I wrote a chapter on being extraordinary in an early version of the AOV. I had always thought the chapter reads like a manifesto and so here it is, transformed into one.

Be bold. Be daring. Be exciting.

Do things differently.

Think differently.

There’s no reason to do things the same way as everyone else. No point rehashing old stuff, or worse, stealing other people’s inspirations.

Here’s a simple way to do things differently.

Just do the opposite of what everyone is doing.

If people are doing it fast, do it slow. If they’re doing it slow, do it fast.

If people are doing it loud, do it soft. If they’re doing it soft, do it loud.

You get the idea.

Challenge the norms, because the norm is boring.

Challenge conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is nothing but old and dried up wisdom that’s been passed down and distilled into simplistic formulas.

It’s based on the common denominator. And extraordinariness is not about being common.

And refuse to be shackled by anything, any system, any ‘higher’ authority, anything that will try to control and define you and demand your complete allegiance.

Your owe allegiance to no one but your art.

And push things to the max. Max means further than anyone has done before.

Go faster. Do more than anyone else.

If people can play ten notes per second, do twelve notes.

If people do two world premieres, do five.

If people do difficult stunts, do impossible stunts.

When it comes to making things extraordinary, follow three simple guidelines.

First, do something no one has done before.

Second, do it in a way that no one has seen or heard before.

And third, blow them away with the power and conviction of your delivery.

The tremolo is not an easy technique.

Think about it.

First, you have to play up to ten notes per second (that’s four 32nds at 152).

And you have to do it with four fingers, all of different sizes, shapes, and strengths.

And you’re expected to play them in a smooth sequence, making them all sound the same, ten times per second.

Quite a tall order.

That’s why I’ve never had much faith in conventional approaches to the tremolo. Because they underestimate the level of difficulty involved.

And that’s why I had to come up with my own solutions.

Practicing the Tremolo is a compilation of the different strategies I came up with over the years.

I have taught them to students with much success and I believe it is time to share the information with a wider audience.

But be forewarned, some of the approaches in the book are unconventional.

If you’re not into new and radically different ideas, this book is not for you.

But I am confident the method will work for you and am extending my usual 60-day money-back guarantee to 2 years.

If you practice the techniques in the book consistently, and do not see any marked improvement in your tremolo within 2 years, I will be happy to refund you the full purchase price of the book less Paypal fees.

Why two years?

That’s about how much time it will take to see results.

Of course, actual results will vary in individual cases. Some of my students took less than a year to master the technique.

To purchase the book:

https://philiphii.com/purchase/

One thing about speed is, you can’t force it or pursue it on its own.

In fact, if you were to try to do that, you will likely produce the opposite result.

Trying to force your body to go beyond its limits will tighten it up and will actually make you move slower.

No, the answer lies in focusing on the conditions that produces speed. This is the basic philosophy behind the AOV.

If you have good conditions, speed naturally happens.

I have mentioned three of these conditions – looseness, which has to do with body state; lightness, with the quality of your movements; and release, which deals with the dynamic nature of performing.

There’s one additional component to the second element, movement, and that’s momentum.

The logic behind momentum is simple.

If you stop and start in the middle of action, you will lose time and waste energy.

To move fast, it’s essential you keep the flow of your actions going, so you don’t waste time and energy stopping and restarting your actions.

By moving continuously, you’ll also be able to recapture spent energy from one action and use it to propel you to the next (a critical component of the automated engine I’ve written about before elsewhere).

Momentum is part of the larger and more fundamental principle of fluidity, which also happens to be another key element of the AOV.

Control is an essential part of mastery.

In fact, the two words are practically synonymous. Without control, there’s no mastery, and without mastery, no control.

There’re two sides to control.

The physical angle, which is to get your body to do what you want it to do.

And timing, which is to make sure your actions occur when you want them to occur.

To use the analogy of an orchestra:

There’re two main players in an orchestra, the conductor and the musicians.

The conductor keeps time and the musicians follow his/her timekeeping.

If you have musicians who are unable to execute the notes in time, or a conductor who is unable to keep time, you wouldn’t have a very good orchestra.

The same is true of playing any instrument.

Think of your fingers as the musicians and your mind, the conductor.

If you lack finger control, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demands of the music and your playing will be sloppy. If you lack timing control, you wouldn’t be able to pace yourself, and you will end up rushing through your performance.

Both factors are absolutely crucial to any mastery strategy.

And in this, timing control comes first.

If you have good timing and rhythm, they will naturally result in greater physical control.

Take the following example.

Let’s say you have good rhythmic control but poor finger control. When you play, your strong rhythmic drive will make your fingers keep up with the pace. If they’re unable to do so, you will practice until they’re able to do so. Good rhythmic control leads to good physical control.

The reverse, however, is not true — good physical control, in themselves, will not naturally result in good timing control.

