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.

I’ve become a big fan of pop psychology lately, especially in the self-help department.

True, there’re a lot of wacky ideas, you’ll have to separate the wheat from the fluff, but there’s a lot of wisdom in it also.

Take for instance, the concept of abundance.

This is a concept that has floated around since the early 20^th century.

It basically says that the universe is abundant, and that everything you need is already out there, provided for by nature.

When I first read it, my initial reaction was skepticism.

If nature is so abundant, why is there so much poverty in the world?

But after having pondered on it for a few years, I realize that the concept is totally rooted in reality.

The reason why some people are rich and why some are poor is because some have recognized the abundance in nature, and learned to tap into it while others haven’t.

It may be hard to see how the concept applies to guitar playing, but it does.

To rephrase the question, why is it that some people become good players and others don’t?

The answer is the same; some people have learned to tap into their natural playing ability (their natural guitar abundance) while others haven’t.

We can paraphrase the law of abundance for guitar this way:

Everything you want your guitar playing to be is already there within you; all you have to do is discover it.

In other words, you’re already endowed with the natural abundance of great playing, and all you have to do is find this gift.

The only problem is; nature may be abundant, but that abundance doesn’t come to you automatically, you’ll have to harvest it.

And this is the hard part – harvesting nature’s abundance – because it requires effort.

Picture to yourself some guy living in the middle of a jungle. He’s surrounded by food – there’s wild game in the jungle, fish in the rivers and streams, and wild fruits in the trees.

Can you imagine the guy starving to death?

Yes, he will – if he stays in his jungle hut, and doesn’t go out to harvest all that food.

And this is precisely the problem.

We’re all surrounded by natural abundance, the only problem is that some of us do not bother to go out and harvest this abundance and consequently, remain poor, or even worse, starve to death in the midst of plenty.

Over the years, I’ve met a number of guitarists who seem to think that the only problem with their playing is that they haven’t found the ‘magic formula’ yet.

And so they’re constantly trying to find that magic pill, that special technique, that new trick, and it’s one trend after another, one gimmick after another.

I actually took lessons with one of them.

Every semester, he’d come out with a new technique, a new gimmick. And he was so possessed with the idea of coming up with a magic formula for good playing, he never had time to practice.

It is true that there’re special techniques in guitar playing but you can’t substitute them for practice.

I’ve taught a number of amazing players, and one thing about them is, they are always playing.

One of them always had his guitar with him, it was like an extra appendage. And then there was this other student who was always playing in his truck; every time I saw him in the car park, either waiting for someone or for lectures to start, he would have his guitar in his hand and would be playing it.

There’s just no substitute for practicing.

I’m talking here about serious hardcore practicing, the kind that takes place the whole day long, sitting with your guitar, playing it whenever you get the chance.

This is something many people don’t realize, the tremendous amount of practice that has to take place before you can become a good player.

The second problem with nature’s abundance is that to be successful at harvesting it, you need proper tools and skills.

That’s one thing those pop psychologists forgot to tell you.

Nature may have provided you with a great deal of abundance but it doesn’t make it easy for you to harvest it.

For example, catching a fish for dinner is not easy if you lack a fishing rod, even harder is bringing down a deer without some shooting implement and good shooting skills.

This is where the analogy becomes useful.

To catch wild game successfully, you’ll have to employ the most effective means possible. There’s no point wandering around in the jungle, you’ll never catch any game that way. You’ll have to be totally focused on your prey and employ every means at your disposal to ensnare it.

The same is true of the guitar.

To master the guitar, you must be single-minded in your practicing, and you must employ every means possible to get at your desired results too.

Which brings us to the only thing that matters – getting results.

You see, in hunting for food, the only thing that matters is that you catch it. How you do it is totally irrelevant. (I believe this echoes that famous old Chinese saying about the color of cats being irrelevant to their ability to catch mice.)

And the same is true of playing guitar.

It doesn’t matter how fancy your technique or the theory behind it, if it doesn’t bring your fingers to the strings in time to do their work, it’s simply ineffective and perhaps you need to look elsewhere.

So why take this rather circuitous path to explain something as simple as practicing and doing it correctly (‘correctly’ being the method that produces results)?

Because I think it helps put things in perspective.

Every one of our ideals, (including wealth, including that ‘great guitar technique’) is already materialized, and is out there waiting for us, like some wild game in the jungle.

If you look at it this way, practicing is not just some wild stab in the dark, hoping you’ll find some magic solution one day, it’s a deliberate search/hunt for your guitar virtuosity.

And like any hunt, if you don’t track it down the first time, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it just means you have to keep on looking.

And like any hunt, if you keep on looking, you will find your prey one day.

That’s the other angle to the law of abundance.

If you search for it long and hard enough, you will find it.

Actually, that’s not a law, it’s a guarantee.

One of the most beautiful studies written for the guitar is Giuliani’s Study in e minor, Op 48, No. 5.

The piece employs a simple arpeggio pattern (p i m a m i) with a beautiful melody embedded in it.

The melody holds the key to the tempo of the piece. I usually recommend playing the piece without the arpeggios first, to get a sense of the melody, and then add the arpeggios later.

The arpeggios should be seen as just an embellishment of the chords, an attempt to simulate an orchestral string tremolando. Sor wrote about this special effect in his method.

The study is one of five that I recommend in the AOV for Guitar as essential practice for the right hand.

Here’s a video of the study:

One of the first pieces I learned was the famous ‘Romance.’ My version was taken from a book called “100 Guitar Best” published in Hong Kong.

