Yesterday I was working on Julio Sagreras’ super fun El Colibri (The Hummingbird) with my son which made it twice the super fun. He’s at the point where he can play through the entire piece, correct fingerings in both hands, smoothly. His lofty goal is 180bpm. Yikes! I explained to him that lofty goals are the best because he may get closer than if setting a lesser goal. And, who knows, maybe he will be the first : ).

In an effort to support this enthusiasm, we went through the piece again in an effort to discover ways to help him make both hands more efficient and relaxed. The one principle which really translated into faster and better looking hands almost immediately was shifting without finger contraction (or extension) and maintaining a relaxed left hand position.

If you are trying to squeeze every last drop of tension out of your hands in order to speed things up, do not contract the left hand fingers into each other (and, of course, do not extend the fingers away from each other).

The temptation to contract to prepare finger 4 is overwhelming but it is not the finger to focus on. Instead focus on using finger 1 to shift and as a result yank finger 4 into place. This reduces our mind’s focus to one movement: the shift. Otherwise, we focus our attention on placing finger 4 and then shifting. I don’t know about you all, but I’d rather have less to think of when playing quickly. It makes the piece feel slower.

And, now, for my first instructional video:

And, if you want to see the absolute finest and scariest rendition of this, check out the great Cuban guitarist Marco Tamayo:

By the way, he has a hyper-detailed edition of El colibri available from his website. Wait, is that 180bpm?