You’ve probably heard it said before, “There’re no shortcuts in life.”

It’s usually directed at people who are impatient at doing something, trying to get rich quick, for example. Or trying to learn to play the guitar.

Yet my whole life has been directed towards just that goal – of finding shortcuts in life.

When I was in high school, I spent almost as much time trying to find shortcuts to exam success as I did on actual studying.

And when I was learning the guitar, I spent an equal amount of time trying to find some hidden underlying secret to techniques as I did on actually practicing them.

The truth is, I hate wasting time.

Why take a longer way when there’s a shorter way?

In a sense, it’s not shortcuts I’m talking about; it’s taking the shortest possible route to doing something. But to some people, it might as well be shortcuts, because they will always take the longest possible route.

For instance, take two points in a city.

You’ll be surprised at how many people will actually take a longer route between the two points. They will opt for main thoroughfares when taking a side street would be shorter.

It comes down to life philosophy.

And my life philosophy has always been to apply life’s finite resources in the most efficient and productive ways possible.

In this philosophy, I have been guided by two things.

First, a healthy dose of skepticism.

Distrust anyone who claims to have the answers to your problems, because anyone can claim to be an expert in their field.

And nothing wastes more time then being stuck with someone who doesn’t know what he/she is doing. It’s like going on a jungle trek with a guide who doesn’t know the way.

The second point is to actively seek out the real experts. We’ve already established that anyone can claim to be an expert in their field.

Well, how do you separate the real from the cons?

From what they do.

Do they and can they actually do what they preach?

And once I find the experts in the field, I become their biggest fan.

I read everything about them, I watch them and dissect everything they say and do, to try to find out if they have any special tricks or techniques to make playing easier.

It was what I did with two of my greatest heroes – Glenn Gould and John Williams

The former, I have close to every CD he’s ever recorded and own almost every book, interview, and everything else that’s been written by or about him.

And John Williams?

I spent so much of my teenage years listening to him, I actually had recurring dreams of meeting him. And I spent a whole year after my jazz hiatus, trying to decode what he did – analyzing his fingerings and his technique –  trying to unearth some basic underlying principle in his approach to guitar playing.

What’s the point of all of this?

To make playing guitar easier.

Again, no point killing yourself when there’s an easier way to play something.

So if someone were to tell you there’re no shortcuts in life, it just reveals their total ignorance.

Life is full of shortcuts.

In fact, if you want to maximize your productivity and effectiveness, you owe it to yourself to find those shortcuts.

In my previous post, I differentiated between the physical and non-physical components of virtuosity.

What are the non-physical components?

I mentioned skill – knowing how to perform the task in the most efficient and effective manner, and knowledge – familiarity with the task. Both of these vital components come from experience.

For example, if you want to play scales on the guitar, you must have knowledge of the scales which includes fingerings etc, and you must also possess the specific skills (or technique) to be able to perform it. Without these basic factors, you wouldn’t get far.

But if these non-physical factors are so important, why did I leave them out of the AOV?

Because they’re not basic fundamental qualities; they’re task-specific – they differ from task to task.

For example, the skills involved in executing a flying kick is quite different from that of playing tremolo on the guitar, even though they both share the same basic underlying physical properties.

And it’s these basic physical properties that I was interested in when I wrote the AOV.

They’re the building blocks of virtuosity.

Lightness, looseness, fluidity… (you can read about the other principles here); these are key elements of virtuosity and absolutely essential if you want to achieve speed, power, and precision.

I mentioned in my last article how one word made all the difference in my attempts to master the rest-stroke.

Lightness – it’s so obvious and yet how many of us pay any attention to it?

But just check out any good player.

And I can guarantee you will not find a single one with a heavy touch.

And look at any beginner, and you will probably see that classic heavy beginner touch.

In fact, look at any accomplished person in any field, whether it’s an athlete, a sportsman, a dancer, a martial artist, and I guarantee you will not see a single person with a heavy gait or touch.

In fact, lightness is the key defining characteristic of the Master, the virtuoso.

Lightness is what makes a person look effortless. If you’re moving heavily, you’re in all likelihood not looking effortless.

But back to my earlier point.

How many of us pay any attention to this quality?

How many of us, when we do something for the first time, force our way, try too hard and generally become heavy in our approach?

I was not immune to this tendency. Even though my touch in everything else was light, yet when I attempted to play rest-stroke, it became heavy.

It took one word from Mr. Shearer in his book to help me recognize my error.

And that’s the amazing thing about life and about playing guitar.

Most of the time, the answer to our problems is right there in front of us, but we’re unable to see it.

And it takes a special moment, when all the pieces are in the right places, when we’re completely open and receptive; when that moment comes, it doesn’t take much – just one word, and voila! instant enlightenment!

So now that we’ve established that lightness is a key quality of virtuosity.

How about other qualities? Are there any other key qualities that you have to be aware of besides lightness?

The answer is yes, but you’ll have to read the AOV to find out.

A number of years ago, I wrote about the phenomenon of water freezing into ice.

