The Work Diary

Waltz #3 is significantly harder than #2 and even gave me wrist injury after practicing it every day.  I took a break for 3 days, and when I came back I started a new technique that I call the "telephone technique".  Instead of trying to crush the strings into the neck to guarantee at least some kind of sound would come out of the correct fret, I started "leaning" into them at a upward angle which really needs the shoulder and elbow to get involved in order to apply enough pressure.  I call it the Telephone because instead of thinking that your hand and fingertips push down the strings, I imagine my fingers like telephone poles holding the strings up in the air against the neck - and this image is just much less physically charged than squeezing as hard as possible and holding on for dear life.  Because waltz #3 is so fast whenever I'd get stressed I'd always go back to grabbing at strings because its what has worked for 15 years but thats when my wrist would start hurting again.  The downside is that you have to be way more accurate because if you don't hit the string dead on the fingertip, you're not going to send enough pressure to get a clear tone - must a muffled buzz or even a muted thump.  

This is where the next break thru happened - over time my left hand fingertips had become hard and callused with dead skin that even has built in horizontal impressions where the strings go.  This is troublesome however when you have an awkward or strange fingering and the indentation can make the string glance off the sweet spot.  But then I figured, if I'm not applying as much pressure as before, maybe I don't need calluses because its the dead skin that protects your pain receptors and allows you to practice longer.  I eliminated the calluses, and it doesn't feel bad at all because I'm not squeezing like crazy anymore and instantly I became 1,000% more accurate.

Then serendipitously because my left hand is so much less stressed out grasping at strings and crushing bar chords, my right hand also became much more relaxed and I'm flicking strings way faster all of a sudden.  Overall volume is lower, but I think I can develop that back up. 

And finally, I was having trouble creating the optimal angles with my elbow and shoulder to access only the needed amount of pressure for this Telephone technique until I actually tried sitting in the classical style posture - and much to my surprise it really helped. 

Have you ever seen anyone sit this way playing guitar?  This is the way my teacher in college would have us sit, and I just never liked it because I'd always have my neck cocked to the left for long periods of time - plus it just looks ridiculous.  Anyway, sitting this way really gave my left arm the best scooping shape to allow my fingers to "lift up" into those strings. 

Take aways

 - Don't crush the strings in the left hand, "lift" them up into the fretboard

 - If you're not crushing the strings, you don't need hardened calluses on your fingertips

 - A relaxed left hand creates a relaxed and faster right hand

 - The classical posture is actually good for something

Ishida (Walz #2 Andreina)

I've been playing these ones for so long that I didn't really closely follow the John Williams versions, but I attached them for future comparison.  

Sor 1

Its hard to take your time with this one because its so relentless with its activity.  This one I aimed for absolutely no missed notes and consciously trying to spread out the changes in volume as evenly as possibly across a rise or fall in the music.  Like Sor 5, I tried to eliminate unintended notes caused by lifting your fingers from the fretted strings.  Its the worst especially at quiet parts, but the trick I use is sliding slightly up or down the string to kinda make the lifting motion more horizontal instead of lifting directly from the string.  But if you do it too hard on a bass string you can make a "zippery" kind of sound because of the wound / coiled nature of the bass strings - its easier on the treble strings because they're solid plastic.

Sor 5

This one is pretty melodically uncomplicated and the chords are pretty easy, but because its so slow and there are so many barre chords throughout you're often exposed if your nail grazes a string causing a buzz or click or if you lift up a fret too suddenly and activate the string accidentally just by lifting off it.  Recording is tough because as your LH gets fatigued from practicing the barre chords you become even more exposed!  Then as you get more and more frustrated your hands get cold which for some reasons make the strings more sticky so lifting away has a higher chance of creating a wrong note!

Ishida

This one is deceptively difficult to record.  I used to play this one maybe 5 years ago, and you could just play the movements back and forth as they feed into eachother with no real direction - conveniently useful as background music.  But when recording it becomes extremely stressful working hard not to distract yourself in terms of where you are in the music because it repeats so many times!  I must have recorded it maybe 10 times where all the sections were good until the final repeat and I'd just realize to myself "wow this one could be the one..."  Klunk - aaaaaaand its gone.  This recording isn't perfect either, and its immensely frustrating how a missed string on a super easy part will make me have to go all the way back to the beginning.  I am getting better at recording though.  I actually was having more success when not even thinking about what I'm doing - the minute I start to wonder what chord comes next or thinking maybe I should play a little quicker or slow down here or there I would absolutely make a mistake.  When I just let my mind wander even the most difficult parts go much more smoothly!   This one is also 6 minutes long, so congratulate yourself if you make it thru the whole thing.

Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer who wrote orchestral, chamber, and works for solo instruments - he was great because he synthesized Brazilian folk music with European classical forms.  This one is a Gavot which was a French folk dance that became popular during the Baroque period, which also means gavots were also composed by none other than JS Bach!  So even though Bach would apply his genius to a simple dance form - the roots are still in folk music.  I think its becoming more and more clear that folk music is going to become my expertise maybe on both classical and acoustic guitar.  Although I do want to try making dance music...  Anyway, Norbert Kraft is a monster, and his CD effortlessly navigates all of Villa Lobos' most famous guitar pieces.  

Ishida

So this piece is hard as hell because of all the trills, and Casals even adds more than are included in my guitar sheet music, but oh well lets go for it.  Trills are really damn hard because to do one you usually have to: hold down one string, then "gently" close the note directly above it, and then "swiftly" pull off the string at an angle so it activates the note below - and then do it a second time really fast.  The Baroque trill is always 2 pulls, so it sounds like "Dee da dee da".  Its even harder when the other two LH fingers are holding down two other strings, so you have 3 fingers firmly closing 3 notes whilst your last finger (usually the wimpy pinky dammit) has to do this gentle / swift thing!  It makes your forearm burn!  I do trill warm ups every day now, and I'd honestly rather do bicep curls than trills because your whole arm becomes fatigued, but I'm definitely stronger compared to a few weeks ago.  Its schizophrenic because the quality of a trill is supposed to be light and ornamental but the execution actually requires a lot of strength in the LH - if you squeeze too hard, you might hit the neighboring strings on accident and that really screws up the whole momentum of the piece.

So Pablo Casals was a Spanish cellist who really is the main reason Bach's Cello Suites are famous today.  There are so many versions that I've heard on YouTube, but I went with Casals again because his version is so fast and soo...under stress!  The other versions are usually slower and...pretentious sounding?  ...at least compared to Pablo Casals.  This could be because the Allemande is originally a German dance that reached its popular height during the 17th century and is almost always the 2nd movement of a dance suite.  Historians use words like "serious" and "grave" to describe both the music and the dance, so I guess that could result in a slower tempo in hopes of triggering emotions like solemnity, heaviness, and just again making a listener sit thru the tired sentiment of profound loftiness that classical music should have.  But what the hell it used to be a dance, and I like Casals' version best.  

Before really practicing this one I used to hate repeats because Arrrgh you just made it to the finish line and now you have to go all the way back to the beginning and risk screwing something up?  Plus the 2nd time thru is always what people remember because it pretty much replaces what might have been a perfect A+!  But now I like repeats a lot because rehearsing this one was so difficult and there was always something that just wasn't nailed completely, and the repeat becomes your second chance.  It isn't always better the second time, but that chance at redemption is a funny kind of motivation where you're distracted in real time after you've made a mistake.  For a few seconds your mind is preoccupied with both the the recent past and fast approaching future and you're not at all thinking about the present.

Ishida

For those of you who've heard me plink this one out casually for years, well I finally hammered out a lot of the impossible parts of this piece.  I mean its still impossibly hard, but wow it took me a long time.  This one just has to be fast because its just a folk song that was transcribed for guitar, so I mean you can learn the notes and play it slow but its just not the same.  Its loaded with ridiculous barre chords and slurs and varying tempos per the goddamn Adam Holzman recording I've listened to for 10 years...more than that wow 15 years. 

Also it was a major hurdle just keeping the hands independent yet interdependent!  What a guitar paradox??  Your hands influence each other, so if your right hand wants to play fast, your left hand will tend to squeeze harder which means slower movement and less accuracy - which then makes your right hand want to go faster to compensate which then makes your LH squeeze harder aaaaand it just gets worse and worse.  So you have to keep your RH light and loose while keeping your LH firm (but not tense) but also ready to completely empty when it comes to the fast parts. 

I'm still not happy with some of the buzzed notes, but of 5 sections consisting of 2 repeats there were only 3 noticeable ones that I've smoothed out from a 90% chance of buzz to maybe 30 or 40%.... anyway.  I played the other 3 walz in college but this mother fucker was always the most ridiculous and impossible one and ironically its the most fun / light / gay sounding (as in gaiety) of the bunch.  So even though its supposed to be a fun dance - its actually a brutal dictator that will turn your hands against each other!!

Ishida

This time I followed the John Williams version and really tried to eliminate the finger feedback - lifting up, rubbing, and nail clicking.