To expand on the previous post, a good way to describe the one path is ‘the sweet spot.’

You know what the sweet spot is. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, it is “The place on a bat, club, racket, or paddle, where it is most effective to hit a ball.”

Wikipedia has a more extended definition:

“A sweet spot is a place where a combination of factors results in a maximum response for a given amount of effort. In tennis, baseball, or cricket, a given swing will result in a more powerful hit if the ball strikes the racquet or bat on the latter’s sweet spot.”

In guitar playing, the ‘sweet spot’ is where everything is working optimally, where your hands feel perfectly right, and you’re able to play with maximum ease and comfort.

The difficulty, as I pointed out in the last post, is how do you know when you have found the sweet spot?

The only way to tell is with results. (And not how great your hands look, not how straight your wrist is, not how much follow-through you have…)

If you’re playing well, if you’re able to do everything you want to do and do it in front of an audience, that’s a good sign you’ve probably found that sweet spot.

Conversely, if playing feels hard, if something doesn’t feel right, if you lack security and accuracy in your fingers, if you have a hard time playing even a simple piece in front of people, that’s a sign you probably haven’t found it.

Perhaps the worst thing you can do is try to get someone else to tell you where your playing sweet spot should be.

You know how, when you go to sleep, it sometimes takes a little while to find that optimum position where you feel completely at ease and comfortable and able to drift off? And you’ll have to try a few different positions before you find it?

Well, you wouldn’t ask someone to show you what that ideal sleeping position should be for you, why would you ask someone else to show you what your ideal playing position should be?

Recently, I had a rather cordial exchange with one of the many online experts on guitar playing, and at the end of our discussion, he said something to the effect that ‘the master knows there’s only one path to mastery.’

To which I responded with ‘many roads lead to Rome.’

Actually, he’s right in his assertion that there’s only one right path to mastery, except that he got it wrong in one crucial respect, and that is, that ‘one path’ differs from individual to individual.

What’s right for me may not be right for you. What worked for Segovia may not work for you.

We’re talking here, of course, about details of technique, how to hold the hand, how to pluck, and specifically, in the topic under discussion, how to hold the left hand to the fretboard.

Details will always differ from individual to individual because each one of us is unique. Just as every one of us have a unique visage, every one of us possess unique physical attributes that determine the details of our technique, and what that ‘path to mastery’ is for us.

And the only person who can find out what that path is is you.

This point lies at the heart of the AOV, that the road to virtuosity is a personal journey of discovery, no one can do it for you. You’ll have to take on that journey yourself and discover what that path is for you.

But how do you know when you find it?

When all the elements described in the AOV are in place.

When you feel a supreme sense of comfort and relaxation in what you do, when playing becomes so effortless and easy, you don’t have to do much, you just hear the notes in your mind, and your fingers automatically do the rest for you.

And that’s the purpose of the AOV — it’s not meant to be a magic formula for you to attain virtuosity, rather, its purpose is to describe the vital conditions that must be in place before virtuosity can occur.

The first time I started thinking about it was when I was teaching at North Texas State University, now UNT.

I had a student named Anthony P. Anthony was just a freshman, and not even a music major. He had come from Houston and he had the most incredible gift. Everything he played, he made the guitar sing.

And in that singing, I could hear a ‘voice.’ It was a voice full of feeling and expression. At times it was plaintive, at other times coaxing. When he played, you felt like he was speaking directly to you.

After that, I began to hear other musicians the same way. In every one of them, I could hear a voice too. In good musicians, I heard voices with the same sensitivity as Anthony’s, voices full of feeling and expression.

And in others, all I could hear was a “blah blah blah blah blah.”

You feel as if they’re talking at you instead of to you.

Try it. Go on youtube and listen, not to the notes, not to the technique, not even to the music, just listen to the ‘voice’ behind the playing. You may have to close your eyes and concentrate real hard and then you will hear the ‘voice’ in the notes.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hosting three wonderful musicians at Del Mar college. One of them was Yury Martynov, Chair of the keyboard department at the Moscow Conservatory.

Yury Martynov at Del Mar College

Professor Martynov is not exactly a household name, but in the pantheon of great musicians, he’s right up there with the best, Dinu Lipatti and Glenn Gould.

At a private dinner, he played three pieces for us and I was completely floored. Never had I heard such sensitivity and feeling. The word is ‘magical,’ especially in his impromptu performance of Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1 (this youtube  performance is not by Martynov but it’s pretty good too.)