Because timing and rhythm is a mental thing and our physical attributes have little impact on them.

So what happens?

If you lack timing control, you will almost always end up rushing through your playing, especially when you’re in high-stress situations, like performances.

The critical thing to note is that the two functions – timekeeping and playing – are quite separate and you must keep them separate in your playing.

In other words, when you play, you must separate the player from the timekeeper.

This is a concept that may seem simple enough on the surface, but bear with me. Because the actual concept may be quite different from what you think it is.

Let’s go back to the analogy of the orchestra

In every orchestra, you have two main players, the conductor and the musicians.

Think of your fingers as the musicians and your mind, the conductor.

When you play, your mind must always set the tempo and your fingers follow that tempo. Never let your fingers set the rhythm, because finger rhythms are not as reliable as mental rhythm.

Finger rhythms are easily affected by weaknesses in physical technique. If for example, your fingers are unable to execute a passage in time, they will slow down, and this will end up affecting your rhythm.

But mental rhythm has no such limitations. There’s no physical technique involved in mental rhythm, it’s all in the mind.

So mental rhythm is pure and uninfluenced by any external factors.

The ability to separate your rhythm from your playing is a crucial part of mastery.

That’s why rhythm is a core component of the AOV.

To learn more about how to separate your rhythm from your playing, check out the AOV for Guitar.

The key to good playing, I’ve discovered, is to focus on internals rather than externals, on good conditions within the body rather than on physical appearances.

In my teaching, I’ve always believed in letting the student discover his/her own playing rather than in dictating it to them.

Because they’re the only ones who know what’s going on in their body, and they’ll have to make the final decision on what works for them.

Yes, I have some general guidelines on seating and hand positions, but they’re more like points of departures rather than rigid prescriptions, and it’s up to the student to implement them in ways that feel most natural for them.

Because I believe that true externals are reflections of the internals.

If you have good internals, the externals will naturally take care of themselves.

The problem with emphasizing externals is that it usually comes at a cost.

You begin to neglect the internals.

And sometimes it will actually interfere with the internals.

If you try to force a student to hold his/her hand according to a strictly prescribed model without taking into account the student’s unique physiology, you may end up going against the natural workings of their body and stunt its development.

It’s far better to work on internals, on how it feels, rather than how it looks.

And the internals are all about comfort level, naturalness, and results.

If you’re playing well, that’s all that matters.

The emphasis on externals has taken on such a strange twist these days; I’ve even heard criticisms of Segovia because he didn’t hold his right hand according to current definitions of what is ‘correct’ right hand position.

One wonders how Segovia would’ve played if he had been taught the ‘correct’ way by these pedagogues.

We often hear of physicians who try to fix the symptoms rather than the underlying cause of the illness.

To me, the externals are all about symptoms.

Taking care of them will not take care of the underlying conditions.

My focus on internals rather than externals is actually part of a larger life philosophy.  Here’re some recent musings on the subject in another area.

Most people agree that relaxation is key to everything – if you’re relaxed, you’ll be able to function more effectively.

No rocket science here, the question however is, how do you achieve it?

There’re probably as many answers as there are teachers and performers.

For me, there’re three basic components to relaxation.

Looseness, lightness, and release.

Looseness has to do with your body state, lightness the quality of your movement, and release focuses on its dynamic nature.

If you do these three things, you will never be tight.

Over the years, I’ve read and become acquainted with other methods of achieving relaxation.

Most of them, I’ve noticed, deal with the obvious – keeping your body relaxed. That’s easy to say, of course, but how do you stay relaxed in the middle of action? How do you stay relaxed when you’re moving at ten actions per second?

Release — that’s the missing component from many of these methods.

The key to staying relaxed in the middle of action is to release all tension as soon as the action is completed.

In guitar terms, the instant you strike the string, you must release all tension in your finger and allow it to become completely relaxed again.

This crucial dynamic component of relaxation is often missed, I suspect, because most of these relaxation experts are operating in the theoretical. They have little understanding of the fluidity of the moment, when actions are occurring at dizzying speeds and when you have to constantly exert and release tension at split second intervals.

Perhaps the most bizarre of these theoretical approaches to relaxation is the so-called Jorgensen technique.

According to advocates of this technique, to achieve relaxation, you must first tense yourself up to the max, and then release that tension.

The rationale behind the approach is that if you understand what extreme tension feels like, you’ll be better able to avoid it.

Kind of like asking someone to gorge on food so he/she can better lose weight.

No, I’m not knocking these methods. They will work perfectly fine at attaining relaxation – if you’re lying on a beach somewhere.

For everything else, however, you’ll have to have a more sophisticated approach, one that factors in the dynamic nature of performing.

One of the greatest myths about speed is that you have to develop fast ‘twitch’ muscles to be fast.

