Here is a video I just recorded of Mallorca, one of my favorite pieces by Albéniz. I think it is one of the guitar repertoire’s most beautiful and evocative pieces, despite the fact that it… More
Active Practice Techniques to Improve Tremolo, Part 2
Reduction
Playing through the “skeleton” of a tremolo piece helps reduce it in your mind’s ear to the essentials of what is happening on the musical front. Because we spend so much time developing the fluidity, clarity, speed, and all that goes into a beautiful tremolo technique, often our attention is so myopically focused on the minutiae of technique that we ignore the larger question of what a tremolo piece is trying to achieve musically.
There are various ways to mentally condense the way you perceive your pieces to make them seem less daunting. The most tried and true method is to play through them well hundreds of times. But because it takes time to develop the endurance and speed to perform a tremolo piece at tempo comfortably, play through them instead in an abbreviated way, as illustrated below, at faster tempos:
Another method, which I have grown to like despite the substandard sonic quality, was recommended by guitarist Philip Hii in his insightful book, Art of Virtuosity. In this method, shown below, ami act as one and pluck at the same time. Think of plucking a chord, but on one string. It won’t sound pretty, but in addition to focusing your attention on the bigger picture, by putting all of your fingers down at once you discover what position will give you access to all the strings in the most efficient way.
For more active practice techniques, check out: Mastering Tremolo
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DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearlyFrom the Archives: Miracle Right Hand Warm Up Sequence
Here is a warm up sequence that I used to do every morning. It is useful for building right hand endurance, finger alternation, speed, pulse, rhythm, and legato. The idea behind it is simple. Set the metronome to a very slow beat, somewhere (50-70). Throughout the whole sequence, the beat remains constant but with very slight and precise increments we increase the number of notes between the beats.
I would go through all 13 steps (using free stroke) and then go through the whole thing two more times using different right hand fingerings am and ai. So, that’s 39 steps. I actually would go all the way up to fret 12 (3 cycles) and often would use a diminished 7th chord or some left hand variation to keep it interesting. Vary what you need. As you will notice, I’ve been more detailed in the first 3 steps and little by little have resorted to short hand as the basic sequence becomes evident.
Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 6
Step 7
Step 8
Step 9
Step 10
Step 11
Step 12
Step 13
Phew! Go back for more. You know it’s good for you.
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DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearlyHow to Improve Coordination – Chromatic Octaves
If Mauro Giuliani’s works are in your repertoire, or those of 
any classical period composer, you will know that interval runs of octaves, sixths, and thirds are used to great effect. Think the fourth variation of Giuliani’s Folias Variations (Op. 45) or the grand finale to his 1st Rossiniana (Op. 119)! Interval runs are everywhere in our repertoire and it’s worth studying them either through repertoire or through scale practice.
The two chromatic octave exercises below should get you started. They are useful for warming up, coordinating the hands, independence and opposing movement in the left hand fingers, and can even serve as a vehicle for right-hand development, too. Here are a few ways to focus on them:
- Start very slowly and pluck both notes with simultaneously. No rolling!
- Keep the wrist relatively still so that the fingers of the left hand are extending and contracting vertically (i.e. often moving in opposite directions from each other).
- Keep the left hand fingers soft and close to the fretboard.
Use right-hand fingerings: pi, pm, pa, pm pi, pi pm, pa pm, pm pa, pa pi, and pi pa.
Once this feels comfortable and in control, explore some variations like the one below.
Use right-hand fingerings: pi, pm, pa, pm pi, pipm, papm, pmpa, papi, and pipa.
Let me know if you find this helpful. Part 2 coming soon!
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DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearlyProblem Solving in Pernambuco’s Interrogando
I was working on Joao Pernambuco’s groovy Interrogando with an extremely young and bright student yesterday. Despite his ability to absorb new material at a pace that inspires me, he was having a difficult time making this little part sound fluid.
After a bit of analysis, we agreed that it was due to the lack of clarity in the right hand. So, instead of playing it over and over, which is often default behavior for most students confronting a tricky passage, we decided to break it down and come up with a list of steps to once and for all solve the problem. Here are the steps.
Step 1 – Write out strings.
