Philip Hii – guitarist

I’ve been reading this book on landscape painting by Ted Gould* and I came across his insightful remark – that technique can’t be taught.

This is a direct affirmation of my own long-held belief – that you can’t teach technique to someone, you can only provide them with directions on how they can go about acquiring that technique for themselves.

This is based on the same kind of logic that says you can’t eat a chocolate for someone.

Or hire someone to work out and get that six-pack for you.

Or practice for someone.

The key word is ‘experiential.’

To learn anything, you have to experience it yourself.

To understand how the tremolo is played, you’ll have to do it yourself, and if you do it long enough, the breakthrough will come and you will understand perfectly how it’s done,

A teacher can help you get to that point quicker. Books and instructions and advice from friends can help you get there earlier too (or maybe not, depending on who’s dispensing the advice).

But unless you practice diligently, all the advice you get is absolutely worthless.

Take the current brouhaha about the dismal state of our education, and placing the blame on teachers.

The misunderstanding is based on a warped idea of how learning takes place.

Going back to the chocolate analogy, unless students want to eat that chocolate (substitute that for ‘learn’), they’ll never get to taste it (substitute that for ‘acquire the knowledge.)

A simple truth and yet no one wants to face it.

These past few months, I’ve been doing some more in-depth analysis of the mechanics of the tremolo technique and I’m astounded by what I’ve discovered. It turns out that the technique is much more complex than I thought it to be.

It’s a veritable Swiss watch of guitar technique.

So many elements and factors have to be in place before you can master the technique. One element out of sync or missing, and you’re out of luck.

How does anyone learn how to put all these elements in place?

Practice and experiencing.

To describe everyone of these elements in detail would require a ton of instructions, and would probably create more confusion than understanding.

So I guess the million dollar question is, if technique can’t be taught, what’s the point of having teachers?

And closer to home, what’s the point of all these books – more specifically, the “AOV” or the “AOV for guitar”

Here, we come to the crux of the matter.

These books are not designed to turn you into a virtuoso overnight.

They’re like recipe books. You can’t eat a recipe book, but you can follow the directions inside and hopefully come up with a good tasting meal.

They’re like road maps. They’ll show you the way to San Jose, but unless you get into your car and start driving, you’re still not in San Jose.

On that ominous note, I’ll like to mention that after several requests for skype lessons and several successful sessions, I’ve decided to offer skype lessons to anyone who has purchased the AOV for Guitar.

Please send me an email if you’re interested.

 

*This is by no means an endorsement of the book.

One of my favorite activities during summer is to drive up the Santa Cruz Mountains to visit one of my favorite persons, John Gilbert.

I’ve forgotten how I got to know John. My first recollection of meeting him was having him fine-tune my Savino guitar for my Chopin recording.  I was having trouble with its intonation and John was kind enough to redo the saddle and fix the fretwork for me.

After that, I went up regularly to visit him, every summer, whenever I was in the SF Bay Area. And I got to know him well. Usually, we would just stay in his studio in the garage and talk guitar talk. He was a walking encyclopedia of guitar facts and knowledge and I was the eager student. And in between the small talk, I would play for him. I remember playing most of my Chopin nocturnes for him before I recorded them in 2002.

John was one of the gentlest and kindest persons I’ve ever known. I remember telling him once that I was looking for a new key to my Mark Leaf case (my only key had broken) and he spent a whole afternoon trying to machine-tool one for me, unfortunately without much success. Thankfully, our mutual friend, Andre, happened to be there and offered me one of his spares.

And then there was the time I brought the missus up to see him. When he found out that she’s a schoolteacher, he gave her a whole box of his specialty rocks and stones for her to show her students. These are machine ground stones, made with the same loving care he built all his guitars.

It’s March, the time I usually start looking forward to summer again, and to my annual trip up the Santa Cruz Mountains. But this year, it looks like I wouldn’t be making that trip. Thanks, John, for everything.

When I was young, I used to imagine myself to be a pretty good writer.

I was editor of my high school paper, editor of a student newspaper in NZ, and column editor for the American String Teacher, and I wrote a few articles that were published by Soundboard and the American String Teacher, among others.

However, nothing prepared me for the writing of my magnum opus, the AOV.

I’m not sure whether it was the sheer weight of the task, trying to reduce something as profound as virtuosity into a few simple principles, or whether it was just writer’s block.

But it took me eight years before I was happy with it.

Eight years of scribbling, the evidence of which is still scattered all over my house, in the form of scraps of paper and several hefty boxes of notebooks.

And at the end of it all – 35 pages.

And it seems the journey is still not finished yet. These past few weeks, I’ve been busy revising the chapter on rhythm and I think I’m finally happy with it. The ideas are still the same, what’s new is just the presentation.

I recently discovered the term ‘beta book.’ Well, I guess that’s what I’ve been doing these past nine years, writing a beta book. However, with this new rhythm chapter, I think I’m getting close to that final release version.

You can download the latest version of the AOV here.