looks promising - using the scale seems to make sense, and the fact that the same 4 chords are repeated throughout the song means there is no guessing game to figure out which chord you're moving to.  (That's another thing I'm having trouble with - I can tell there's a chord change but more often than not don't know which one - but that challenge is for another time).  I also like the incremental approach - starting off with one octave, known chords...  apart from getting seriously bored with Beyonce I think it might have promise, so I thought I'd share - here is a link to part one, and from there, go on to part 2 😊...
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/learn-to-play-by-ear-using-chord-tones-part-one/

Can jazz help my classical playing?

This week I was having an interesting email exchange with a friend of mine who studies jazz guitar.  He wanted to know my take on  comments related to a blog post regarding playing classical guitar vs. jazz guitar...  (paraphrased below)

• Jazz guitarists know the fretboard better than classical guitarists 
• Rhythmic energy and drive is secondary for classical guitarists
• Classical guitarists spend too much time worrying about making the smallest mistake

Hmmm.   From a personal point of view I can confirm I don't know the fretboard at all well and I do indeed memorize a series of shapes and patterns, but my teacher seems to know the fretboard intimately - he often points out that something I'm playing up the fretboard is "just an xyz chord" (news to me!)  And let's face it, rhythmic energy and drive, i.e. a steady down/off beat? is not what's required when connecting musical lines across several measures.  Worrying about the smallest mistake? I figure I'll get to that when I've stopped worrying about the big mistakes. 😆 

But wait!  He followed up with a treatise involving 10 places to play

Cdim/Cm6-5 chords... and 4 (equally confusing) synonyms for the same 4 notes.   What?  I'm not even sure I know how to say that.  I realize that I'm paddling around in the kiddie pool and he's swimming the English channel so far as chords are concerned.  And to be honest,  I don't have much use for 10 places to play a jazz chord just at this minute, but it would be nice to actually have at my finger ends triads etc of major/minor/7th chords all over the neck wouldn't it?  (yes I do know the CAGED shapes and how to use them, but only in theory, i.e. I can work out how to play a C chord at the 8th fret if need be).  So it would be nice to recognize the shapes I'm playing as actual chords instead of having to refer to the sheet music to work out what they are.  The only thing I am confident about in our whole discussion is I can read the exercises (notation) he pointed to without having to convert them to tab!  

So how does this all help me?  I'm not about to start learning jazz guitar - I'm having enough trouble with classical, and anyway I don't have an extra few decades available.  However what I'd really like to be able to do is improvise over basic chords - it's something I'm supposed to be learning but I'm not getting very far, while jazz guitarists can apparently do this in their sleep.  Do I have to know all the scale shapes all over the fretboard and figure out which notes of the scale in the key sig go with which chord and where they are, instantly, on the fly?   Or perhaps just fret all the different chords as they come up and improvise on those?  Or..... well ? you tell me.    Something has not yet clicked, and it's not like I can't hear when it sounds right... the problem is knowing in advance what I need to do to get there!  I'm hoping it's going to be something where I get an aha! moment - like when I found out that modifying the major and minor scale patterns to get the church modes finally made musical sense.  (Previous attempts to understand them had been like peering through the murk at the bottom of the inner harbor).

So enough musing - when I get it I'll post what worked for me (but it could be a while).  In the meantime, here is where I am on my latest classical exercise (where I note the rhythmic accuracy leaves something to be desired still)

What are the 10 most useful things I learned THIS year?

I am tempted to just repeat the list from a year ago, because I have to keep being reminded of the same things over and over!  However here's my attempt to document that I did learn something this year!

1.  Sometimes the best only way to keep in time is to count along with yourself.  It's not easy (especially if you have trouble concentrating on more than one thing at a time, like I do) but the metronome can only take you so far, and it really doesn't sound good playing along in the background!   Seriously though - pieces that don't have a steady downbeat seem to be particularly hard to keep a steady tempo - there was one piece (the Pavan) where I didn't get it until I counted along.

2.  Counting is pretty essential when sight reading too.  My guitar teacher in a fit of what cannot possibly be sadism has given me sight reading pieces that I swear are impossible to read (unless you're a real guitar player, perhaps).  The only way I even managed to get the beat (ignoring the notes) was to count along laboriously.  Worked for 16ths with rests and ties, but not for quarter note (or-  heavens! half-note) triplets.  Any hints on that topic will be welcomed (and it's way too slow to just fit in trip-e-let... I tried!)

