In my essay
"Discover
Your Discomfort", I urged you to become aware
of the sensations of discomfort you experience while
practicing and playing. The reason is very simple. Until
you do, you will not be able to be aware of the sensations
(that is, your mental awareness of the physical feelings
in your body) a good player has, the sensations that
you must have to play well. I call this sensation, or
feeling in the body, "The Incredible Lightness".
I call it this, because once you experience it, and
allow it to grow by Correct Practicing, well, it’s
Incredible. This feeling of lightness is what makes
fast, accurate playing possible. Unfortunately, because
of ignorance of how to practice correctly, far too many
players create for themselves "The Incredible Tightness".
I am going to quote from my book, The Principles of
Correct Practice for Guitar, to bring this point home.
"The relative state of tension
or relaxation in the muscles is one of the hardest things
to be aware of. I once saw a person play with so much
tension in her right shoulder that it was up to her
earlobe! Always trying to be helpful, I pointed this
out to her when she finished. As she let her shoulder
down a few inches to it’s normal position, she
told me I was wrong, she wasn’t tense, but very
relaxed!
The reason she felt this way is because
we very quickly become used to whatever we experience,
and consider it normal. We never question whatever tensions
we experience in learning new skills on the guitar,
and in fact consider it part of the doing of it. And
it often is, but it doesn’t have to continue to
be that strenuous. We can learn to do the movements
with less effort.
However, when we first try something,
it is often not possible to do it without a lot of excess
tension. The mistake is, we assume that the tension
is inevitable, and never realize we can get to a point
where we can get the result we want without all the
huffing, puffing and straining. Often, more stretch
or muscle development is required, which will come with
a correct approach.
Of course, as we continue to try the
new skill, and assume the effort we feel must be that
way, it becomes ingrained into our approach, and gets
worse. So we have a vicious circle, that leads to frustration
and bad playing. So extra tension in the muscles, which
every advanced player knows is the number one cause
of playing difficulty, becomes a blind spot for us.
Usually we are only aware of the result of the tension,
which is that mistake we just made. Often it happens
we are not even aware of that, because we start to filter
out those unpleasant reminders of our troubles.
As you will see shortly, the correct
approach to dealing with "mistakes" caused
by tension, is to repeat the movement extremely slowly,
with a great focus on keeping all muscles relaxed. With
each repetition, the muscles learn the relaxed way of
moving to produce the result you want. "
So you see, it is lack of understanding
of how the body/mind functions, and lack of honest attention
while practicing, that gets us in to trouble. You must
start to observe your own "Tightness", and
replace it with "Lightness", then you will
see your level as a player change upward, what I call
Vertical Growth. Since many players have no idea what
this lightness feels like, here is a very simple way
to connect with it. You must then begin to cultivate
this feeling in actual playing. Believe me, it feels
good! In fact, when you see a good player "making
it look easy", it’s because it is easy, when
you have the "Incredible Lightness".
Let’s discover "The Light
Finger"
The first step in finding "The
Incredible Lightness" is to discover The Light
Finger. The Light Finger is the completely relaxed finger,
brought to the string, and touching the string, with
only the weight of the finger. It does not press the
string down until told to do so. To discover the sensation
of the Light Finger, do this:
1. Raise your arms in front of you,
without the guitar, and take hold of the index finger
of your left hand with the thumb and index finger of
your right hand. Completely relax the left index, and
wiggle it around with your right hand. This is the Light
Finger.
2. Touch the palm of your right hand
with your left index. Raise the left index two inches
from the palm. Now let it drop by it’s own weight
back to your palm, touching it very lightly, with no
pressure. This is how the finger feels when it first
touches the string.
3. Now hold the guitar, paying attention
to the being comfortable and relaxed throughout the
body, and slowly raise your relaxed left arm up to the
neck, bringing the hand up so that the index finger
is lined up with the ninth fret. Have your fingers in
a relaxed curl over the 6th string. Allow your Light,
relaxed middle finger to fall to the 6th string, behind
the 10th fret, so that it touches the string, but applies
no pressure. Look at the string under your finger, and
see the distance between the string and the fingerboard.
Make sure the string does not get move at all down toward
the fret.
4. Raise your finger an inch, and
then bring it back to touch the string again in the
same way. Do this over and over, touching the string
with the Light Finger, bringing it away, and touching
it again. This is called Finger Flapping. Do this a
few times with each finger every day. Make sure you
keep the inactive fingers as relaxed as possible while
touching the string with the active finger. This will
get you used to the feeling, and over time, very sensitive
to the feeling of complete relaxation.
This light feeling is how your fingers
will be when they first touch the string to play a note,
and it is the feeling they will return to when they
release from a note. It enables them to be prepared
for their next job. Many people never have this light
feeling, and play with tense fingers all the time, and
their playing suffers greatly because of it. This exercise
is what I call a Foundation Exercise, one that should
be done regularly, no matter how long you have been
playing. It will continually act to increase your awareness
of the correct and necessary sensations you must have
in order to play well. Learning how to bring this feeling
in to all playing situations is often a tricky matter,
and there is much else to know, but we have to start
somewhere!
Now I know I haven’t mentioned
speed yet, and here is why. Speed, or the ability to
execute movements rapidly and accurately, is simply
the result of continuous correct practice that promotes
"The Incredible Lightness". If you are creating
"The Incredible Tightness" when you practice,
you will suffer because of it. Think of walking and
running. Does a little kid have to practice running?
No, it just happens after balance is mastered, and the
ability to place one foot in front of the other, and
have all the body parts work together to keep the movement
going. After the two year old gets that down, don’t
worry, he’ll be running!
In closing, let me say that all the
preceding is founded upon the first two Principles of
Correct Practice. I will state them pretty formally,
and they apply to all instruments.
Principle of Correct Practice #1:
Your aware, thinking mind is your primary practice tool.
Principle of Correct Practice #2:
Control of the fingers is developed by infusing conscious
awareness into the muscles through the mechanism of
attention while practicing.
Remember, as in all things in life,
you get out of it what you put in to it (and believe
me, it makes me feel pretty old to hear myself saying
that, but it’s the truth.) So read this over and
over, and do the exercise, and apply these understandings
to your practice. Good Luck!
