Springbreak is always a good time to catch up on stuff, and this week, I managed to catch up on some youtube viewing. Tired of the stop-start connections, and with the help of google, I soon found a way to download some of the videos to view on my netbook. Which led me to an epiphany about youtube as the greatest learning tool ever invented and to this short article…

Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation.

Let’s say you have a choice of two teachers and they’re giving you conflicting advice.

One is saying you have to play from the knuckle and move your finger into your palm as you pluck and the other one is saying you have to play with your fingertips and lift your finger up as you play.

Let’s say one of them is your teacher and the other one is John Williams.

Who would you choose to believe?

Yes, it’s a hard decision, and you’ll probably say you don’t deal in hypotheticals.

But let’s say it’s not so hypothetical after all, thanks to youtube.

You can actually have John Williams teach you, right there in the comfort of your home or studio – not with words but with actions.

Here’s what you need to do to study with John Williams.

First download this app, VLC media player (it’s free).

http://www.videolan.org/index.html

Next, go to this link:

http://en.savefrom.net/

And paste this youtube link into the box where it says download.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDlQE9djIxE]

Here’s the video:

Then download the video. I recommend MP4 360p for best quality.

When you’ve downloaded the video onto your computer, open it with VLC media player.

Next, go to the menu and select playback-speed-slower. This is a crucial part of the process. You’ll have to watch the video in slow motion.

And go to 2:55 or 3:18 in the video. These are two spots where the upward movements are clearest but you can probably find other places.

And there you have it – the great John Williams teaching you how it’s done.

So who would you choose to believe?

I don’t know about you, but all I can say is I wish we had youtube and VLC player back in those stone age days when we only had LPs and cassettes.

In an earlier article, I mentioned that these days, it’s fashionable to blame all the failings in our school systems on teachers.

And in this regard, I’ve been disappointed with the actions of our foremost education administrator, our esteemed President (who I voted for twice) and who I think is greatly misguided in his education policy by jumping on the bandwagon of teacher bashing.

Of all people, he should be the first one to understand that good students are not the result of good teaching but of good parenting.

Does he attribute his own success to the mentoring he received from his grandparents and the personal interest his mother took in his education getting him up personally at 5 am to do his homework, or to some ‘super teacher’ in his life?

(http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/05/01/dreams-of-his-mother.html)

In the article above, he himself said that “she seemed intent on raising a combination of “Einstein, Gandhi, and Harry Belafonte.”

In his infinite wisdom, how could he fail to recognize that this was the secret to his success and not some imaginary ‘teacher-of-the-year’ in his life?

But these days, it seems to be the trend to blame all the problems in our schools on teachers.

And even worse, to apply workplace standards and business practices to the task of educating our children.

In other words, to equate the education of our children with manufacturing products and running a business.

It is true, in most industries, if the products are not up to par, you can often lay the blame squarely on the workers.

For example, if you’re building cars and you’re getting recall after recall of those cars for defective workmanship, it’s not unreasonable to blame the workers in the factory for those defects.

But can we apply those same standards to teachers?

Can we apply factory floor manufacturing standards and expectations to schools and the task of educating our young?

On the factory floor, if you assemble a car, the results are predictable. When you put in a screw, the screw stays there. When you install a part, the part stays there. In other words, you’re working in an environment of predictable outcomes. What you put in is what you get out.

Teaching, however, exists in quite a different environment.

You’re dealing with unpredictables, because you’re not dealing with inanimate objects that are completely under your control, you’re dealing with thinking human beings.

(If you don’t know what a thinking human being is, try asking a teenager to take out the trash and you’ll soon find out.)

And here’s the crux of the problem.

The student is not some inanimate object that is completely subject to your will and control. It’s not a product rolling off a factory floor that you have 100 % control over. It’s a live thinking human being with a mind of their own.

Imagine if you will, a car manufacturing plant.

Cars are rolling down the conveyor belts, and you’re a worker on the floor installing, let’s say, the headlights.

Only this is no ordinary factory – in this factory, every automobile part is a live thing with a mind of their own.

So you try to put in the first headlight, but instead of going into its designated space, it decides to roll onto the floor.

You chase after it, and after some effort, you manage to get it into the space but now the screws refuse to go in. So there you are trying to persuade them to be good and allow you to tighten them, when the manager comes along and asks why you’re not doing your job.

It sounds like a crazy world but that’s the world of education.

You’re trying to do the best you can, but you’re constantly being sabotaged by students and administrators.

Truly a thankless task.

First, you have to try to persuade your typical facebooked-texted-friend-me-twittered-video-gamed-to-the-eyeballs distracted student – trying to persuade them that perhaps they should do their homework besides these other great ‘priorities’ in their lives.

Or on the other side of the coin, trying to persuade children who have no strong and involved adults in their lives, children who have been indoctrinated by popular culture that being cool is better than getting good grades.

And doing all this while having to justify your job by writing countless ‘learning outcomes’ reports, and undergoing endless evaluations to determine your dedication to your profession.

And on top of that, an unsympathetic President and other opportunistic politicians and administrators who would use teachers as scapegoats for all the failings in our society.

Welcome to the circus, otherwise known as the wonderful world of education in America.

I wrote “How to be extraordinary” two years ago.

The book is based on the three principles that have defined my life and career – do something no one has done, do it in a way that no one has done before, and sing your heart out.

After I wrote the book, I decided I would rewrite the book and place it in a more general setting, the original being overly guitaristic in tone.

The result is the new “How to be Extraordinary.”

(The first book is now retitled “How to be Extraordinary – for Classical Guitarists.”)

Like my other books, the new book is brief – 38 pages short – and to the point. No made-up anecdotes, just the bare essential points.

But why extraordinary?

As I wrote in the blurb for the earlier book, it’s hard to be noticed these days.

With over seven billion people on the planet, you’ll have to be extremely exceptional and special to stand out and be noticed.

This book offers simple strategies (or life principles) to separate yourself from the crowd, come up with your own vision of where you want to go and do it in an extraordinary way.

To read more about the new “How to be Extraordinary,” please follow this link:

https://philiphii.com/htbe

As usual, the 60 day money back guarantee applies to this book.

If you find that you have learned nothing from the book, let me know and I’ll be happy to refund  the $8.

For a limited time, I’m offering a special bonus.

If you purchase the new “How to be Extraordinary” before March 31, 2013, I’ll bundle “How to be Extraordinary – for Classical Guitarists” with this book – two books for the price of one. You will receive your download link for HTBEgtr after the purchase.

And if you have already bought “How to be Extraordinary – for Classical Guitarists,” you can download the new book free using your old password here:

https://philiphii.com/cgi-bin/dl_file.cgi?file=htbe.pdf

To purchase the new “How to be Extraordinary,” please follow this link:

https://philiphii.com/purchase/

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.