Philip Hii – guitarist

When I’m faced with a problem, I like to deconstruct it, reduce it to its simplest elements and start from there.

That’s what I did with the AOV.

Over years of teaching, I had identified the key components of virtuosity and had reduced them to a few basic principles.

These principles were later to become the basis of the AOV.

To me, these elements are so critical, it’s unthinkable that anyone would even try to achieve virtuosity without working on them.

An analogy can be drawn here with building a house.

The three most basic elements of a house are the foundation (or site), the walls and the roof.

It’s unthinkable for anyone to try to build a house without one or more of these basic elements.

And yet, I see students working on their techniques without any regard for rhythm (one of the key elements described in the AOV) or students contorting their hands and fingers to conform with certain rules, totally disregarding the basic element of looseness (another key element of the AOV). I could go on with the other elements but you get my point.

That’s like trying to build a house without a roof or walls or a foundation.

To me, the basic elements described in the AOV are as critical to virtuosity as a roof or walls or foundation are to a house.

That was my main motivation in writing the book, to draw attention to these basic but absolutely essential elements.

To go back to the analogy of building a house, once you have the basic elements in place, you can add the details, how many rooms you want, where the kitchen is going to go, and once those details are in place, you can add the final furnishings.

The same thing applies in working on virtuosity.

Once you have the basic elements in place (lightness, looseness, fluidity, economy, rhythm [all basic elements described in the AOV]), you can add all the details you want, such as specific technical skills and other refinements.

I wrote in my last post that virtuosity is about knowledge and skills. If you want to master a task, you must know how to do it.

In other words, like uninstalling the old lock, you need instructions on how it’s done.

But where do you get these instructions, where do you gain these skills and knowledge?

The answer lies in a few places.

You can be like Cook Ting and gain this knowledge from constant doing — over nineteen years of carving oxes until you know every detail of the ox’s anatomy and you’re able to slice through effortlessly where you want to go, even with your eyes closed.

Or you can be like Cook Hii and have an expert in the field teach you.

Or you can just go to Youtube and watch others do it.

All these are important sources of information and knowledge.

But nothing can substitute for real practicing.

Practice is important because it puts you directly in the driver seat. You’re no longer just discussing it, talking about it, theorizing how best to do it, you’re actually doing it and experiencing the sensation of doing it.

And sooner or later, if you keep on doing it, the answer will come to you in a flash of insight, and you will understand how it’s done.

When that happens, you’ve made a breakthrough.

The breakthrough moment is what most of us live for. It’s like finding a nugget after years of digging, it makes all those years of toiling worthwhile.

And when it happens, you know straightaway you’ve found it. That you have the nugget in your fingers because it feels so right and it sounds so good.

You feel a lightness in your fingers, you feel as if your fingers are on fire, as if they have a life of their own. And the notes just ripple out from your fingers effortlessly.

These are key indicators that you’ve arrived at virtuosity.

You can also use these indicators to determine whether you’ve achieved the breakthrough too.

If you’re still struggling through the task, if it feels hard, if your fingers feel tight, if you find yourself rushing through the piece, or if it sounds choppy and uneven, those are clear indications that you haven’t experienced the breakthrough yet.

If you’ve followed this blog, you’d probably have guessed by now that I have a slight preoccupation with the subject of mastery.

As a guitarist, the differences between mastery and non-mastery are obvious.

If you know how to perform a technique, it’s easy, but if you don’t know how, it can be hard.

Like playing the tremolo. If you know how to go about it, it’s easy, but if you don’t, it can be very hard to do.

But I’m not interested in mastery just from the point of playing guitar.

To me, it’s a concept that’s relevant to everything we do.

As I’ve written before, even the simple act of uninstalling a lock requires a certain amount of mastery and can be hard to do if you don’t possess the necessary skill and knowledge.

In fact, it’s true of anything we do that requires skill and knowledge – driving, riding a bike, skateboarding etc.

To me, that’s the essence of virtuosity.

It’s not about the kind of showy technical displays that we often associate the word with, but about knowledge – knowledge at a physical level and knowledge of skills involved in the task.

When I first decided to use the term ‘virtuosity’ in my AOV title, I knew it would conjure up images of flamboyant musicians and flashy showmen.

I knew that some might be inclined to think that that’s what this book is all about, how to achieve a kind of showbiz virtuosity.

Well, I must confess, to a certain extent, they’re right.

That was part of my original plan, to write about developing the techniques and skills to become a flashy guitarist.

But I must say that although that was part of the plan, my real purpose have always been to write about virtuosity in all its different manifestations in our lives.

The real essence of virtuosity, not as a performance sport, but as a principle we can live by.