Category: Practice Stuff

Classical Guitar Performance – Cutting Loose and Going For It

Nicole NealLeave a comment

Cutting loose and going for it. Cutting loose is about letting go and letting the unconscious mind and your muscle memory and all that hard work and practice you’ve been putting in do its thing. It’s about trusting yourself.

What does that even mean when playing guitar? For me at least it means:

  • Resigning conscious control of what it is I’m playing.
  • Being really in the now and present with what I’m playing in exactly that one moment; living for the moment!
  • Not being concerned with the music I have just played and is now past.
  • Not becoming upset with any glitches or imperfections I may have played or thinking how I’d like to play that better and so on.
  • Not judging myself or thinking about what others may think.
  • Not allowing myself to get over-excited when I really nail something spectacularly.
  • Maintaining a calm, confident and centred (not ecstatic, not negative) demeanour when playing; just being.

Here are some ideas to help loosen you up and get you to trust yourself….

Why are you playing guitar? To make yourself and others happy or moved? Or to make yourself feel tense and horrible? Hopefully not the latter or you and I need to have words! Note that I say “make yourself…..” – only you can make yourself feel a certain emotion….Think about that one. And remember why you’re playing in the first place.

Close your eyes when you’re next practicing and really listen it to the sound you’re making. How does it sound? How does it feel to really focus in on your sound in this way? How could focusing in on your sound help you in a performance situation? It gives your conscious mind something to focus on and be occupied with so your unconscious mind and your body can get on with the job in hand (boom boom). It will also mean your sound quality remains top notch.

Practice getting in the zone, and quieting the active, bubbling, bouncing conscious mind and its whirling thoughts. Some daily meditation, or similar mind-body awareness practice can really help with this. I like to do daily Alexander Technique practice with my semi-supine position as it gets mind and body awareness working together – I become aware of both mental and physical tensions and practice noticing and letting go. It’s soooo relaxing…

This one’s for those who are ready to take it to the next level……. Say “bugger it! What is the worst that can happen?!” As special as you are and all that, no one is going to remember your performance in an hours time let alone that you played a B-flat instead of a B (if they even realised!), or that you skipped a section, or that you lost your place because you got excited. I promise you.

Think on it – do you remember any particular moments from the concerts and gigs you’ve been to as an audience member? Maybe a couple, but overall you remember them as fantastic experiences I bet?  People always remember the big picture rather than the little details, so give them a technicolour experience rather than something in muted tones!

And then pull it back a little

And when you’ve got that down pat it’s time to review, revise and perhaps look back a little in the other direction.

Sometimes cutting loose and really going for something may not always be entirely appropriate – Barrios and the idea of high-energy “cutting loose” seems to go well together. With a Bach prelude perhaps the interpretation of “cutting loose” needs to be tempered slightly.

In the act of getting excited and really going for something we may in fact over-egg the pudding and diminish it’s impact. This is then where we need to exercise a little, not restraint – I don’t think our playing should ever feel restrained, do you? – but refinement.

This is where we now work to define the point or range between totally, 100% “safe”, timid and indeed restrained playing and 100% playing by the seat of your pants, super exciting, edgy, risk-taking playing….. I call this the Rogers’ Cutting Loose Scale. Hah hah!

Where do your current repertoire pieces sit on this scale? Is it time to put a rocket up the proverbial backside of some of your playing? Is it time to bring some back down to earth a little?

Ooh before I forget…..

Watch out for a wee announcement tomorrow about an exciting new development for the blog. 🙂

Nicole

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Striking the balance between continuous improvement and good to go

Nicole Neal1 Comment

As guitarists and musicians we must always be working, driving forwards and striving for improvement. Ever tweaking, ever growing, ever changing, ever developing.

Banksia marginata seedling near mature plants,...
Get growing, but don’t be afraid to show your wonderful foliage to the world! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Playing guitar is one of those things, I think, where we’re not really ever static as such. You’re either developing and moving forwards or you’re going in the opposite direction.

This is one of the key reasons why it’s so important to keep on undertaking even the simplest of technical exercises on a frequent basis – scales, Giuliani right hand studies, scales in thirds and sixths, slur exercises and other more specific and tailored exercises depending on the repertoire you’re playing and so on. Doing this keeps you right on top of your game, even for the most advanced of guitarists – it’s like the kung fu master continuing to practice his simple drills daily; it’s all part of the continual improvement process. It’s like one needs to just touch the foundation stone again, ensure it’s there and solid, put a little extra strength into it in order to build the structure a little higher.

And not only that, these exercises add a little something more each time you do them – provided you do them in the right way of course! Really listening very carefully whilst carrying out these kind of exercises is where we get those incremental, barely discernable, improvements in tone quality with the right hand and fluidity of movement with both left and right hands.

These changes do seem almost imperceptible day-to-day when you’re learning. It’s like watching a child grow as a parent – you don’t notice them growing and changing as you’re with them every day, but if you’re away from them for a week or even a few days you can notice the difference, things have changed. And so you may not feel like you’ve made much of a change or an improvement week to week between your lessons, but if you’ve been putting your work in (again in the right way) I can pretty much guarantee you that your teacher does (or they should do!).

Similarly if you feel like you’ve not quite got your fingers around that tricky little element as you’d hoped or gotten your piece sounding as smooth as you’d quite like yet and you don’t feel you’ve improved much, if you’ve been working your teacher will be able to tell the difference, will notice the improvements week to week (well, I can with my students anyway!). Know that doing the work, undertaken with a positive mindset, applied in the right way and as directed by a good teacher will see improvements in your playing and your technique and your musical expression.

At the same time, whilst we’re striving for this continual improvement, on the flip side we must also recognise when a piece is “good enough”. Yes, a piece will continue to change and develop and grow (my own repertoire pieces can change significantly from one month to another!), but it’s also extremely healthy, both physically and mentally, to say “yup, this piece is pretty good right now. I like how it’s sounding. It’s ready for performance/ examination/ recording/ whatever you want to do with it”. Let go of the idea that a piece will ever be “perfect” – there’s no such thing and in fact indicates that you don’t know what standard you want for the piece of music. Hmmm, think about that one!

And just because you’ve performed or recorded a piece in a particular way doesn’t mean that interpretation is set in stone forever more. It’s just a snap shot in time of how you’re feeling musically and how you’re able to technically express that at that point in time. As we grow and learn and develop as musicians and people we may come back to reflect differently on our work (check out Glenn Gould and his recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for example – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach:_The_Goldberg_Variations_(Glenn_Gould_recording)#Reappraisal). Or we may not! Who can tell? That’s part of the fun of being a musician!

So, yes, continually strive for improvement, but also recognise when your work is good to go (or more than that – the excellence that is!) and get out there and share your hard work with your adoring public – or at least the dog, the goldfish and your friends and family 😉