3. Playing super slowly really helps with memorization.  Muscle memory seems to fall apart if you play it slowly enough, so you have to really think about the notes and which fingers you are playing them with.  So by the time you relearned how to play it super-slowly you know it a whole lot better.

4. Playing super-slowly really helps with correcting errors you may have been unconsciously making, such as playing the wrong notes (!) or failing to hold them the correct length.   Why? because if you're me, it's probably the first time you've really studied the music closely - it's amazing what you find out...

5. Practicing things 10x in a row correctly is not necessary nor (for me) advisable.  Four is about the right number for me because I've found it tends to fall apart at 3 or 4 if it's going to.  Why is it not advisable for me to do more? If there is one injury I'm prone to, it's tendonitis/over-use injuries.  Enough said.

6. If you can't seem to 'get' the LH fingering, check the RH!   I  know, sounds counterintuitive, but if the brain is puzzling over the RH fingering, it's easy for the LH to fall apart too. I tend to concentrate on the LH, so it makes sense I don't notice when the RH is causing the trouble.

7.  I don't think I've internalized this one yet.  Start learning the dynamics and articulation sooner- while you are initially learning the piece.  I've been told enough times, I thought I'd write it down 😏

8.  Learning to sight read takes a long long long time.  Yep, it was on last year's list as well.  I guess I could add that it takes more willpower than I have to do it every day,  but at least this year I've kept at it for longer periods between breaks, and I enlisted my guitar teacher to help me remember...

9. Recording yourself is really really really useful.  Another one from last year's list.   I can say that I am no longer intimidated by the red button on my phone.  I'll sometimes play a section, listen,  and repeat multiple times until it actually sounds roughly like I think it did to start with.   I guess if this was new year's resolution time, I'd say I need to make myself just as comfortable with the video camera.  Don't hold your breath though.

10.  I'm tempted to make this one a repeat of "you need to practice performing if you want to perform" and it's still true, but I didn't do it this year.   Instead I'm working on the other end of the equation - working up pieces until they are solid enough that they don't completely fall apart under performance pressure.   Having confidence that I really can play it through every time will hopefully help.

Left hand, right hand, all together now....

Usually I concentrate on my left hand...   and when that approach fails, then I check to make sure I know what my right hand is supposed to be doing.  Fortunately that doesn't happen too often, but it's usually a quick fix. Until now.  For my latest piece, there are sections when neither hand wants to happily fall into the next position, (as I've discovered through repeated attempts that resulted in a distinctly unmusical result).  It's finally down to having to train each hand separately until the "hand shapes" needed are part of muscle memory, and then try to put them together.  Sigh.  It seems that gone are the days when I can polish off a piece in a couple of weeks and then move onto something new and interesting. 

For the forseeable future, I have the Carcassi, which is gradually moving up in tempo from "almost stopped" to "only thinking about stopping" - the Prelude, (where I can but marvel at how much refinement is still needed for a 50 second piece), Maria Luisa, which is going back to "too slow to count" to iron out some technical issues, and then the aforementioned piece (Adelita) with the finger tai chi.  Only one more to add to the mix and that'll be it for the next 6 months...  As my guitar teacher points out, it's time to learn several pieces in parallel rather than one after the other.  Don't get me wrong  - I'm still enjoying the challenge of these pieces, but I am not looking forward to the stage where I'm sick and tired of working on them and they still  don't sound right! 

Maybe I'll look out an easy Christmas song or two for a little light relief 😀. 

Am I my own worst enemy? I need self-control!

Go slow.  Don't run before you can walk.  Make sure it's solid before you speed it up.  I know this.  I should do anyway -I've just spent 2 weeks playing a fast piece unbelievably slowly.  And I proved to myself that it works.  Not only did I get to know the piece really well,  I could play it consistently at a slow pace.  So why then, instead of working the tempo back up in slow careful stages, did I speed it up unbelievably fast?   Duh.  Now it's back to making mistakes again😕  I don't honestly know why I think to myself "this is really going well, let's see how much better it sounds when played a lot faster."  Or even more idiotic, "I made a couple of mistakes, let's see if they disappear if I double the speed."  Honestly I really am my own worst enemy.

Thankfully I'm using the super slow method on a second piece, also with a big improvement in consistency.  This time I've been more careful about increasing the tempo slowly. So far so good.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed I can keep myself under control😂

In the meantime: for the Carcassi - it's back to v-e-r-y s-l-o-w.

Use the end to find the beginning..

