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.

In the world of providing instrumental music lessons, there’s an unwritten code out there.

Let’s say you’re a musician turned businessperson and you want to start a private music school. You rent the premises, you do the advertising, you pay the bills, and you hire teachers to teach for you and you split the takings with them 50-50.

Fair enough. You have overheads and you also need to make a profit. Without you, the school wouldn’t exist, without the teachers, the school wouldn’t exist either. 50-50 is fair.

It’s amazing how universal this business model is. I’ve taught in music schools in Germany, Malaysia, and New Zealand and 50-50 seems to be the magic number. But there’re exceptions. I’ve even been paid up to 70 percent and I know there’s a music school here that actually pays 75 percent to their teachers.

Now, suppose a businessperson comes along and he decides to change this model to 75-25, in his favor. (Without naming names, I know of at least one establishment that’s doing this.)

Let’s say he’s surveyed the market and he’s discovered that there’re a lot of hungry music students who would take the job even at 25 percent. Especially since some of them are working minimum wage jobs at the local McDonalds.

In his mind, teaching guitar is no different from flipping hamburgers and he reasons he’s doing these hungry music students a favor by offering them a job that pays more than minimum wage.

(For our discussion, let’s say that the going rate for lessons is $40 per hour lesson or $20 per half-hour lesson. 25 percent of $40 is $10, much better than the minimum wage of $7.25.)

Here we come to the basic question of fairness. Which is what the occupy movement is all about.

Fairness depends on who you ask.

If you were to ask the teachers, they would probably say it’s not fair, if you were to ask a businessperson, he would probably say it’s fair, he has a right to make a profit.

As a teacher, you can probably guess where I stand on this issue.

To me, it’s clear that teaching guitar is not the same as flipping hamburgers. It takes years of practice and training for someone to get to the point where he can sit down and teach someone to play guitar. (In some cases, four years of college with all the attached costs.) It takes less than ten minutes to teach a person to flip a hamburger.

You decide if it’s fair to equate teaching guitar with flipping hamburgers.

I agree that the profit motive is important. Businesses exist to make a profit. But how much profit is reasonable profit and how much is greed?

If the only motive in businesses is to make a profit, I would say, why not go all the way? Why stop at 25 percent? Why not zero percent? They did that years ago. It’s called slavery.

I probably have the biggest collection of the Tao Te Ching in Texas. This photo of my bookshelf will attest to that. Twenty-five different versions in the photo with at least one stray version which I couldn’t locate.

What is it about this ancient text that holds such fascination for me?

I had never given it much thought until I found one of my latest additions in a bookstore recently – Chad Hansen’s new translation. (The striking blue book in the photo.)

I normally don’t get excited by new books, especially new translations of the Tao Te Ching. They follow pretty much the same pattern, the same formulaic approach. But Mr. Hansen’s version caught my eye immediately.

The standard procedure for pretty much the past hundred years has been to translate the second character ‘te’ as ‘virtue,’ (some have also translated it as ‘power’) but in his new translation, Mr. Hansen translated it as ‘virtuosity.’

Now you can see why I was so excited.

I suddenly saw my two biggest passions in life – the Tao Te Ching and virtuosity – converging in one place.

I decided to google ‘te’ and ‘virtuosity’ and I found that other authors have also latched on to this new translation of ‘te.’ Mr. Hansen is not so unique after all.

But who started this trend? Who was the first to have the nerve to buck over one hundred years of literary tradition and change the translation of ‘te’ from ‘virtue’ to ‘virtuosity?’ I have yet to find the answer. Perhaps it is Mr. Hansen himself.

It doesn’t matter, but it clarified everything for me.

I suddenly understood why I have been so fascinated with the book since I discovered it years ago in the school library. It’s because it mirrors perfectly my fascination with virtuosity. All these years, I had always intuitively sensed that the TTC is a manual on virtuosity, and not the heavy philosophical tract that it’s made out to be by scholars.

So does that make my AOV obsolete?

No, the AOV deals with the nuts and bolts of achieving virtuosity. It is an eminently practical book.

While the TTC approaches virtuosity from a more philosophical standpoint, and is mostly a collection of aphorisms about achieving virtuosity.

If you’re interested in Mr. Hansen’s translation, here’s a link to one of his earlier versions:

http://terebess.hu/english/tao/hansen.html

The printed version differs slightly from this online version.

My good friend Miguel de Maria asked me if I could write a few words on how to prepare pieces for performance. I really don’t have much to say as I don’t have any fixed system, so I thought I’ll just share some general observations on what I’ve seen others do.

Over the past years, I’ve hired a number of handymen and repairmen and one thing I’ve noticed, they all seem to have different levels of commitment and standards when it comes to their work.

Some take a lot of care in what they do, they would stand back, admire what they’ve done, and they would not stop until they’re fully satisfied with their work, while others would simply slapdash the job together and call it finished and leave.

What do handymen and repairmen have to do with preparing pieces for performance, you ask?

Quite a bit, in fact.

I’ve noticed the same varying levels of dedication and commitment in players when it comes to preparing pieces for commitment.

For instance, some players are just concerned with notes.

They will simply learn the notes and they think they’re ready for prime time. They totally ignore rhythm (and other aspects of music) and they play without any reference to a rhythmic pulse.

If you were to ask them to tap their foot when they play, they will be unable to do so because they have no idea where the beat is. This is the first level of commitment.

