Taking Time

It's funny how we are aware that some things are important when playing guitar, yet fail to implement them until they rise to the top of the priority pile...  this week the need to "take time" was that thing for me.  Of course I didn't realize it was going to be that thing, this week...  Coincidentally I was listening to Matt Palmer's  approach to Torroba's Andante,  and I just had to marvel at his masterful timing resulting in a gloriously unhurried approach.  Not that I thought it had relevance to my personal playing odyssey until I asked my GT why I was repeatedly failing to nail all dynamics I wanted in the De Visee Prelude (not to mention making stupid little mistakes).  I asked the question really hoping that it would be something I could change and instantly fix (could it be my left hand thumb yet again?) Nope - it was all about the timing.  My GT pointed out that I needed to take time: time to phrase it correctly, time to relax, time to avoid rushing to the next phrase (and under no circumstances to  -hateful word -'grab').  Each time I felt the need to rush to the next part I tensed up, making it infinitely more likely I would make a mistake and/or fail to execute the dynamics I could hear in my head.

So this week's practice is to actively work on relaxing into the phrasing...  So here's a question - I wonder if it is possible to meditate while playing the guitar???

Learning to relax: why is it so hard?

I have absolutely no problem relaxing - just sit me down on the sofa with a glass of wine and I guarantee I'll be so relaxed I might even fall asleep.   However put me in charge of a guitar and ask me to play it, while remaining relaxed, and I have absolutely no idea how to do it.  We all get tense when we are doing something unfamiliar, but you would think after a few thousand tries I might have figured this out by now.  No such luck.

I’ve got lots of excuses – lack of flexibility so I need pressure required to keep my fingers in place, unfamiliar hand/arm positions, and of course, how much does it matter anyway?
But maybe the biggest reason is I don’t know what it feels like to truly relax, I pretty much always play tense. However recently while working on some Carlevaro octave shifting exercises I managed to relax on my way up the fretboard (aided and abetted by gravity).  I actually experienced what relaxing my left hand feels like. Wow! My arm/hand movement was much easier and more fluid.  

However incorporating this into general playing is still not easy.  Perhaps it's because I have always assumed that relaxing was an absence... ie "don't tense up"!   Then while reading Daniel Nistico's email newsletter, I noticed that he talks about actively relaxing - in other words it's something you actually have to make an effort to do! This may seem like semantics, but there seems to be a big difference between trying NOT to tense up vs. trying TO relax  - in fact it was my guitar teacher telling me to actively relax various fingers that resulted in me experiencing 'that relaxing feeling'.  As a first step to incorporating this into my playing, whenever I'm having difficulty I'm stopping what I'm doing to see if I have too much tension and can manage to relax something. Perhaps not surprisingly it often works.

Slow practice: so that's why it isn't working!

I'm messing up again.   Even though I can play it at home, (most of the time) I'm not managing to play it for my guitar teacher.   And then comes the instruction ... "try playing it more slowly" -  I can almost predict when.  But at home, I often do play it more slowly in an effort to make it more consistent, it's just not helping much with the faster playing - why not?

I think I may have just come across the answer in Kevin Gallagher's excellent blog at http://www.guitar69.com/   His latest post is short, to the point and may have hit the nail on the head.   He says you have not just to go slowly, but also to do things differently while you've got all that time, with a view to changing how you play it fast.  What in particular does he recommend?  You should be thinking ahead - visualizing, and even feeling how the upcoming notes are going to look and sound while you are still playing the previous ones.  As this is something I've been unable to figure out how to incorporate into my own playing it feels like it might be key. Also consciously working on playing in a relaxed manner - essential for playing faster.  

So it's back to the drawing board for another round of slow playing - this time with something to aim for 😊