I know - that title is either an oxymoron, confusing, or perhaps both, but stay around and all will be explained...   This week I was reminded of a different goal-setting technique (in Noa Kageyama's excellent e-newsletter).  That is, when trying to set goals for a deadline, instead of starting from the current timepoint and working forward, start at the finish line and work backwards.  What does this mean? Figure out the precise goal, and all the tasks that are required to accomplish that goal, then fit them into timepoints between now and then so they fit.   (Actually I think the point of the exercise is to identify the tasks and schedule them - rather than actually working backwards, but I'm not quibbling*)
I've done the goal-setting exercise before with my guitar practice and it works, kind of.   But it usually falls by the wayside sooner rather than later, maybe because the goals aren't tied to a specific endpoint.  As I seem to have a number of projects that are not making much progress, I thought I'd have a go at this technique for the next week or so. 

First I had to identify specific goals and deadlines - believe it or not, that in itself was useful.

By Nov 12 (pm)

• Play the De Visee Prelude at the next online masterclass (part of Simon Powis' ClassicalGuitarAcademy) - probably November 12.  There are a number of us working on it and it was suggested (at least half tongue in cheek) that we would all play the same thing!

By Nov 8 (pm)

• Learn part 2 of Adelita sufficient to play it v slowly
• Read through orchestra music from e.g. the Swan from Carnival of the Animals and identify any challenges to ask guitar teacher 
• Finish working through sight reading practice exercises (8 remaining)
• Be able to play through Carcassi 7 (like this!) but cold @ 30 (super slow) with metronome on 8ths.

After identifying the goals and the deadlines, I then broke down what I had to do to get there. Though  it would be tedious for you to read (so I won't list them here), it was extremely useful for me. For example, to get through the (so called) sight reading I found I had to assign myself more to do at the weekend, because it takes me such a long time (it's not really sight reading, it's more figuring out how to play it.)   In contrast, the orchestra music was pretty simple - read through one piece a day and done!  Learning Adelita involved breaking it down into sections and concentrating on one section a day.  So far so good.  The Prelude however - I've had it a while now, and though I've made progress on dynamics and keeping the voices separate and legato, I rarely if ever play it clean.   I decided I needed to break it down into sections and apply the super-slow approach till I could play each section without errors 4x.  Started this at the weekend, and I found 7 things I needed to do differently. Wow. 

So in summary, what did I get out of this and is it worth continuing?

• Assigning a specific goal to a deadline (even 'fake' deadlines can help!) made things seem achievable as opposed to nebulous 'in the future' kind of goals. 
• Thinking about what was needed to reach the goal resulted in me trying new things (for instance applying the super-slow technique to iron out the problems in the Prelude) - more on using your head instead of just trying harder
• Having only a small subtask to do each day (and then you're done!) made it much easier to actually do, and is well-known as helping to achieve larger goals.
• I got a sense of satisfaction from achieving the smaller tasks
• Even if some of the deadlines prove unrealistic, the information I got from trying will help me set more realistic deadlines in future. Adjusting goals is an important skill in project management.

As for whether I reached any of my goals - that will remain to be seen!

*Definition of "quibble" 'early 17th century (in the sense ‘play on words, pun’): diminutive of obsolete quib ‘a petty objection,’ 

Go slow, go slow, go slow, go slow, go slow....................................

Ever tried to play part of a piece from the middle of a sequence and blanked out?  How about reducing the tempo drastically - do your fingers "forget" what they happily knew at the usual speed?  Mine do.  This is of course further evidence that there is a part of my brain akin to the 'black box' that used to be a common feature of my biochemistry lectures back in the day.  If the mechanism wasn't known, the equations used to show one thing going into the box, and another coming out. What happened in between was anybody's guess.  What brings this to mind?  Well my challenge this week is to play Carcassi 7 cold at an agonizingly slow pace every day.  I can tell what's going to happen - first my fingers won't want to find the strings (cold, remember?) and then I will get to a part where I blank out on which fingers play the note(s) I can hear in my head and have played approximately five hundred times (the black box).  So I will have to get the music out (or play faster) to 'remember'.  Come to think of it, I might also check out what the dynamics and phrasing are supposed to be while I'm about it. And I might figure out the sequencing a little more clearly.  Hmmm... perhaps there is some method to this madness -  My memory might even get to decipher some of the contents of that black box...

But here's the kicker - I have to do this for my guitar teacher next week!   Oh man, I'm going to need a strong drink either before or after that lesson (maybe before and after...)