Writing out the strings as numbers also helps see patterns if you process information better that way (i.e. 5232 5423 1232 ).
Step 2 – Choose the best right hand fingering options. See this post for more about choosing the best options: Conde Claros, Scales, and String-Crossing.
We came up with two solutions. The top one was chosen by the student because his technique was more suited to it. I preferred the second solution given to my preference for aipi instead of amim.
Step 3 – Analyze where the right hand position change happens (if at all).
Step 4 – Practice the last box from Step 3 using right hand alone with a focus on rhythm.
Step 5 – Bring left hand into the game for that box only (right hand now does it correctly and proficiently and left hand has to catch up is a much better option than both hands struggling and doing it somewhat incorrectly).
Step 6 – Check in with the right hand alone again.
Step 7 – Go back to Step 4 and Step 6 with the second to last box. Add to last box.
Step 8 – Go back to Step 4 and Step 6 with the first box. Add to both boxes.
Step 9 – Do a few minutes of focus, take a mental rest, and go back for several more sets (building mental muscle!).
Step 10 – Check tempo and set tempo goals.
Not only could the student whip through the passage after doing this, his skills at identifying any confusion improved. Lots of “Oh!” and “Now that feels easy!”.
Problem solved!
Three Fingering Tips for Villa Lobos’s Etude Nº2
If you all were inspired (or recovered) from watching Ekachai Jearakul whip off Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Etude Nº2, you may find this post helpful. While I was a student at the New England Conservatory, the second half of one of my degree recitals was simply Villa-Lobos’ Twelve Etudes. While some of the etudes are manageable, others require relentless and careful practice, and they all have moments that can fill endless practice hours with frustration. To add to the matter, I was studying with the great Eliot Fisk and despite all of his valuable advice and help, watching him display what was possible on a regular basis conjured both extreme inspiration and a sense of hopelessness at achieving such a level of comfort with these pieces. Needless to say, the year preceding that recital, I was immersed in a figurative amazonian finger jungle and found my own way of surviving.
For those working on this particular etude, there are a few spots where I found less obvious fingerings less problematic. These solutions are personal but if the spots have been frustrating for any of you, give the following solutions a try.
Measure 3 (repeats not counted)
In order to increase the resonance, I like having the 3rd and 2nd strings open on this one so I shift to 5th position to enable this. There are a few alternate right hand fingerings to explore but I prefer the 1st.
Measures 10-12
In this solution, guide fingers are highlighted in red. While the right hand solution is personal, I like switching to rest-stroke on the highest note of the run. If you prefer to play free-stroke, you might choose to switch to 1st position by playing the first note of measure 12 on the 1st string open and using that to shift. The second finger would still work as a great guide in this situation.
Measures 21-22
In this example, ending the repeat with a slight alteration makes a noticeable difference in playing measure 22. Again, I’ve included some alternate right hand fingerings for exploration but I prefer the 1st.
Hope this helps!
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DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearlyVilla-Lobos Etude Nº1 Part 1
I love getting to the point when a student is ready to tackle Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Etude Nº1. There are so many angles to explore and it takes a lot of dedication to master it. There was a time when I was preparing to perform all 12 etudes that I decided the best use of my warm up time was to spend at least 30 minutes on Etude Nº1, 30 minutes on Etude Nº2, and 30 minutes on Etude Nº3. After which my hands always seemed to work well as I worked on other material.
Over the course of months I may have played those etudes at least a thousand times in many, many different ways. I tried everything I could think of to make them better.
The first step in this great journey is to develop the right hand’s ability to play the entire arpeggio comfortably. The great Andrés Segovia suggested a solution that is still used by the majority of students and the one I used for years. However, as we develop our abilities we find that our hands have an easier time with certain movements and we find ways to use those movements to harness our strengths.
So, I always suggest putting in your time with Segovia’s solution until you can perform the Etude with that pattern. I find that the weakest part of the solution is moving from m to a making the 3rd quarter note beat (half note of the measure) sound articulate which helps to delineate the rhythmic structure of the Etude, so I have come to prefer substituting m with i. However, it wasn’t until working on the piece for many years that I slowly came to prefer it. Explore the possibilities in the practice room by adding in a few alternate fingerings to start the exploratory process. I’ve watched my mentor, Eliot Fisk, play it through in hundreds of ways just as an exercise to develop string crossing – I think I remember him even doing the whole arpeggio with m and pinky!