What is it about Martynov and Anthony that so captivated me?

Sensitivity.

Anthony was blessed with incredible natural sensitivity to the music he was playing. He probably didn’t know what he was doing, but he knew how to make those notes sing.

Mr. Martynov, on the other hand, is the consummate artist. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he creates pure magic with it, with great sensitivity.

So what’s this thing called sensitivity?

We know what it means in life, we use the word all the time. We say someone’s sensitive to the cold, to heat, to pollen, perhaps even to criticism.

To me, it means to be aware, to sense and know what’s going on, and respond to it, either consciously or unconsciously.

That definition is the same in music, to play with sensitivity means you must know what’s going on in the music and you’re able to respond to it and convey that feeling and emotion to the audience.

At the basic level, it means giving full expression to the melodic line.

Like a good actor speaking his lines convincingly, you must play every note and melody convincingly, and give it its appropriate emotional content and meaning.

But sensitivity is much more than just playing melody expressively.

You must know everything else that’s going on in the music, from chord changes to key changes, to every compositional device in the book.

If you’re going from the dominant chord to the tonic chord, you must convey the sense of resolution in that chord progression. Or if you’re playing an appoggiatura, you must give it that sense of resolution too. Or if you’re modulating to a different key, you must know the relationship between that key to the old key and be able to convey that relationship in your playing. (For instance, modulating from A major to C major requires a different treatment as from A major to E major.)

And you must understand the function and relative weight of every other element in the music.

For instance, main themes have more weight than secondary themes, and secondary themes more weight than transitional filler material. Melody has more weight than bass lines and bass lines more weight than accompaniment. And you have to play them all accordingly. You can’t play everything exactly the same as if they all have the same musical weight and meaning.

If you do, you’ll get that “blah blah blah” effect I wrote about earlier.

It does make playing classical music difficult, doesn’t it?

Well, western classical music is a highly evolved art form and no one claims it’s easy or simple. It’s a complex language in itself, with many special conventions and syntax and one has to immerse oneself thoroughly in the art to be able to understand and express it convincingly.

How does one go about learning all this?

From experience — from listening to other artists, understanding what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and then incorporating those things into your own playing.

But the most important part is to become extra sensitive to everything that’s going on in the music and be able to convey that understanding to the listener in your playing.

In his masterclass, Mr. Martynov said something which sums up his special musicianship perfectly. Talking about a Scriabin phrase, he said, “That phrase is very boxy [square], in your playing, you must escape that box.”

That, to me, is the essence of good sensitive musicianship, make the music come alive, make it sing, make it talk and escape all the boxes within it.

I’ve been reading this book on landscape painting by Ted Gould* and I came across his insightful remark – that technique can’t be taught.

This is a direct affirmation of my own long-held belief – that you can’t teach technique to someone, you can only provide them with directions on how they can go about acquiring that technique for themselves.

This is based on the same kind of logic that says you can’t eat a chocolate for someone.

Or hire someone to work out and get that six-pack for you.

Or practice for someone.

The key word is ‘experiential.’

To learn anything, you have to experience it yourself.

To understand how the tremolo is played, you’ll have to do it yourself, and if you do it long enough, the breakthrough will come and you will understand perfectly how it’s done,

A teacher can help you get to that point quicker. Books and instructions and advice from friends can help you get there earlier too (or maybe not, depending on who’s dispensing the advice).

But unless you practice diligently, all the advice you get is absolutely worthless.

Take the current brouhaha about the dismal state of our education, and placing the blame on teachers.

The misunderstanding is based on a warped idea of how learning takes place.

Going back to the chocolate analogy, unless students want to eat that chocolate (substitute that for ‘learn’), they’ll never get to taste it (substitute that for ‘acquire the knowledge.)

A simple truth and yet no one wants to face it.

These past few months, I’ve been doing some more in-depth analysis of the mechanics of the tremolo technique and I’m astounded by what I’ve discovered. It turns out that the technique is much more complex than I thought it to be.

It’s a veritable Swiss watch of guitar technique.

So many elements and factors have to be in place before you can master the technique. One element out of sync or missing, and you’re out of luck.

How does anyone learn how to put all these elements in place?

Practice and experiencing.

To describe everyone of these elements in detail would require a ton of instructions, and would probably create more confusion than understanding.

So I guess the million dollar question is, if technique can’t be taught, what’s the point of having teachers?

