Playing lightly is perhaps a necessity for playing "well" - and I've tried various techniques to ease up on the pressure with limited degrees of success. Playing buzz scales beforehand, or playing through pieces so lightly that they buzz is one method, but that has limited applicability when you have to apply a certain amount of pressure or your fingers sli___ide back together. What needs to happen is for the pressure to release as soon as it isn't needed. But if you're me, once you apply the pressure, it tends to stay on. This leads to a merciless build up of tension on progressing through a piece until moving at all is a major challenge. And then there's the additional problem of tensing up just because there is something challenging ahead - a fast shift, or a challenging stretch for instance - totally a recipe for not making it!
Why am I thinking about this now? This semester I have a part in the orchestra that is a simple one line melody. No problem, right? Wrong! It's very slow and very exposed, IOW a messed up note will be all too noticeable. Compounded by a major shift 2 notes in. Guess who tenses up and finds a straightforward shift difficult??
So I figured there is a need to be able to relax on demand. Easier said than done, of course and not something that seems to be taught as a separate skill. Once relaxed, the shift is easy, moving is easy, in fact the whole process of playing is much easier, so why can't I do it? Probably because I don't actually know how to 'turn on' relaxation. I've tried thinking about it beforehand but somehow it always gets lost in the playing of the music, thinking ahead etc, so I obviously need to slow it down. Not the whole thing, but precisely where I need to be thinking about relaxing. So tonight I'm going to experiment with taking that piece and adding a beat before every shift with the goal of using that time to make my hand relax. Maybe once I get that, I will be able to progress to relaxing without having 'thinking time'. We shall see!
I spent a few months mucking around on a steel string guitar before going over to the dark side (classical) a few years ago, and when learning to switch between chords I found that the technique taught at JustinGuitar called "one minute chord switch" was surprisingly successful. It involves switching back and forth between 2 chords for (guess what?) one minute. Somewhere around the 40 second mark the fingers seem to get in the groove and the switch becomes much easier (and faster). I hadn't had reason to think about this for quite a while - however in our latest orchestra part I've been struggling to switch between a chord on 4th, followed immediately by an awkward chord at 1st and then a barre chord on the 10th fret with only an eighth note in between, Either one chord or the other was muffled or I just didn't get there in time. Then I remembered the one minute technique, and after only a couple of "minutes" of practice I'm much sooo... much closer. Can't say I'm quite there yet, but it doesn't seem so impossible as it did a week ago. Try it and see if it works for you!
The only time I have ever visualized the fretboard is when trying to fall asleep - doing 6-string scales in your head is much better than counting sheep! Even though it's my understanding that visualization is an important part of memorization for guitarists (and other musicians), it's not something that I've ever thought I could do. Sometimes I can't even remember how to start a piece until I pick up the guitar, and then my fingers do that muscle memory thing (AKA context-dependent memory).
However, I recently started to work on a piece for orchestra (see below) - all single line melody but in just about every position on the fretboard between 2nd and 14th, the way our conductor has it arranged. I concluded I would actually have to learn the piece (as opposed reading along after familiarizing myself with it beforehand) because of all the shifts (for more info on shifting, check out Zane's excellent lesson here!).
So after I replaced the strings on my guitar - again - (what is it with those handmade strings still not staying in tune 10 days later??), instead of torturing myself with the out-of-tune guitar I was idly perusing the sheet music for the orchestra piece. And I found myself visualizing where it would be played on the fretboard. I don't know if it it's because it's a single, uncomplicated melody line, or because I've spent a lot of time trying to fall asleep with scales recently (!) but it didn't seem nearly as impossible as it has the few other times I've tried, and failed, to do this. Of course I was just doing what I do with the scales, figuring out the positions of the notes, ignoring the right hand and left hand fingering. But If I have those it wouldn't be a large step to repeating the process without looking at the music.
And maybe that's the key - make it super-simple to start with then add what you need later - maybe the reason I've not been able to do it is because I've been trying to do too much at one time - pieces that are too hard, memorizing everything at once. Instead maybe it needs to be digested in small chunks. It could in fact be a stepwise process - I might need a lot of steps, but not so many compared with a hundred partially correct repetitions perhaps!
So this is my draft plan for the orchestra piece this week (maybe in sections, not the whole thing at once).
1. With Guitar... ( I did this already, so will be starting on #2)
- Work out where to play it on the guitar with the score and mark in positions and fingerings
- Read it through with the guitar until it's "familiar"
2. Without Guitar...
- Read score trying to remember positions on fretboard.
- Remove score and visualize notes and positions.
3. With Guitar
- Read score playing silently with LH trying to remember, i.e. adding kinesthetic memory to the visual memory in 1.
- Remove guitar and visualize playing the piece with the left hand, remove score and repeat.
4. With Guitar
- Try playing piece from memory. Work our RH fingering/issues. Mark them on the score.
- Remove guitar and visualize playing piece both hands using score.
5. Visualize piece - no guitar, no score.
I'm a little hazy on the steps that might be needed, but have a suspicion I might need all of these and then some ;) I'll update when I've had some practice at it, and believe me, I will be practicing because we have to rehearse it next week!
