Philip Hii – guitarist

There’re two ways to achieve effortlessness in life.

The first is to do only the bare essentials. Get rid of all the unnecessary stuff and your life will get a lot less effortful.

The second is to get someone else to do it for you.

When I suggested this second option in one of the earlier incarnations of the AOV, (I think I said something like, “Do not do for yourself what others can do for you.”), my friend who was proofreading it was aghast. He left a few exclamation marks next to the line by way of comment.

But no, that’s not what I meant.

I didn’t imply that the way to effortlessness is to exploit others.

What I meant is to harness the energy of others to do your work for you, in very symbiotic ways. In relationships that are mutually beneficial.

A classic example of this kind of relationships is the honey bee. Flowers need honey bees to pollinate for them, and honey bees need flowers to give them honey. Win-win all around.

If you’re a guitar teacher, you don’t really have to advertise yourself.

Let your students do it for you. Just make sure you teach them to the best of your ability, and their good playing will speak and advertise for you. Another win-win relationship.

Interestingly enough, I’m sure you’ve probably seen the deluge of ads put out by banks and oil companies lately. Mostly feel-good ads propounding their community-mindedness and their concern for you.

I’m sure those ads would make a huge impact on those who have been recently foreclosed or those who live on the Gulf Coast.

Back to the point I was making.

You see, we often forget that we’re not the only ones on the planet, there’re other people too, and they can help us do our stuff, and help themselves too in the process.

Another example.

I used to get really freaked out when overtaking cars on those narrow two-lane country highways in Malaysia and see cars from the other side coming straight at me.

But then I realized that there’re people in those other cars too. They would, in all likelihood, want to avoid a collision with me and would slow down or even go off the road to avoid me too. Which is precisely what happen all the time.

Yes, I should still stay vigilant but I can take comfort in the thought that there’re other people watching out for me too.

In the martial arts, getting your opponent to defeat themselves is part of good strategy. Why waste your energy when you can redirect your opponent’s energy back to him? Yes, it’s not exactly a symbiotic relationship, but for some reason, that’s not a huge concern when you’re trying to avoid getting hurt.

In the AOV, enlisting the energy of other elements is the key to effortlessness.

Don’t try to do everything yourself. Don’t depend only on the fingers to pluck the string for you.

There’re other things that can do the job for you. Momentum, for instance, or the energy in the strings themselves.

And of course, don’t forget the first option – make your movements ultra economical so you don’t have to do so much work.

I’ve been playing the tremolo a lot lately – neglected it these past ten years. (In fact, come to think of it, I have neglected the guitar these past ten years.)

But I’ve been playing the tremolo a lot lately and it’s been an interesting exercise, revisiting it and observing it anew, from different angles.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m struck by how complex it can be if you want to analyze it. So many elements have to be in place before you can produce that seamless stream of notes.

Of course, if you just follow your instincts and play naturally, it can be the simplest thing to do. It’s like any human motion; if you break it down into its component parts, it can be incredibly complex. But if you just allow your body to do it naturally, it can be really simple too.

Back to the tremolo.

At the basic level, to make it work, the basic conditions I wrote about in the AOV have to be absolutely there. If you don’t have those conditions, forget it.

But there’re other factors involved, such as finding that sweet spot in your hand, where everything is working together and optimally — your hand, wrist, fingers all moving in perfect harmony.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I observed are the basic properties that are absolutely essential to the finger movements themselves.

The first is lightness. (This happens to be a key principle in the AOV.) Your movements have to be super light, not a hint of effort or tension anywhere, completely free and unfettered.

The second is efficiency. Your movements have to be super efficient, no waste of energy, focused only on doing what it needs to do. This is the principle of economy, another basic key principle in the AOV.

And the third is momentum, you have to create momentum in your actions and let it drive your actions.

Momentum is not one of the principles of the AOV. I did include it in earlier versions but decided to take it out as it has more to do with movement than a basic fundamental property of virtuosity.

It is however crucial to virtuoso movement

Think of momentum as a row of falling dominoes.

To knock down a row of dominoes, all you need to do it knock down the first one and the rest will automatically fall over.

It’s the same with virtuoso finger movements. To create a stream of effortless notes, just initiate the first one, and let momentum do the rest for you.

This is something I’ve written about extensively already, and is the principle behind the self-propelled engine. But it’s a principle that is never more crucial than in playing the tremolo.

When you harness the power of momentum to play for you, you’ll find you don’t have to do much, your fingers will do the rest for you. All you need to do it is relax them (and I mean relax them!) and get out of their way.

To expand on the previous post, a good way to describe the one path is ‘the sweet spot.’

You know what the sweet spot is. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, it is “The place on a bat, club, racket, or paddle, where it is most effective to hit a ball.”

Wikipedia has a more extended definition:

“A sweet spot is a place where a combination of factors results in a maximum response for a given amount of effort. In tennis, baseball, or cricket, a given swing will result in a more powerful hit if the ball strikes the racquet or bat on the latter’s sweet spot.”

In guitar playing, the ‘sweet spot’ is where everything is working optimally, where your hands feel perfectly right, and you’re able to play with maximum ease and comfort.

The difficulty, as I pointed out in the last post, is how do you know when you have found the sweet spot?

The only way to tell is with results. (And not how great your hands look, not how straight your wrist is, not how much follow-through you have…)

If you’re playing well, if you’re able to do everything you want to do and do it in front of an audience, that’s a good sign you’ve probably found that sweet spot.

Conversely, if playing feels hard, if something doesn’t feel right, if you lack security and accuracy in your fingers, if you have a hard time playing even a simple piece in front of people, that’s a sign you probably haven’t found it.

Perhaps the worst thing you can do is try to get someone else to tell you where your playing sweet spot should be.

You know how, when you go to sleep, it sometimes takes a little while to find that optimum position where you feel completely at ease and comfortable and able to drift off? And you’ll have to try a few different positions before you find it?

Well, you wouldn’t ask someone to show you what that ideal sleeping position should be for you, why would you ask someone else to show you what your ideal playing position should be?