Small is beautiful

I might have been talking about my new (to me) romantic guitar, but I'm not.   Instead, more on practicing.  It's so easy for frustration to set in when learning something new.  Try it, try it again.  Almost get it.... Nope it's gone again.   Seems to be the story of my life right now. It's not like I'm not practicing, though admittedly having a furry friend has cut into guitar time somewhat.  So I started thinking about the way I practice. My morning routine involves working through a list of technical exercises as a warm up, taking the dog for a walk,  eating a quick breakfast, then back to the guitar for a bit before heading out to work.  Invariably the dog is nosing at the guitar before I finish the technical exercises and the shorter days mean I have less and less time to practice after the walk.  At least that is my excuse for the fact that I'm still making the same mistakes and having the same problems today that I was having at the beginning of the week.  Each day I start, I fumble, I work at it until it comes right, then move onto the next thing.  And then I realized that I am so focused on getting through everything that I am not taking the time to properly practice things that are not working.

So today I did something different: I worked on only small sections of the technical stuff (but stayed with them a lot longer).  I picked only one or 2 measures of pieces to work on and forced myself to think about them, check the sheet music, then play them in slow motion to see why I was still making mistakes.  What happened? For one of the measures I was working on I ended up changing position and fingering allow me to fret a part I've been having problems with.   And in the shifting exercise I've been struggling with, I noticed that my hand snugs up against the guitar neck much better when shifting relaxed than shifting tense.  Huh? Have to explore this more, but maybe it will help me a) find the notes at the other end of the shift and b) recognize if my hand is relaxed or not (believe it or not, unless I stop and think I really can't tell).

Moral of the story?  make it small and take it slowly,...

It pays to revisit old pieces sometimes...

I have been struggling with some new skills recently.  The first?  More comprehensive damping of strings - starting with identifying where they need to be damped, figuring out which hand is available to do the damping, and then finally trying to choreograph it while actually playing the notes!  This is still a work in progress.  At least I fondly hope and anticipate there will be some progress at some point...   Tapping your head and rubbing your tummy is child's play by comparison.  (Oh wait, that is child's play 😉).  The second is to shift around the fretboard without adding a whole boatload of tension.  I seem to have failed to grasp the concept that relaxing during the shift is a much better way of shifting than tightening up.  Seems obvious in retrospect doesn't it? Again - working on it.  Don't hold your breath.

While struggling with these apparently immovable obstacles, I've been more than a little frustrated.  Throwing balls for the puppy has become a too-attractive substitute.    However I started to relearn an old piece, the beautiful "Un Dia de Noviembre" by Leo Brouwer.   I've heard that it's difficult to incorporate improved technique into a piece where there is old muscle memory - and indeed if I'm not concentrating - off I go automatically again.    However there are some rewards as well as challenges to applying new technique to old pieces. For instance in the Brouwer second half I could never actually play all the notes with the barre, but now I can - and in that same section the previously- fudged slurs show hope that they will emerge nice and clean.  If pushed, I can now play the piece in time with a metronome rather than adding in technique-related pauses, and my improved knowledge of the fretboard means that reading the notes has not been a major hurdle in itself.  And for the rhythmically challenged (ie me) I was able to check the tricky timing by inputting it into Musescore.  Now just need to practice
I like this version - low key and doesn't rush...

So although the major challenges of the day remain unconquered, there have been small successes... I'll take what I can get, and keep working on it.

OK done! What's next?

When I get focused - everything else goes out the window (metaphorically speaking).  I was determined to get the videos submitted for the certificate, and as the opening date for submissions approached, it seemed I was doing nothing else guitar wise apart from trying to get to a point where I could play all the pieces in a row without too many errors.   It worked - I submitted the videos at the weekend, breathed a big sigh of relief, and ... well  no I haven't got straight onto all those other projects that got put on hold after all.  Instead in the last few days I've indulged myself by learning fragment of a simple but beautiful JS Bach piece (BWV 1056) arranged by Edson Lopes.    Working for the certificate really demonstrated to me the stages a piece goes through in development - there's the initial "learn the notes" stage where you can kinda play it through with the music.  Then there's the memorization stage - where dynamics and phrasing is being added but mostly just trying to get a picture in my head to follow.  Then there is the recapitulation stage after I get some feedback from my GT - this can cycle a number of times - and finally there is the practice performance, where eventually I hope to be able to pick up the guitar and play it through cold - perhaps not at its best but still take a decent shot at it.   So this piece is at the "I just memorized it" stage - it takes multiple attempts to get through it without forgetting the next bit or misplacing a bass note, and as yet there's precious little in the way of organization.  Stay tuned for the "after input' stage! 😂

And when I feel like concentrating again - maybe another Bach piece now I seem to be in that headspace - Prelude #1 is on the list for the next certificate (perhaps be ready next year) so I might start work on that.  Though I suspect it is going to take me quite a long time to get that one under my fingers!