Here are some important ways to practice it. Stay tuned for Part 2 and we’ll go deeper.
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DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearlyThe Best Guided Warm-Up for Your Left Hand, Part 3
I’m in the process of creating a new series of guided warm-ups for my students. Here is Part 3 for Six String Journal readers. In these guided warm-ups, I’ll go through some of the most important drills to help you establish a good routine for warming up before practicing your repertoire.
So go grab your guitar and get comfortable. In this second video, I’ve set the metronome for quarter = 60. We’ll go through the second part of my go-to slur routine, which involves compound slurs (121, 232, 343, 131, 242, 141). For the right hand, I simply use p for strings 6, 5, and 4, and then use i, m, and a for strings 3, 2, and 1. Follow along, stay aware of good form, stay relaxed, and stick with it until you can start to increase tempo with a good foundation.
If you’re a beginner, take it slowly and don’t wear your hand out. Pause occasionally for rest and let your hand catch up. It might help to just watch the first few minutes to get a sense of how it unfolds for the fingers.
The Best Guided Warm-Up for Your Left Hand, Part 2
I’m in the process of creating a new series of guided warm-ups for my students. Here is Part 2 for Six String Journal readers. In these guided warm-ups, I’ll go through some of the most important drills to help you establish a good routine for warming up before practicing your repertoire.
So go grab your guitar and get comfortable. In this second video, I’ve set the metronome for quarter = 60. We’ll go through the first part of my go-to slur routine. For the right hand, I simply use p for strings 6, 5, and 4, and then use i, m, and a for strings 3, 2, and 1. Follow along, stay aware of good form, stay relaxed, and stick with it until you can start to increase tempo with a good foundation.
If you’re a beginner, take it slowly and don’t wear your hand out. Pause occasionally for rest and let your hand catch up. It might help to just watch the first few minutes to get a sense of how it unfolds for the fingers.
New Publication: The Best of Six String Journal, Vol.1
Sometimes I just love having a printed copy or a pdf to read from on my iPad of a bunch of technique drills to work on instead of trying to remember everything. To that end, I just created a new publication with the most popular articles on technique in the first volume of The Best of Six String Journal. And to thank SSJ readers, here is a 50% off coupon for the first 25 copies sold: THE BEST OF SIX STRING JOURNAL.
Contents of Vol.1
Miracle Right Hand Warm-Up Sequence
Developing Coordination and stroke control
Want speedy scales?
Coordination and right-hand arpeggios
advanced left-hand training, part 1
left hand warm-ups: slurs, fixed fingers, open strings, and tunnels
pavel’s left-hand technique fun
a way of thinking of tremolo
Warm Up With Me!
I’m in the process of creating a new series of guided warm ups for my students. Here is part 1 for Six String Journal readers. In these guided warm ups, I’ll go through some of the most important drills to help you establish a good routine for warming up before practicing your repertoire.
So go grab your guitar and get comfortable. In this first video I’ve set the metronome for quarter = 60. We’ll string cross with single and pairs of fingers and go through a great slur routine with all the pairs of left hand fingers. For the right hand, I simply use p for strings 6, 5, and 4, and then use i, m, and a for strings 3, 2, and 1. Follow along, stay aware of good form, stay relaxed, and stick with it until you can start to increase tempo with a good foundation.
Six Tips to Master Tremolo
Over the years, I’ve posted several times about tremolo technique and even wrote the book Mastering Tremolo. Check it out if you haven’t yet! Nevertheless, there are times when I decide to spend a lot of time working on certain techniques to brush up, improve, try new approaches, revisit, and revise. I did this with tremolo this week and though I may have mentioned them in my book, some stood out to me. Here are a few entries I wrote in my practice notes:
- The movement from p to a is key – This is a feel thing. Think of snapping with p and a. As p articulates the bass note, a lands with some energy. It is almost like they are landing at the same time but not quite, allowing the melodic note on the higher string to vibrate justy a bit more.
