For days I've been trying to capture the whole suite played in one take
from memory, but I learned that this is extremely difficult.
Technically a lot of new discoveries have been made - beginning with
string tension. In college, I would play high tension classical guitar
strings because thats what my teacher used. Tension is governed by the
diameter of the string, and I think the material used measured by how
many pounds of pressure it can sustain. Harder tension strings are
harder to push down with the left hand but "yield" a louder or richer
sound in the end. Ever since my college days 90% of the struggle was in
the left hand - trying to shift form bar chords to far stretching
intervals and quick scales. Because I was always so preoccupied with
the LH I never really thought about focusing on the Right hand besides
making sure my fingernails were pretty long.
Then I switched to low tension strings and wow what a difference!
Because I didn't have to push down so hard, it wouldn't stress me out as
badly and I could dedicate mind share to the right hand pulling the
strings consistently and accurately. This is when I realized how little
I thought about the RH all along. When I got to a difficult part that
was still stressful even with low tension strings, I took the idea
further and detuned the whole guitar using a clip on tuner (that are so
popular and convenient these days), and this made it even easier. Then
as the whole piece from start to finish became easier you tune back up.
Across all the pieces of the suite I did this until I was detuning,
retuning, and then upgrading strings until I found myself back at Very
Hard tension strings again.
Pro tip - If your left hand is working too hard, try switching to low
tension, if its still too hard go ahead and detune high A from 440 down
to 430 and see how that feels.
Then I started playing the whole work all the way thru for the first
time since I began playing the individual pieces in college, and it felt
good. But when the recorder is on its like a whole different league.
Its a weird place between concentrating and not thinking about anything
at all. As soon as a complete thought enters your head, you're going to
crash. I'd usually be doing Ok thinking about people's faces or TV
shows, but as soon as I comment to myself "that was a good landing"
Boom its over, and I'd have to start back over at the beginning.
In the end, I just had to read the music because maintaining that kind
of lucid dreaming is just too .... too maddening. Oh well the goal was
to capture the entire set anyway - unfortunately reading from the music
sounds how it sounds - like someone reading from a piece of paper. I
think I have a new understanding now why some classical players can be
hostile to those who have no idea the degree of preparation and
concentration it takes. And then to top it off you do all this work and
no one even cares about classical music! Oh well.