Over the years, I’ve seen other versions but have been dissatisfied by them all, especially in regard to two spots where the harmony always seemed suspect to me. These two spots are in the E major section, measures 3-4 and 13-14.

A few years I managed to find a manuscript of a piece called Estudio para Guitarra by Antonio Rubira, an early version of the Romance. I decided to check the two parts in question in the version and became excited by what I found.

In the first part, the version has a dominant 7^th in root position (B7 chord with ‘b’ in the bass). My first version has an ‘a’ in the bass which puts it in third inversion. Other versions have ‘f#’ in the bass which puts it in second inversion.

In the second part, the version has a I 6/4 chord (E major chord with ‘b’ in the bass). My first version has a dominant 7^th chord with ‘g#’ in the melody while other versions have a I chord in root position. The Noad version keeps it in dominant while taking out the seventh (B major chord with ‘g#’ in the melody).

The root position chord in measures 3-4 in the major section makes perfect sense and is consistent with the minor section where all the harmonies are in root position. Second and third inversions sound oddly out of place in this simple harmonic environment.

The 6/4 chord in measures 13-14 makes even more sense. It is perfectly in line with the harmonic conventions of the time and creates a smooth transition into the dominant chord. It also eliminates having a G# note against a B7 chord for three beats, which has a jarring effect and is not consistent stylistically with the rest of the piece.

Based on the evidence, it became clear to me that this version is the original version of the piece and I decided to relearn it.

There’s one more significant difference in this piece – the arpeggio pattern is reversed. After playing the piece with this pattern, I’m even more convinced of the authenticity of this version.

I just uploaded the version to youtube. Please check it out.

If you’ve read the AOV, you will know that the book lists six basic principles of virtuosity. These principles are universal principles of performance, central to everything we do.

At the end of the book, I described specific ways of achieving power, speed, and precision, utilizing what I call virtuoso reality principles.

One of the things I like to do is to read up on books by experts in other fields, mostly books by real practitioners, as opposed to those by theoreticians and armchair experts, to see if there’re any correlations, any confluences of ideas, or whether I’ve missed an essential point.

So far, I’m glad to say that everything I’ve read up to this point supports the basic ideas in the AOV.

And I was not disappointed by Tim Cartmell’s book.

Mr. Cartmell reminds me of two other great American martial arts exponents, Peter Ralston and Bruce Frantzis. All three followed their passion and went to live in China or Taiwan at one time or another to perfect the mastery of their art. And all three gentlemen turn out to be prolific writers and we’re all the better for it.

Back to Mr. Cartmell.

The book is in three huge chapters, basically three main sections.

The first chapter describes the different types of throws and basic principles relating to them. The second is about body use, and the third chapter goes into the actual mechanics of the throws.

Naturally, I’m drawn only to the second chapter ‘Body Use.’

Although written in greater technical detail and in more technical language, the ideas do not differ significantly from the AOV. In fact many sections support the AOV.

For example, here’s a short excerpt from the section titled ‘ Principle Four: Generate Power Through Stretch/Rebound and Rotation.’

“There are basically two ways to generate power without using tension or effort: the first is to allow an external, compressive pressure (to) stretch the muscle and connective tissue, storing energy which will cause the tissue to rebound or “snap back,” creating a pulse of force; the second is to allow the limbs and torso to rotate or swing like pendulums, generating centripetal/centrifugal force.”

One of the central themes of the AOV is to generate power through the release of tension rather than through its exertion. And the way to achieve that involves exactly the same process that Mr. Cartmell describes.

For example, in plucking strings, when your fingertip meets the string, allow it to flex or give slightly. Here, the string is the external pressure that is acting on the fingertip, stretching it, and making it flex back. And then, to generate the power, release the finger in an instantaneous action.

Interestingly enough, Mr. Cartmell uses the word ‘snap’ to describe the release of energy. This is the same word I use to describe the snapping action when we release the finger from the string.

However, I do differ with him on one point, but this is a small point concerning an analogy rather than a basic fundamental principle.

On page 41, he mentions that “Correct muscle tone is neither limp nor rigid, a coiled noodle will not snap back.”

But a coiled noodle is very different from a relaxed finger. The relaxed finger may be and should be limp when relaxed, but it is not a lifeless inanimate object like a noodle. It is capable of snapping back at any time and exerting pressure and force.

This is the same error of analogy that another author made. He said that plucking the string with a relaxed tip joint is like trying to play with a paintbrush. The analogy is off here too because a paintbrush is a lifeless object with no power and muscles behind it, unlike human fingers.

In the AOV, I mention momentum as essential to power and speed. On page 37, Mr. Cartmell echoes the same idea saying:

“When generating momentum (the key to power), tension serves as a kind of ‘brake’ which inhibits the smooth transference of momentum through the body, stifling power.”

Notice the word ‘smooth.’ This also echoes another key principle of the AOV – fluidity.

One of the comments (or is it criticism?) I’ve received about the AOV is that it’s too freeing.

To which my response has always been “is there any other way?”

It’s almost as if you’re seeing a runner struggling down the road with a chain strapped onto his back, and you politely suggest to him that perhaps if he removes that chain, maybe he’d be able to run a little faster and he says, “But it feels too freeing that way.”

Freeing yourself is the whole point of the AOV.

To achieve virtuosity, you have to remove all the chains that bind you and slow you down, and prevent you from moving at your natural and optimal speed.

But of course, if someone prefers to run with a chain strapped onto his/her back, that’s fine too, it’s a free country.