At the second level, you find players who are a little more sophisticated. They will faithfully read the notes and rhythms, but they totally ignore fingerings – left-hand or right-hand. In fact, you will see them grabbing the first notes they can find with their fingers when they play.

At the third level, players become aware of the need for good left-hand fingerings so they take time to read them in the score and apply them. Some will even come up with their own fingerings.

But they’re impatient to learn the piece, so they ignore right-hand fingerings because they don’t think it’s important. And because they don’t have any thought-out right-hand fingerings, they often end up playing with the same right-hand finger on consecutive notes.

This may work okay during practice but they quickly find that the repeated use of the same finger on consecutive notes can create havoc during performances.

At the fourth level, players become even more sophisticated. They take care reading the notes and their rhythmic values. They work on fingerings – left hand and right hand – and if you were to look at their working scores, it’s full of penciled-in fingerings for the left hand and right hand.

But there’re no dynamic and expressive markings. They’re so focused on the technicalities of executing the music, they haven’t put much thought into expression. Their playing is stiff and dry and mechanical.

At the fifth level, players have all the fundamentals in place, they make sure they read the notes and rhythmic values carefully. They invest time in finding out the best fingerings that will allow them to execute the notes in the most efficient ways possible.

And they analyze the music and come up with a clear plan of execution. Their scores are full of fingerings, dynamics, and other expressive markings.

And when they play, you feel as if they know exactly what they want to do in the music. Their playing is full of shadings and dynamic contrasts, with clearly defined climaxes and cadences.

But something is missing still. Their music doesn’t sound right. It’s almost as if they have learned all the words but they’re pronouncing them all wrong.

At the sixth level, players take care of all the basics – notes, rhythms, fingerings, dynamics, articulations, sectional contrasts etc.

But they go one step further. They spend time immersing themselves in the music they’re playing. And they do this in a fundamental way – through listening.

If they play South American music, they will listen to all the South American musicians they can find, from popular to folk to classical. If they play Fernando Sor, they will spend time absorbing the music of Mozart and other Classical composers, and if they play Tarrega, they will listen to Chopin and other Romantic composers.

They know music is not just a bunch of dots on a page but a living vibrant thing and to make it come alive, you must immerse yourself in it and feel it at your very core.

So they listen and they practice, and they don’t stop until they’re able to get the music to sound just right, with all its natural inflections and nuances.

To go back to that language analogy, until they’re able to speak it like the natives.

Six very generalized approaches, each one reflecting a different level of commitment and priority.

It’s not easy to be a guitarist these days. Good guitar players are a dime a dozen. Just check out youtube and you’ll see what I mean.

So how do you make an impact? How do you stand out from the crowd?

You become extraordinary.

And that’s the subject of my latest book, “How to be Extraordinary.”

The book is drawn on my experiences in the trenches and learned from the greats. It’s guided me in my own career, both in my programming and in my CDs.

If you’re an up-and-coming artist, the book is especially relevant to you. Because it explains the processes you need to go through, to get noticed in an increasing crowded field.

If you already own an earlier version of the AOV, you might recognize the title from a chapter in those earlier versions. The book expands on the ideas in that chapter.

As usual, the 60 day guarantee applies. If you don’t think you’ve learned anything from the book, let me know within 60 days and I’ll issue you a full refund.

To order the book, please click on this link:

https://philiphii.com/purchase/

I’ve always been at odds with some of my colleagues over teaching philosophy.

Years ago, one of them even came up to me and told me point-blank, so you’re the guy with the weird ideas.

Well, if you call a flexible approach weird, then I plead guilty.

I believe in a flexible approach to teaching.

The core of my teaching is based on the belief that each student is unique and that we should customize the method to fit the individual rather than fit the student to the method.

One example is that of keeping the right-hand wrist in a straight line.

I’ve never believed in this straight wrist rule in right hand positioning because it’s just plain too rigid and don’t take into account each student’s unique physiology.

I won’t go into the details here because I’ve written about it quite exhaustively over the years.

In one of my last ruminations on the subject, I quoted a story from Osho about a mad king who tried to make everyone fit the length of his guest bed by either stretching them or chopping off their feet.

Well, as it turns out, the story is from Greek mythology about a certain man named Procustes. (Thanks to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and The Bed of Procustes for pointing this out in the latter.)

So the need to enforce rigid ideas and exert absolute control is not such a recent phenomenon after all.

Such heartwarming news.

The thing of course, is that it’s much harder to teach from a flexible standpoint.

You’ll have to make many decisions, you’ll have to possess a multitude of solutions, and you also have to have the creativity to come up with new ones when the need arises.

Because there’s always the unexpected student with unusual needs.

For instance, this semester, for the first time in my teaching career, I came across a student who has a missing tendon in his right hand. This genetic condition prevents him from using his thumb in the ‘normal’ way.

Yes, it’s so much easier to teach the rigid way.

Because all you need is one method, one solution for everyone.

And you apply it across the board, no exceptions, no special considerations. One blanket implementation.

On the surface, it might seem that such a one-size-fits-all approach will have some advantages.

It has a clear structure — you’ll look organized to the student and will appear to know exactly what you’re doing. (The other way will make you appear to be improvising as you teach, without any fixed method.)

And that uniformity of approach, it shows no ‘favoritism’ – everyone gets the same dosage of attention and material.

But to me, the structure and uniformity is just a cover for laziness.

Because you’ve essentially abdicated your teaching duties and deferred them to a ‘higher authority.’

And all you’re doing is dispensing the prescriptions from the higher authority and making sure students follow them faithfully.