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  😊

Which online sites are most useful for learning student pieces?

Apart from actually listening to your guitar teacher, and checking out performances by all and sundry on Youtube, where else can we go to find out how to manage fingering, determine tempo and figure out how to interpret a piece of music?   Yes, I know that hopefully we are going to end up with our own interpretation, but along the way it's helpful to see what others have done and what sounds good.  These days we have a wealth of online resources, but with that cornucopia of possibilities comes a downside - with no 'expert' moderating what gets uploaded, we could be diligently learning to play an idiosyncratic version, or worse,  duplicating all sorts of errors.  For instance, I learned a renaissance piece, happily emulating multiple student versions.   My subsequent lack of tempo control was pointed out quite vividly by my guitar teacher as he demonstrated the impossibility of 'conducting' my version due to its widely varying tempo.  I went back later to check the online 'student' videos and discovered there wasn't a single version (at least among the half dozen or so I reviewed) that kept to a solid tempo.  Ugh.   Not that online videos aren't useful, but it does mean we have to be somewhat circumspect when using an uncurated upload as a model.

So how, not being experts, do we assess what we are seeing and hearing?    I guess the easiest way is to check the credibility of the musician -  searching YouTube reveals a host of respected names.    For a particular artist you can look for a YT (or Vimeo) channel- particularly good resources include Brad Werner,  Kevin Gallagher, Edson Lopes,  Per-Olov Kindgren, Daniel Nistico,  Eliot Fisk, Zane Forshee and Strings By Mail sponsored artists Gohar Vardanyan, Matt Palmer, Raphaella Smits,  and Irene Gomez.  A new site likely to be useful for a lot of student pieces is guitaretudes.com (sign up required - but you can check out multiple clips posted on the Instagram app).  Another site to try is Delcamp (free sign up) where you can find some beautiful versions of non-copyrighted music posted by members of the forum.   ITunes or CDBaby may be other options for nice renditions, and at ~ 99c for the complete version, hardly likely to break the bank.    So far as other upload sites go, such as Soundcloud, Box (free subscription required) and Vimeo,  you are on your own!

So as I'm going to be learning the well-known Study in Bm by Fernando Sor, I thought I'd go web-hunting to see what is available. As this is (apparently) part of every student's repertoire, I thought there might be some instruction  available, but perhaps because it's so popular, reputable instruction seems to be only by subscription - although there is a Strings by Mail "lessonette" by Gohar Vardanian.   For performances though, there are a lot of great options, my current favorite being by Kevin Gallagher, not to mention   Julian Bream...  Now if only there were a way to download those versions into my guitar....

Less well-known pieces (like another piece I will be learning for a while - Pagina de Radio by Maximo Diego Pujol) are less easy to come by.  The version I'm listening to currently is on Delcamp  Even though I don't know who is playing it...- has a lot of good feedback (from people I know who can play) so it works for me 😊

How does "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" relate to learning guitar?

I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" decades ago (ugh) but I still remember the take-home message, which is that anything (even the art of motorcycle repair) can be understood and conquered if you look at it patiently, carefully, and in sufficient detail (I guess that's where the 'Zen' comes in). Which is something I might have done well to remember and apply to learning guitar___But did I mention I'm impatient?  Like to get things finished? Preferably yesterday?  Strange to say, this attitude doesn't seem to be working right now.   Time for a little introspection - there are a lot of skills (from sports to fly fishing) where initially you can charge right ahead and make good progress, and then you reach a plateau where however much you practice it doesn't seem to get any better.  I think I've reached this stage.  Although I can kind of play my pieces, they often fall apart in the same places and suffer from being 'hit or miss'. Often it takes 3 or 4 run-throughs before I finally make it. That's not 3 or 4 run throughs once.  It's each and every time I pick up the guitar.   

The solution, my long-suffering guitar teacher has told me (maybe a couple thousand times) is to work on small parts slowly.  I understand this.  And I do start slowly, walking through challenging sections  before speeding them up again.  Sometimes this works (especially if I don't charge right ahead with the 'fast' until I've done a LOT of 'slow'), but sometimes it doesn't.  Currently it seems more often than not.  What gives?

Perhaps I'm not looking at things in sufficient detail and the slow version is a 'fudge' that doesn't work when sped up.  It seems it's time for the 'Zen' approach.  In other words SUPER SLOW - so slow it doesn't resemble music any more. So slow that each individual finger movement (on both hands) can be analyzed in detail.  Does that finger need to hold on? Can it be released? When? Which finger(s) need to be prepared first for a difficult shift?  What sequence should the fingers go down in?