It was an article inspired by a book called Chance and Chaos by David Ruelle.

According to Professor Ruelle, there is no scientific theory which can explain why water freezes at 0° C. If you lower the temperature of water, theoretically, it should slowly get ‘more and more viscous’ until it solidifies into ice.

But of course we know better, no such process occurs in nature. The phase transition from water to ice is sudden and instantaneous.

One minute you have water, the next, ice.

I’ve found that this sudden change of state is not so unique to water.

In fact, it occurs in almost all areas of life.

For instance, learning doesn’t occur in the smooth and progressive fashion as those learning experts will have you believe.

It occurs in sudden and unexpected ways.

You’ll be working on a problem, plodding on and on, day after day, seemingly without making any headway, and then suddenly one day, something happens and you instantly know the answer to your problem.

If it’s a guitar technique, you know exactly what to do to achieve the effect you want. One minute you didn’t know how to do it, the next, you do.

It’s what they call a breakthrough moment.

The question is; how do you experience these breakthrough moments?

In my earlier article, I mentioned practicing.

Practicing is the key to learning and understanding. By experiencing something over and over, you begin to gain familiarity with it, and eventually you get to know it so well, you know exactly what to do to arrive at the results you want.

But there’re other ways to arrive at the breakthrough.

For example, I’m a firm believer in the power of special insights.

These are those seemingly insignificant bits of information that eventually turn out to be a major part of the puzzle that makes the breakthrough possible.

Many years ago, I was deadlocked on the rest-stroke.

No matter what I did, how much I practiced, I was unable to get the smooth effortless rest-stroke I could hear in the good players.

Then one day, I happened to read Aaron Shearer’s method book. (The earlier version published by Belwin Mills, not the later Mel Bay version.)

In the book, Shearer mentioned that rest-stroke scales must be played lightly.

And instantly, I knew what I needed to do.

I realized that in my anxiety and over eagerness to learn the technique, I had been applying too much force in my rest strokes and making them too heavy. (Classic case of trying too hard.)

One word, and it made a breakthrough possible for me.

That’s what I mean by powerful insights.

As I reflect on my own teaching approach, I realize that much of my teaching philosophy has been guided by the same principle – to provide the conditions and special insights for those breakthrough moments to occur.

That approach lies at the heart of my recent series of tremolo lessons.

And it’s also the main driving force behind the AOV.

As I look back to my old posts, I realize I’ve been repeating myself quite a bit. Concepts like the automated engine, walking the fingers, snapping through the strings, kept on showing up in my posts.

Well, at least I’m consistent.

And it does point to one thing — that playing the guitar is really quite a simple matter. All you have to do is to understand the basic concepts behind the techniques and there’re only a few of them.

It’s one reason I haven’t been writing much about technique lately.

I’ve said most of what I wanted to say (with perhaps one or two exceptions which I’m reserving for my books).

But one of the concepts that I’ve been referring to, and which I haven’t written in detail yet is that of the tactile sensation at the fingertips.

To me, the sensation at the fingertips is everything.

When I first discovered the tremolo technique, all I could remember is that of the sensation at the fingertips. It was an unusual sensation. I remember the moment I found that sensation, my tremolo smoothed out immediately.

I was so excited by my discovery I decided to transfer the sensation to all my other techniques. It was a conscious effort. I had to re-practice all my techniques to get the sensation into my fingertips when I played them.

I remember that to get the sensation, the nail length had to just right and I had to make sure I hadn’t washed my face that day, because if I had washed my face, there wouldn’t be enough grease on my face to oil my fingertips. (Yes, part of the sensation is that the fingertips should be able to slide past the string effortlessly, with minimum resistance, although with a slight catch in the finger nails.)

So what’s this sensation?

It’s the sensation of complete relaxation at your fingertips. (I’m talking about the tip joint here.)

You feel as if you have full control over your tip joint. No matter how fast the tempo, you’re able to place your fingertip on the string and pluck each one of them individually and deliberately.

This gives you great control over every note, at any tempo.

You feel a slight give at the fingertips, you allow it to relax, and you snap away at the moment of plucking.

As the finger snaps away, you feel the string sliding past the fingertip with a slight catch just before it clears the string. It all happens easily and effortlessly.

Perhaps the most important of these factors is that you have to focus your movements not in the knuckles, but right at the fingertips when you play.

The beauty is of the technique is there’s absolutely no hurry. Even at the fastest tempo, you feel as if you have all the time to pluck the strings.

So if the tactile sensation is such a crucial part of finger plucking technique, how come no one has ever mentioned it before?

It’s a good question. I’ve often wondered about it myself.

Years ago, I was talking about teaching with a good friend and she made a remark that has stayed with me to this day.

She said, “Why are you giving away all your secrets, shouldn’t you hold back at least one technique?”

And then she made a reference to the old martial arts masters.

Legend has it that every martial arts master in ancient times held back at least one technique from his students. The fear was that if you taught everything to your students, one day, one of them might come back to kill you.