And words like ‘ballistic’ and ‘explosive’ are often used to describe the kind of action you need to cultivate to develop this speed.

The principle may have some validity in sports, but the guitar operates under slightly different rules.

On the guitar, it’s not how fast you can pluck the notes, but how fast you can get to the strings that determines your speed

Let’s say you have a task of pulling a lever in five different locations.

We’ll call these points A B C D E.

To perform the task, first, you have to pull a lever at point A, then you have to run to point B and pull the lever there, and then you have to run to C and pull the lever there, and then you have to run to point D and do the same thing, and the same again for point E.

What do you think is the most important determinant of your speed here?

Is it your speed in pulling the lever or your speed in getting to the location?

Clearly the latter.

Pulling a lever is a relatively simple task which doesn’t require much time, but getting to the location is the part that takes the most time and effort.

It’s the same in plucking strings on the guitar.

Plucking a string is a relatively easy task, it’s getting to the string that often takes the most time.

That’s why I’ve always focused on getting to the string quickly and efficiently rather than on the actual plucking itself.

In fact, if you have good speed in getting to the point of action, the actual execution of that action can be done rather leisurely, without hurrying.

And that’s what you’ll see good players do.

Even at the fastest speed, you’ll never see them hurry, in fact, they often look like they have all the time in the world to pluck the strings.

The next obvious question is, how does one go about developing speed in getting to the strings?

Finger independence, which I have written about before here.

This is not an article about virtuosity or guitar playing, but about another subject that’s close to my heart.

Although I teach at the college level, on a slightly different subject matter – guitar playing as opposed to high school math, for example – and serve a different clientele – college level students as opposed to k-12, the problems of teaching are the same whether you’re in college or in the schools.

I’ve been watching a few TV ads from Exxon Mobil lately.

Heartwarming stories about how some of their employees were inspired by their teachers.

That’s a bunch of malarkey. (Apologies to the VP)

Reminds me of a similar set of heartwarming ads put out by BP recently, announcing their commitment to the Gulf Coast and to America.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it is to be wary of people who are a little too aggressive in promoting their good intentions. Because you can be sure that behind that warm façade usually hides some other less honorable intentions.

But let’s get back to the subject at hand.

The greatest fallacy these days in education is that teachers can influence students.

I’ve written about it before. Teachers are not miracle workers.

We cannot make students learn if they don’t want to learn.

And if you’ve ever parented a teenager, or even a toddler, you’ll understand what I mean. Have you ever tried telling a kid to do something he/she doesn’t want to do?

Okay, how about inspiring students with innovative and interesting approaches?

This is the sugar-coating option. If students don’t want to learn, come up with ‘new’ and interesting ways to teach the material.

Who hasn’t heard of the super-teacher of the year, who’s been able to ‘inspire’ a whole class of reluctant students and turn them into overachievers with their ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘innovative approach to teaching?’

But how much effect have these super teachers had on the general state of education in the country?

Not much.

Because after all the media hoopla and the awards, and the Oprah appearance, and perhaps the Hollywood movie, test scores and standards continue to decline in the country.

Why?

Because you can’t base a whole educational system on a bunch of gimmicks, or as they call it, ‘innovative teaching methodologies.’

The general malaise in our educational system reflects a wider problem and is symptomatic of our society in general.

We are placing the entire blame for the failings in our society on teachers.

Instead of pointing the finger at teachers, how about looking at the breakdown of the family unit, how can students learn when they live in unstable and dysfunctional households?

How about looking at the lack of parental guidance as a possible reason why students don’t want to learn? Parents who are more interested in their own lives and care little for their children’s welfare?

How about looking at our entertainment-driven society and the value it places on having fun and partying?

How about looking at video gaming, and how it is turning a whole generation of children into mindless zombies who live in an unreal world of virtual thrills and highs?

And in the middle of all these distractions, where is the value society places on education?

And in the middle of all this, how do we expect children to sit quietly in a classroom and absorb the finer points of math or any other subject?

What kind of ‘innovative teaching techniques’ can compete with ‘Halo’ (or the latest hot title from Electronic Arts)?

To use a biblical analogy, all teachers can do is plant a seed and if the ground is fertile, the seed will grow and bloom into a tree. And if the ground is dry and infertile, the seed will wither and die.

So to all those parents who complain about teachers, look into the mirror first.

When was the last time you sat down and helped your child do his/her homework?

When was the last time you called his/her teacher and asked how he/she is doing?

When was the last time you asked your child what he/she wants to be when they grow up?

When was the last time you read a book to him/her (assuming they’re at that age)?

When was the last time you brought your child to a museum or did something to help them grow their curiosity?

When was the last time you taught them to respect their elders and teachers? (Because teachers can’t teach if students don’t respect them.)

In other words, what have you done lately to ensure your child wants to learn at school?