When I first started writing the AOV, I had a list of 11 basic principles of virtuosity. Over time, this list eventually shrunk to six.

Why?

Because I began to see that some of these principles are actually subsets of the others.

One of the 11 that was purged is positioning.

Positioning has always been a big factor with me.

Because how you position yourself will determine how efficient you are.

Take a simple example of working in a workspace.

When you work in a workspace, one of the most important things is to keep everything within easy reach. You don’t want to have to run back and forth just to get a chisel or hammer – you’ll be wasting too much time.

You want a chisel? Just reach out and it’s right there.

You want a hammer? Same thing.

But eventually, I realized that positioning is really part of the bigger picture of economy.

For example, when you hold your hand, you want to hold it in such a way that all the fingers are lined up directly above the strings, as close to the strings as possible.

So that when you play, you don’t have to reach out much, you just reach out and the strings are right there under your fingers.

Economy is of course, one of the basic principles of virtuosity and few people will question its importance.

And yet, I’ve often seen players sacrificing economy simple to fulfill some other secondary consideration.

One such is that of how a hand “looks” rather than how it operates.

It’s common to see players trying to hold their hands so that it fits some “textbook model” of right hand positioning, completely disregarding the bigger implications of how that hand position will affect the economy in their plucking.

To make matters worse, when they pluck, they will try to fulfill some imaginary rule of follow-through and push the finger into the palm of the hand as much as possible, again completely ignoring the principle of economy.

It is a kind of insanity which is totally inexplicable to me, because all the evidence points to the contrary. (A similar kind of insanity seems to pervade many religious cults too, where some of the ideas propounded can only be described as general wackiness, and yet there are people who actually believe in them.)

Everything we do is subject to the basic laws of nature.

Whether we choose to follow or ignore these laws, we do so at our own peril.

I’ve been reading “The Essentials of Persuasive Public Speaking” by Sims Wyeth.

No, I’m not about to embark on a new career.

I picked up the book because I liked the author’s engaging style of writing, something I’ve tried to cultivate myself (with rather limited success, I must say).

On page 99, Mr. Wyeth asked an interesting question:

“Have you ever seen a performance in which dancers move and musicians respond to their movements?”

To which he answered with the obvious, “I haven’t.”

That’s true.

If you’re a dancer, you don’t expect the musicians to follow you, you have to follow the musicians.

The principle happens to hold true for guitar playing too.

When you play, you mustn’t ‘make’ the rhythm follow you, you must follow the rhythm.

In other words, when you perform, your rhythm must be an independent entity, separate from your playing.

To use Mr. Wyeth’s analogy, think of your fingers as dancers and rhythm as musicians.

Just as dancers are subservient to the musicians, your fingers must be subservient to the rhythm.

You don’t expect the musicians to follow the dancers; so also, you mustn’t expect your rhythm to follow your fingers.

The problem for us guitarists is that the two are one and the same – we’re both dancer and musician.

And it’s easy to reverse their roles during performance.

So for us, it’s easy to focus more on our fingers than on our rhythm during performance. The result is rhythm that is subservient to our playing instead of the other way around.

The trick to preventing this from happening is to consciously separate your rhythm from your playing.

First, externalize your rhythm by tonguing the beats (deet, deet, deet …) and then make your fingers follow that tonguing pattern.

In other words, first separate the dancers (fingers) from the musicians (rhythm), and then make your dancers follow the musicians.

Quite a mouthful but this concept is at the heart of the AOV.

If you’ve read the AOV for Guitar and “How to Become a Virtuoso in 60 Days,” you’ll recognize it as that of separating our playing from our rhythmic source.

One of the easiest ways to develop speed is to play in groups of notes rather than singly. Instead of thinking of one note after another, think in terms of groups of notes.

A good piece to apply this technique to is Carcassi Study #7. The study forms an integral part of the 60 day virtuoso program.

Here’s a recent performance of the piece:
 

The new version of Practicing the Tremolo is now available. I’ve added musical examples and reformatted it slightly. Other than that, not much else is changed.

One of the things I’ve decided to implement for my books is DRM or Digital Rights Management. Basically, it means you will need your email address to open the book. It is a hassle, I know, but present conditions leave me with little choice.

With this new version, I’ve also increased the price to $18, which I believe is still a reasonable price.

To read more about Practicing the Tremolo, please go to this link.

The new book, How to Become a Virtuoso in 60 days is now available.

The book is a step by step practical course to applying the principles in the AOV.

What is the difference between this new book and the AOV for Guitar?

The AOV for guitar is a compendium of guitar tricks, techniques, ideas, and philosophies while this book is strictly a step by step guide to implementing the concepts in the AOV.

To read more about the book, please go to this link.

For a limited time, I’m making the book available at $18. This price is good until July 21, after which it will go to its normal price of $38.