Oh man, this is tedious!  But wait - going super slow I just figured out how to stop that squeak (turns out I can release that single finger a little early, pick it up and place it back on the squeaky string while another finger holds an instant then slides on the nylon string.    And the gymnastics required for preparing that next note while holding the previous one? I can actually release a finger I had been needlessly holding, which gives me a little more freedom of movement.  And for that interval I keep missing, it turns out my hand is not moving back into position fast enough so I'm trying to fret it from an awkward position.  Far from being tedious, this super-slow stuff is engaging  -  a series of little puzzles to solve, and best of all, resulting in solutions!    Having figured out the solutions of course, the next step is to do lots of (regular) slow practice until the new movements stick in muscle memory. Only then do I get to see if I will actually start improving again.  I can't wait! (but I will.... 😉 )

Is it good to get feedback from more than one source?

 Been a while since I posted because I've been in the UK. This is the 8th time I got to pre-board on British Airways courtesy of my guitar....  I've almost, but not quite, forgiven them for the 23 hours and 20 minute delay on the outbound flight, on account of their excellent treatment of people traveling with musical instruments. Doesn't help much with the 8 hour plane ride though.  After I’ve exhausted the possibility of the on-board meal (is it always chicken or pasta?), a movie and am sick and tired of reading my phone, I got to thinking about the value of having more than one guitar teacher in the quest to become a better musician. It’s common to hear from those who have been learning for many years that they have had a number of teachers and learned different things from each of them. Of course I haven't been at it long enough to have had multiple teachers, in fact (except for a few lessons during the summer break), I’ve only had one teacher ( In case he’s reading this, he’s the best!)😁  And what I'm really talking about is getting feedback from more than one (knowledgeable) source.

 In my case I subscribe to the online lesson site (classicalguitarcorner.com) and have received occasional feedback from an online teacher on pieces I’m learning. What’s surprising to me is how teachers seem to unerringly pick on the same thing.  How can that possibly be that they all hear the same 'something'  which totally escapes my ears?    (I guess that's a good thing, because if they all heard different things the potential for things to be corrected would be enormous!)  Apparently I can happily ignore an excellent piece of advice from my guitar teacher until a second person tells me exactly the same thing.  It's not that I don't hear it the first (second, third) time I'm told, it just doesn't get prioritized until there is reinforcement from another source. I mean there are so many other things I need to work on that I have trouble figuring out what is most important.  In some respects this reminds me of my students - they know a phenomenal amount but often are not able to figure out what's the key thing that matters, and which stuff can safely be ignored.   So that's reason #1.  Prioritizing things to work on. (Especially as my guitar teacher has developed an annoying habit recently of asking me to decide what's needed instead of straight-out telling me.  I mean, what does he think I am, a musician???)

As for reason #2 - seeing personal preferences as to what's important to learn at each stage is useful.   I first learned about analyzing music for different "voices" from the online site, and was also introduced to bass stopping,  adding vibrato and playing in different positions for musical reasons.  No substitute for a real teacher though....

However that's about it for my reasons... - feel free to comment!   Before jet lag gets the better of me, I'll post the latest version of this mini piece that got almost identical feedback on things that need fixing.  (feel free to do your own critique... but keep it to yourself - I've already heard it twice!!!) 

Some weeks I need the reset button...

Anyone who has soldiered their way through a few of my posts probably already knows that I need some tangible evidence that I'm making progress ( and we will not discuss here the difference between 'need' and 'want').  So over the last few months I've wavered between wanting to take community college music courses (somehow fitting them in with my actual salary-paying job), getting my guitar teacher to be more demanding so that I work on pieces that will move me forward (even if I don't particularly like them), and taking an unofficial "certificate" course offered through Simon Powis' online Classical Guitar Corner site.    Or a combination.   I finally resolved this issue a few weeks ago with the help of my guitar teacher, deciding that I will work towards a certificate at a fairly sedate pace, while my guitar teacher will help with priorities (and obligingly be demanding too😂) It's been a few weeks... does this need tweaking? In other words, why am I exhibiting classic "displacement behavior"? (In this case watching reruns of this months' La Vuelta, the Spanish 3-week bicycle race. No I don't cycle, but watching cycle-racing is addictive. You should try it!)

Analysis is called for:
So here's what I have on my list to practice...

• Learn 3 new pieces for the certificate - I started on Carcassi 7.
• Performance practice (run through) Maria Luisa and Prelude
• 5 sets of exercises. Each has multiple new skills to learn.  
• Sight reading
• Rhythm reading (this was an added bonus from my guitar teacher - I suspect it's impossible but I've been wrong before)
• My 'want to learn' piece (Promise by Yvonne Bloor)
• Duet stuff
• Trio stuff

Aha!   I'm spending most of my time on the exercises (which are challenging), the Carcassi (and La Vuelta 😉 ).  Everything else I only fit in occasionally. As a result I feel like I'm falling short, particularly with the sight/rhythm reading, one of my goals for this year. Plus the "want to learn' piece I chose may be a bit much on top of everything else.    Fortunately the cycling will be done tomorrow.... 

(New plan.  Triage! (at least until priorities change).  Use the timer!

• Carcassi 7 (15 min increments)
• Exercises. (<45 min)
• Sight reading (15 min)
• Rhythm reading  (15 min)
• Performance practice (run through) Maria Luisa and Prelude (once)
• Fun! (unlimited...)