And closer to home, what’s the point of all these books – more specifically, the “AOV” or the “AOV for guitar”

Here, we come to the crux of the matter.

These books are not designed to turn you into a virtuoso overnight.

They’re like recipe books. You can’t eat a recipe book, but you can follow the directions inside and hopefully come up with a good tasting meal.

They’re like road maps. They’ll show you the way to San Jose, but unless you get into your car and start driving, you’re still not in San Jose.

On that ominous note, I’ll like to mention that after several requests for skype lessons and several successful sessions, I’ve decided to offer skype lessons to anyone who has purchased the AOV for Guitar.

Please send me an email if you’re interested.

*This is by no means an endorsement of the book.

One of my favorite activities during summer is to drive up the Santa Cruz Mountains to visit one of my favorite persons, John Gilbert.

I’ve forgotten how I got to know John. My first recollection of meeting him was having him fine-tune my Savino guitar for my Chopin recording.  I was having trouble with its intonation and John was kind enough to redo the saddle and fix the fretwork for me.

After that, I went up regularly to visit him, every summer, whenever I was in the SF Bay Area. And I got to know him well. Usually, we would just stay in his studio in the garage and talk guitar talk. He was a walking encyclopedia of guitar facts and knowledge and I was the eager student. And in between the small talk, I would play for him. I remember playing most of my Chopin nocturnes for him before I recorded them in 2002.

John was one of the gentlest and kindest persons I’ve ever known. I remember telling him once that I was looking for a new key to my Mark Leaf case (my only key had broken) and he spent a whole afternoon trying to machine-tool one for me, unfortunately without much success. Thankfully, our mutual friend, Andre, happened to be there and offered me one of his spares.

And then there was the time I brought the missus up to see him. When he found out that she’s a schoolteacher, he gave her a whole box of his specialty rocks and stones for her to show her students. These are machine ground stones, made with the same loving care he built all his guitars.

It’s March, the time I usually start looking forward to summer again, and to my annual trip up the Santa Cruz Mountains. But this year, it looks like I wouldn’t be making that trip. Thanks, John, for everything.

I was having dinner with a musician friend the other day, and the conversation turned to the subject of when is an optimal age to start playing the guitar.

The friend said something to the effect that anyone who starts playing the guitar after age 14 should really give up as it’s already too late by then.

I, of course, had to differ with him.

I know many players, mostly ex-students, who started playing at age seventeen, eighteen, even twenty, and who managed to get to a high level of playing.

But he had a point.

It is true that when it comes to learning, children do have an edge over adults, for a variety of reasons.

Children tend to be hands-on. They are less prone to theorizing and questioning than your regular adult, they just play, which means they learn a lot faster and more intuitively.

Children are also not afraid of making mistakes, of doing things ‘wrong.’ If there’s one thing that stands in the way of learning, it’s the fear of making mistakes. If you’re afraid of falling, you’ll never learn to ride a bike.

On top of that, children generally have more time on their hands to practice (unless they happen to have a soccer mom as a parent) so they practice a lot more than your average adult who usually have more commitments and less time on their hands.

In a nutshell, kids are able to learn faster and more effectively because they’re not saddled with the usual baggage that adults have to contend with.

But there’s another reason why people who start earlier tend to be better players.

That’s because they have a head start over someone who started later.

If you start playing the guitar earlier, you’ll generally clock up more hours playing the guitar than someone who starts later than you.

This is the 10,000-hour rule revealed by the great purveyor of common sense truths and half-truths, Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers.

In the book, he asserts that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill or to achieve success in any field.

As anyone involved with the teaching of skills would say, “Duh!” (And Mr. Gladwell had to take 336 pages to reveal this awesome fact.)

10,000 hours is just an arbitrary figure thrown out by Mr. Gladwell and the researchers he cited. But we all know the actual number of hours needed to master a skill depends on the complexity of the task.

If it’s flipping a hamburger, it’ll probably take less than ten minutes, if it’s in playing a Bach fugue on the guitar, it could take more than 10,000 hours.

Coming back to the person who started playing at age ten, if the person practices on the average one hour a day, by the time he reaches thirty, he would have practiced 7605 hours (365 x 20 + 5 leap year hours).

Now, if a person starts playing at age twenty, and practices three hours a day, he would have practiced 10965 hours by age thirty. (356 x 3 x 10 + [3 x 5] leap year hours)

You decide who will probably end up a better player.