- Nails – Each nail has to offer identical resistance to the string so that the quality of evenness is built in. If you are negotiating different stroke strength from finger to finger, it is too much effort.
- Proximity – Watch fingers closely and observe their distance from the string before the contact point and subsequent stroke. If there is too much discrepancy between the lineup, it can lead to galloping.
- Evenness – When practicing slowly, evenness is very important for both the attack and the silence or momentarily planting between notes.
- Left Hand Softness – Make sure the choreography of the left hand is worked out well. Abrupt motions in the left hand to make shifts can manifest in the right hand as accents. Keep the left hand as relaxed as possible.
- Right Hand Fingers – Sometimes increasing the perception of space between the right hand fingers seems to help me even out the notes. Try it.
Two Pieces by Agustín Barrios Mangoré
I recently recorded several of my favorite pieces by Paraguayan composer, Agustín Barrios Mangoré. Here are two of them, well-loved and well-known to most of you. Julia Florida was the first Barrios piece I learned decades ago and I still love playing it. And, of all of Barrios’s waltzes, his Vals Op.8, Nº3 is probably my favorite. Thank you to Stefan Nitschke for such a beautiful sounding guitar.
Thanks for listening!
Capriccio Diabolico
Here are several wonderful renditions of one of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s greatest guitar works, Capriccio Diabolico (Omaggio a Paganini), Op.85. Written over the course of five days in 1935, Capriccio Diabolico was commissioned by Andrés Segovia and, after much back and forth with Castelnuovo-Tedesco, was finally published following Segovia’s version in 1939. However, there are letters indicating that Castelnuovo-Tedesco was unhappy with the changes and had hoped for other guitarists to see the score before publication. There are now published versions of both. Segovia’s seems to be the most widely played simply because it has been around for longer and is what most guitarists have grown up listening to but there are guitarists choosing to follow the original manuscript published by Ricordi and edited by Angelo Gilardino and Luigi Biscaldi. Below are some of the finest concert guitarists playing both versions.
Six String Journal’s Complete Technique Course on Sale
Have some time to work on your technique over the holidays? Through December, my course Complete Technique for Classical Guitar will be on sale through Six String Journal’s Podia page. Use this COUPONCODE for a 20% discount.
Six String Journal’s Complete Technique for Classical Guitar Course was developed for the advancing beginner with some experience, the advancing intermediate guitarist, and will even benefit those with lots of playing experience. Though music theory isn’t necessary, a rudimentary understanding of rhythm is helpful.
The course consists of primary movement videos where I will teach the foundational movements that you’ll need in order to master classical guitar. These videos cover topics such as free-stroke, rest-stroke, arpeggios, alternation, scales, hand coordination, slurs, and shifts. These are followed by several series of secondary videos where I’ll apply the techniques and movements in various ways to help you engrain them into your own practice. Stringing the secondary videos into a sequence will teach you how to form an effective practice routine that will maximize your results and get you closer to your musical goals.
Course Includes
- Hours of focused technique lessons with an award-winning classical guitarist, the founder of Six String Journal, and sought-after educator.
- Over 50 extensively detailed but digestible videos demonstrating essential foundational movements, technique tips, exercises, routines, and how to implement them into your practice, carefully edited in small bite size videos for easy assimilation and viewing.
- Printable PDF summarizing the entire course with a condensed visual of the material presented.
- Loads of bonus content from Six String Journal’s Mastering Diatonic Scales.
The King of Guitar, Marco Tamayo
Cuban-born virtuoso Marco Tamayo gave a spectacular concert in Palo Alto last Saturday as part of the Peninsula Guitar Series to begin his short US tour. He dazzled the audience with works by Couperin, Bach, Sor, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, and Barrios. His playing was about as virtuosic as I can imagine but with a refinement of age and seemingly unlimited amount of nuance and stylistic brilliance. Here are some recent videos that I’ve come across recently that say it all but if you have a chance to go to a live concert, I guarantee it is a whole different experience.
You can learn from Marco on Tonebase. Use the coupon code SSJ-30 to receive 30% any memebership!
The Keys to Right Hand Control
In the videos below, I go through a progression of movements in the right hand that lead to better control of both rest stroke and free stroke. Grab your guitar and follow along. Hope this helps!
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