If you held back one secret, you’ll have at least one advantage over him. (This is something perhaps Obi-Wan Kenobi should’ve kept in mind.)

It was a good thought, but since I didn’t expect any future guitar dueling contests with my ex-students, I decided to go ahead and keep on revealing all my secrets to my students.

And it was bad teaching philosophy anyway. If every successive generation held back at least one secret, where would the state of the art be in a few generations?

I’ve brought the same open philosophy to this blog and to my books.

Everything I know, everything I’ve learned is here in my books, and in these posts.

And somewhere, I suspect someone is asking the same question that my friend asked years ago — why am I revealing all my secrets to the world?

Because I believe knowledge is meant to be shared. It’s not meant to be hoarded, held to the chest like some secret weapon. The more one shares, the better for the state of the art.

The method I just described in the previous article is a vision-driven approach to learning, as opposed to the systematic step-by-step approach.

The vision approach requires two things.

First, a strong vision of where you want to go, and second, a do-whatever-you-can attitude to getting there.

For some, the approach may seem too unstructured, but to me, it’s the most effective way to learn and to achieve your goals.

For example, my Bach CD – I had a clear vision of what I wanted the CD to be before I could play a note of it, and then I figured out the way to get there.

Same thing with everything else I’ve worked on.

When I first heard John Williams play Asturias, I was amazed at the sound he was able to produce with just four fingers and six strings.

Guided only with the sound in my mind, I set out to discover the techniques behind it and many of the concepts I described on this blog are derived from that search.

It’s like a baby seeing adults walking around, and saying to himself/herself, that looks like a fun thing to do and then he/she just gets up and does it too (but not after falling a number of times).

A fundamental requirement to this approach is trust – trusting in the body’s innate ability to learn and teach itself.

To me, the structured approach is too rigid and preempts the many happy accidents that create magic in life.

You may get to where you want to go, but it’s never as good or as natural as the vision-driven approach.

Think of finding your way in an unfamiliar city.

You can take one of two ways to get around.

You can follow carefully prescribed paths and you may get to where you want to go, but you’ll never get to know the city as well as someone who follows his heart and finds his way around the city through instinct and through trial and error.

For instance, suppose you’re going your way one day, and you see this side street.

Now if you follow the prescribed paths, you will tell yourself not to bother, and you will go your usual way.

But if you follow your instincts, you’ll become curious and decide to go into that street. It could lead you to a dead end but it could also lead you to a shorter and easier way to get to where you want to go.

And who knows, you might even find an unexpected music store along the way, or discover a great restaurant or café.

As an addendum to my previous article, here’s a guide to hunting for that perfect tremolo.

First, forget everything you’ve been told or taught about the tremolo. Forget all the theories and finger exercises. This is important. You must start with a blank slate.

Next, go to youtube and find the most perfect tremolo you can find there. (Here’s a hint, someone with the last name of Williams or Romero might be a good place to start.)

Listen to that tremolo, absorb it into your subconscious, know it so well you can hear it in your sleep.

Now, take up your guitar and try to recreate that tremolo in your fingers.

It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t sound quite like it yet. You’re just starting on your hunt, and you can’t expect to find your prey immediately.

Keep on doing it.

First thing in the morning, pick up your guitar and play the tremolo. Last thing at night, pick up that guitar and play the tremolo, and in between, whenever you get the chance, pick up the guitar and play the tremolo.

And keep on listening to that model on youtube.

And keep on playing.

The important thing is to have no preconceptions on how it’s supposed to be done. Rely totally on the sound model in your head, the one you’ve absorbed from youtube.

And be flexible. Be creative in your approach, dismiss nothing, everything is worth trying, give it some time to work, and if it doesn’t work, try another approach.

And all the time, keep the sound of that perfect tremolo in your mind, and let it guide you.

Every morning, before you start to practice, tell yourself this could be the day you get it. And don’t be discouraged if at the end of the day, it hasn’t happened yet.

Remember, nature doesn’t give up its abundance easily.

But somewhere out there, is that great tremolo of yours, waiting for you. And if you keep on doing it, playing the tremolo every day, trying to recreate that sound model in your fingers, you will find it one day.

It may take a year, it may take two, but if you keep on trying, you will get it.

That’s a guarantee.

Why am I so sure?

Because I have seen the process work many times.

Here’s how I think it works.

The tremolo is dependent on a combination of factors coming together.

The only way to arrive at this combination is through experiencing, through practice.

The strategy here is to have a sound model in your head and then rely on your body intelligence to show you how to produce that sound model in your fingers.

The critical factor here is to keep a totally open mind and have no preconceptions.

Only by opening your mind up to all the different possibilites in techniques, in positions, in approaches will you be able to find that magic combination that will produce that great tremolo for you.

The bottom line, of course, is practice—experiencing the sensation of fingers against strings, the tautness in the strings, learning how to play your fingertips against them, and generally becoming so familiar with the sensations, eventually you master every one of their nuances.