Decided to see if repetitions of this process (trying to play it cold, sloooow) has any benefit...  so will try it daily and track problems and solutions this week.

DAY ONE.   Quel Disaster!    Playing it at 25-30 (vs. ~80).  Started off by missing strings (as predicted).  Then forgot where to go in multiple spots (also as predicted).  And speeding up (should have been predicted) - just could not stay with the metronome.  Tried the metronome on 8th notes (still hard to follow) and finally on 16th notes, which worked better.    I learned the "forgetting" was usually in the right hand, not the left, so practiced some areas right hand only.


DAY TWO -  Slight improvement...  a couple of sections I practiced yesterday were OK today.  Still missed strings, but mostly in the first few measures, right hand.  Maybe I should do a dry run of the first bit next time to make sure I'm lined up?  Still having problems with the slur section  - my hand doesn't like i on 1 with p on 6, so repeats m, and then I notice what I did and screw up the next bit.  Potential solution?  Changing fingering to add in 'a.' Noticed a squeak I can work to eliminate.  Forgot to put metronome on at all....oh well, it was slow...

DAY THREE - Definitely improved today - only missed or buzzed ?4 notes in a complete run through - but wait!   I "forgot" to go super slow - it was just "slower."   Aaargh.  Back to the metronome tomorrow.  Good news - squeak disappeared, and having done a dry run of the beginning few measures,  only missed one note instead of most of them in the first section.  And the 'a' on the slurs seems to be working but needs more practice.  Worked on trying to find that F#/C stretch by feel because it's a "commonly missed" part - not too much success with that yet.  Figured I'd better damp the E bass at the end so worked on the right hand thumb (which never ever wants to do what I tell it to....).  Thought about adding in breathing room but didn't...

DAY FOUR - Much better at staying with the metronome on 16ths - no tendency to charge ahead at all.   And I managed to get through to the end (i.e. before the repeat) , only missing one note , and in particular the first section when I was totally cold went without a hitch as did the slurs and F#/C (but I did have to look).  But then on the repeat new problems emerged - now I have so much time to think that I'm second guessing myself or analyzing or wandering in my head instead of focusing.  Then suddenly I remember to concentrate and - guess what? I don't know where I am.  Also totally forgot about damping at the end.   So tomorrow's challenge is to stay focused, perhaps by actively thinking about dynamics in the upcoming part instead of the individual notes...
Thinks💭   might try some of my other  "problem pieces" (actually that's all of them currently) at super-slow tempos to see if that will iron out some persistent problems.

DAY FIVE - I can say I know this piece a lot better than I did at the beginning of the week!  Tempo is good but I'm continuing to have problems remaining focused at such a slow pace, and today I had to restart due to 'wandering off' right at the beginning- what can I say? it's too early in the morning.  However once I got  my brain in gear, the second section including the repeat went well.  Tried to think about what I needed to concentrate on in upcoming sections and it seemed to help.  Though I did wander off once, believe it or not thinking about suggestions to avoid wandering off from yesterday's online masterclass!  - and I still forgot the damping. 

I tried the super-slow stuff on Maria Luisa - that's a harder nut to crack - I've tried concentrating on so many different aspects  - one of these days I will figure it out.

DAY SIX  - I would dearly like to say that this is the day it all came together.  Nope.   In fact it was dreadful.  Missing notes with both hands left right and center.  Gave up and practiced thumb damping instead.  Reminds me of when you are clicker training a pig to follow a target (yes, I've done all sorts of odd activities in my career) and things are going along swimmingly until a few days in, then the pig ups and forgets everything you thought it had learned.  This (for a pig) is normal - within a day or so it's back on track and seems to have mastered the task.  Something to do with transitioning from short term to long term memory.  I suppose I could be like that pig.  OR it might have been because I reduced the metronome to 8ths, and here I was again fighting not to speed up instead of concentrating on what I was playing.  I'd love to know why it is so much more difficult to stay at tempo with half as many clicks...  Tomorrow's task - somehow encourage my brain to stay on tempo with 8ths and think about what's coming next...

DAY SEVEN - well today was the day when I actually had to play it, at this painfully slow tempo, for my guitar teacher.   Just so you know, I rarely if ever manage to play anything for my guitar teacher due to nerves and fear of failure.  What happened?  Well I succeeded! - played through the whole thing with minimal mistakes (though admittedly I did have to start twice).  Of course I did not have to stay with the metronome, which helped. Next week's task is to stay with the metronome on fewer clicks, but I think I'll spare you the day-to-day tribulations  😊