At $38, I believe it’s still a bargain. It would be hard to get one lesson for $50 these days and this book has ten lessons contained within its pages. The price also includes access to all accompanying future videos. These videos will be available October, 2013.

After much deliberation, I’ve decided to start password protecting my books, especially the practical books. When you purchase the book, the email address you use will be your password.

You would still be able to print these books into hard copy, which I suspect most people are doing anyway, especially with the practical books.

Five hours a day – I wrote in my preface to my new book.

That’s what you need to do to achieve virtuosity.

I know some people will be asking, isn’t this asking too much? Who has the time to do all that practice?

Precisely.

And that’s why not everyone will become a virtuoso.

But yet, there will be others who will think, ‘but that’s hardly enough.’

The point is, it takes effort to accomplish anything.

And the more complex and greater the task, the more effort is required. We’re talking about conquering an Everest here, not some hill in the park.

You can get by with two hours, but it wouldn’t be enough.

Three hours is the minimum, but you’re just getting warmed up with three hours.

It’s only after three hours that magic happens.

That’s when your fingers begin to loosen up, they seem to become charged with a special kind of energy. Things that you had difficulty with before suddenly become easy.

This is when breakthroughs happen.

Imagine if you only have the patience and dedication to do three hours a day.

Just as you’re getting warmed up, you stop playing.

Think of all the breakthroughs that were waiting to happen, but didn’t because you stopped too early.

A short clarification.

By five hours, I don’t mean five hours consistently every day.

Some days you might do two, and others, eight.

It doesn’t matter, as long as you’re playing all the time. Five hours a day is really another way of saying you should be practicing all the time during this 60 day period.

Every chance you get, you’re holding and playing that guitar.

That’s part of that virtuoso reality you will be introduced to, part of that state of mind I wrote about earlier.

So this course is not some happy talk designed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And it’s not a magic pill either, that will turn you miraculously into a virtuoso in 60 days, without you having to do the requisite practice.

But perhaps you’re saying.

Isn’t that stating the obvious?

If you’re practicing five hours a day, wouldn’t that automatically make you a good player, with or without any special book or program promising such a thing?

Not necessarily

It depends on what you practice.

If you spend five hours a day practicing follow-throughs, that’s unlikely to develop economy in your movements, which is vital to virtuosity.

If you spend five hours a day trying to hold your hand straight at the wrist, that’s unlikely to give you the relaxation you need to produce speed and power.

And if you spend five hours a day trying to play exclusively from your knuckles, that’s unlikely to improve your precision, another vital component of virtuosity.

To produce results, you must practice the right things.

(‘Right’ meaning things that will bring you your desired results.)

And that’s what this book will do.

It will help you develop the fundamental conditions that are vital to virtuosity (described in the AOV) and to tapping into your natural speed and power.

Two more days to go before the 2 for 1 special offer expires.

You get both ‘How to be Extraordinary’ and ‘How to be Extraordinary – for classical guitarists’ for $8 — in effect, $4 for each book.

And if you don’t like them, let me know within 60 days and I’ll refund your money in full.

Just a side note.

Perhaps you’re wondering, what on earth does being extraordinary have to do with virtuosity?

Well actually, everything.

The very definition of virtuosity is to be extraordinary.

Think of these two books as being the philosophical counterparts to the AOV and AOV for Guitar. They deal with the mental components of virtuosity while the AOV series deal with the physical.

Some people, I’ve noticed, only see the difficult in things.

You can give them the simplest things and they will find some way to make it complicated.

For these people, life is hard, it’s a constant struggle.

Virtuosos think and work differently.

Instead of making things complicated, they simplify them.

Instead of seeing the difficult in things, they see the easy.

This point was brought home to me never more forcefully than in a recent viewing of Paco de Lucia playing the Aranjuez concerto.

As I wrote in my previous post, there’re some advantages to living in the 21^st century, one of which is youtube and the other is the VLC media player.

Now watching Paco play the first movement in slow motion, I was amazed to see how he simplified the score.

One scale, in particular, caught my eye. This is the scale which first occurs at 02.23 and is repeated five more times and in four different keys in the piece.

What do most people do with those scales?

They play them with a different fingering every time.

But not the Maestro. He plays the scales the same way every time. Whether it’s in D or F or C, he uses the same fingering in all of them, thereby effectively reducing four scales to one.

Truly amazing.

And it just goes to show that virtuosity is mostly a state of mind.

If you have the virtuoso state of mind, virtuosity will occur naturally, a logical outcome of that mindset.

I’ll be posting a series of articles soon.

This will be the beginning of a new book titled, “How to become a virtuoso in 60 days.”

Yes, it sounds a little bold and provocative, I know.

Can one really achieve virtuosity in 60 days?

Well, you’ll have to read the posts to find out. But you can probably guess the answer from the first part of this post.

Virtuosity is mostly a state of mind.

And it shouldn’t take more than 60 days to change your state of mind.