Identifying the basic elements of virtuosity 2
The AOV is basically a compilation of the basic elements of virtuosity which I had identified over years of playing and teaching.
But as I wrote in my last post, you don’t have to take my word for it, you can identify your own list.
In that post, I suggested two ways of identifying these crucial elements.
Here, I’ll share a third.
Instead of focusing on our playing and on the playing of others, we’ll approach the problem from a more academic standpoint. We’ll approach it from the point of achieving our goals.
What goals are we trying to accomplish in our pursuit of virtuosity?
Obviously, the list can get pretty long if we think about all the things we want to accomplish but let’s narrow them down to the most essential elements.
These are speed, power and precision.
If you think about it, these three factors are at the heart of every human pursuit and sport.
Watch any martial artist, athlete, sportsperson, and you’ll see the same striving after these universal goals. (There’s a fourth element, endurance, which doesn’t concern us so much here.)
Among these three basic elements, speed is at the top of the list.
Why? Because the other factors are actually subsets of speed.
Power, for instance, is dependent on speed – if you can move faster, you can create greater momentum and this increases your power.
And if you can move faster to your destination, you can usually locate it more accurately, so precision too is a function of speed. More about these points later.
The thing about speed is, it’s a great rationalizer. It forces you to become extremely lean and economical in your execution because you don’t have a choice. It’s either that or be left behind.
If speed is not a concern, if you can take all the time you want to finish your task, it can be easy to get distracted by extraneous concerns and become bloated and inefficient as a result.
In thinking about speed, one way to approach it is to think of cars.
If you were to build a car, how would you build it so it’ll run fast, economically, and without guzzling too much gas?
The obvious would be to:
- Make it light, build it with light materials.
- Reduce the moving parts so there’s less resistance.
- Make sure all the moving parts are well lubricated so there’s less friction to overcome.
- Eliminate unnecessary components.
- Put in a more powerful engine.
That’s just a tentative list. I’m sure real car builders have a more extensive list.
The point is, there’re basic things we can do to make cars go faster and there’re basic things we can do to make ourselves go faster too.
With that in mind, what are the equivalents of those factors we just listed above for cars, factors we can apply to our playing?
- Lighter – we can focus on lightening our touch.
- Reduce moving parts – we can reduce the movements in our body
- Good lubrication – looseness in our body so there’s minimum resistance.
- Eliminate unnecessary components – economy, eliminate unnecessary moves, unnecessary notes even.
- Put in a more powerful engine – develop more power in our fingers.
Again, the above is just a tentative list. If you’re more familiar with car building technology, you can probably come up with a better list.
I must confess that I didn’t derive my list of basic elements by looking at cars, I discovered them from years of teaching, trying to find out what works for me so I could impart them to my students.
But using the car model is a good way to help us define the parameters we’re dealing with. It’ll help us focus on the real issues at hand, the concerns facing all performers, which are speed, power and precision.
And it’ll provide us with the answers to those universal issues too and help us identify those basic elements which are so crucial to achieving virtuosity.