I’m probably oversimplifying the case, but you get the idea.

And I did not take into account the first factor, that of approach.

This is an even more critical point than that of the second– that of merely clocking up hours on the instrument – because if you have the wrong approach, it really doesn’t matter how many hours you practice.

As I mentioned earlier, children tend to learn faster simply because they’re freer in their approach.

They don’t have any of the baggage that afflicts older players (unless they happen to have an overzealous teacher), baggage such as doing things right, following proper procedures, they just play and that’s why they’re able to develop such a free and natural technique.

But older people tend to get bogged down with extraneous concerns, concerns about doing things right, concerns about rules, about following the strict dictates of their teachers religiously.

Under these constricting conditions, it’s no wonder many find it hard to play or develop a natural technique on the instrument.

The basic premise of the AOV is that virtuosity is a natural instinct, all of us already have it within us, and all we need to do is release it.

And the way to do it is not to impose any strict rules on the body but to free it up, to allow our body to teach itself.

I’ve found that if you approach playing the guitar this way, you will naturally develop a very free and relaxed technique, and whether you’re ten or twenty or even thirty, you will get all the speed and dexterity you want within one year of learning to play the instrument.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you do not develop this facility within that first year, you would probably never develop it – unless, of course, if you bring yourself back to a more natural and freer approach, the one advocated in the AOV.

I wrote the Desiderata of the Guitar a number of years ago and had completely forgotten about it. That is, until recently, when I rediscovered it while doing some spring cleaning on the site.

I found the sentiments expressed in the piece as relevant as ever and fit well with the philosophy espoused in the AOV and decided to give it a new lease on life.

Here’s the desiderata, in slightly updated form.

Desiderata of the Guitar

(with apologies to Max Ehrmann)

Go placidly into the practice room,
and remember what peace there may be in playing the guitar.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with your guitar.

Keep your back straight, your fingers loose;
and your touch light as the wind.

Especially know that your body has its own secrets.
If you fight it, you kill its natural impulses.
If you impose your will on it, you subdue its talents.
Rather, let it lead you where it wants to go.

Let your music speak for you.
Do not try to impress your peers.
Jealous persons intent on finding faults will find them.

Avoid loud vexatious persons.
who will tell you their secrets of life.
The world is full of ‘wise’ men,
who hide behind a wall of self-delusion.
Ignore their words, listen to their playing.
Words are cheap, advice is easy,
but diligent practice is hard and great playing is rare.

Trust your judgment, do not follow the pack.
Crowd hysteria exists in all quarters.
Find your own space and believe in it.
Follow your instincts, for they will lead you to unexpected and delightful places.

Listen to everyone and listen to no one.
The great players and the not so great – they all have their stories.
Listen to them and take with you what you need.

As you gain in wisdom, do not be afraid to share it.
But realize that many have not traveled the same paths,
or drank from the same cup.
Do not try to impose your wisdom on them,
let them come to you instead.

Infuse your playing with magic and wonder,
and let it speak of the joys and tribulations of life.
One note played with love and imagination,
is worth a thousand executed with soulless precision.

Therefore be at peace with your guitar,
whatever you conceive it to be.
Practice hard. Strive to be happy.

As a concept, the follow-through has never made any sense to me.

Why carry on the stroke after you’ve already plucked the string? Once you’ve plucked the string, any movement after that is superfluous.

It also has an inherent flaw. It changes the target of the stroke from plucking the string to carrying the finger to some imaginary point beyond the string.

This runs counter to a principle that is at the heart of an effortless relaxed stroke (and of the AOV) and that is to release all energy the instant you pluck the string.

In other words, the moment of plucking must be the moment of release.

So where did I derive the principle? Mostly from practice, but also from observation. You don’t have to take my word for it, however. If the follow-through is working well for you, more power to you.

But if you’re looking for ways to relax your strokes, try the technique out. At the moment of impact, relax all tension in your fingers. I guarantee you’ll like the feeling of relaxation this produces in your fingers.

It’s no secret that I was heavily influenced by John Williams. Here’s a video of him playing Recuerdos which I have posted in an earlier blog.

Watch his fingers at 1.51 in the video. Note how little movement there is in his knuckles and the equally minimal follow-through in his fingers. But most importantly, note also the trajectory of his fingers, upward rather than inward (into the palm).

Here’s an old article about this very same topic in my archives:

The follow-through.