I’m in Asia, in the heart of Borneo, arrived about a week ago.

When I first arrived in Kuching, the capital city of Sarawak, I decided to go visit some of my old haunts downtown and was wandering the streets and alleyways when I chanced upon this old bookstore.

As some of you may recall, I was heavily influenced by an old yellow book when I was a boy and still harbor hopes of finding that book.

I did not find the book in the store but I did manage to find an old book on writing. The book looked like it’s been sitting on the shelves since I last walked that street half a century ago (well, maybe not quite) and the storekeeper was kind enough to give me a generous discount.

Somehow we started talking and the conversation turned to religion. This was perhaps not too surprising as the store was filled with religious books and other paraphernalia from a certain religion.

He asked me what religion I was. When I mentioned that I’m an open-minded person, he insisted again that I tell him. I told him I was raised a Catholic although I like to think of myself as a free-thinker. (I happen to think that most religions are pretexts for enslaving people and getting them to part with their money.)

He said, “Good, good, go and pray to your Christ.”

I was surprised by what he said. Our conversation then shifted to the religious strife in the world today and how some people seem to want everyone else to believe what they believe in.

“These are low level people, they’re the laymen,” he told me. “Real religious people will not insist that you believe what they believe in.”

Impressed, I asked him, “What’s the higher level?”

He said, “We believe there’re four levels. At the low level, you’re a layman, you want everyone to think like you do. The next level is chanting or as some people call it, meditation.”

Now I was really curious. I asked him again, “What’re the other two levels?”

He said, “At the fourth level, it’s closeness to God, to the Creator.”

He seemed to have skipped one level so I asked, “What’s the third level?”

He said, “Reality.”

Now, this answer hit me like a thunderbolt. If you’ve read my other posts you’ll see why. I’ve previously written about a virtuoso reality which is quite different from ordinary reality, a reality that can only be arrived at after much practice.

Trying to hide my eagerness, I asked him, “What’s this ‘reality?’”

He said “That’s the real reality. Before you meditate, you will not understand this reality. Only after you meditate will you understand what this reality is.”

I was absolutely mind-boggled, the parallels between what he said and the world of guitar playing were simply astounding.

From the laymen at the lower level (substitute guitar players and teachers here) who would insist that you do things the way they do, to the ‘reality’ of those who have reached enlightenment through meditation, I saw amazing parallels.

Even the act of meditation has its equivalent in guitar playing, it’s called practice.

I was so impressed with the wisdom of this man, I was about to take a photograph with him when some customers came and interrupted our conversation.

In the meantime, the dark menacing clouds that had been hovering above the whole morning suddenly decided to let loose its floodgates and rain was beginning to pelt down with proverbial cats and dogs fury, so I decided it was time to move on.

As I was about to take my leave, my new-found friend said, “Do you want to become a —- [name of an adherent of his religion]?”

He then produced a religious book, seemingly from nowhere, and told me, “Take this. You don’t have to return it.”

I was flabbergasted. Here I was thinking he was such an enlightened individual and he’s trying to convert me to his religion. Perhaps not so wise after all.

Seeing he was distracted by his customers, I quickly made my exit.

There’s a quality of playing that I’ve mentioned a few times time before.

It has to do with a certain sensation, a feeling at your fingertips when you play, a sensation as if the fingers are completely independent, able to operate on their own and fully focused on their targets, the strings.

They seem to be driven by some hidden force, almost a kind of intelligence that’s guiding them automatically to the strings.

In the left hand, this is manifested in a kind of ‘stickiness’ at the fingertips.

You feel as if there’s an internal force at the fingertips attracting them to the fretboard, almost as if there’re little magnets at the fingertips. You don’t have to do much, they automatically know where they need to go.

In the right hand, you feel as if there’s an internal intelligence at your fingertips, constantly guiding them to the strings. You don’t have to do much, the fingers seem to be able to play themselves, with incredible efficiency and precision.

The sensation is almost like when you want to scratch an itch.

You don’t have to look for the itch or make your fingers go there. You feel the itch and instantly your finger is there, scratching it. If you were to watch yourself do it, you will see that the movement is all concentrated at your fingertip.

How do you develop this internal intelligence, this ‘magnetic’ force in the fingers?

First, focus your playing at your fingertips.

Don’t try to ‘pluck’ the strings, just stroke them with your fingertips. The movement must be very small and totally focused at the fingertips.

You should feel as if you’re only moving the fingertip, wiggling them. That’s how small the movements should be. Naturally, there will be small sympathetic motions in other parts of the finger, don’t suppress them.

When you develop this extreme focused movements at your fingertips, you will begin to notice increased sensitivity in your fingertips. You will feel as if you have complete control over them.

The more you focus on the fingertips, the more awareness and control you develop. This control eventually becomes so automatic you don’t have to think about it anymore. Your fingers instinctively know where they need to go.

Second, anticipate. Focus on getting the fingers to the strings before you have to play.

No, this is not the old ‘preparation’ technique where you place your fingers on the strings before you play. That technique is too static.

This form of ‘preparation’ is fluid and dynamic. You feel as if your fingers are constantly on the move, moving to the next note, to the next string, propelled by some unseen force in your fingertips.

Try playing Etude #1 by Villa Lobos this way.

Make your fingers constantly go to the next string. Focus on getting to the strings rather than on plucking them. Let the plucking happen naturally, without effort, as you let go the string to move on to the next.

When you do this consistently and over time, your fingers will begin to develop a sixth sense as to where the strings are. They will move automatically to the strings as if they’re propelled by some unseen force in the fingertips.

I know the idea of finger intelligence may sound a little strange.

But the sensation is very real and is at the heart of what I do. In fact, I first became conscious of the principle when I saw flamenco legend Juan Serrano play years ago.

What fascinated me about his playing was the incredible precision and directness in his left-hand fingers, especially in the way he fretted his notes. When he fretted his notes, it almost appeared as if there were some kind of weight in his fingertips, some magnetic force in them pulling them to the strings.

One of the things I had learned from Karl Herreshoff was to apply strong pressure in the left hand. This is to develop strength in the left hand. Over time, this pressure becomes effortless as you develop strength. To me the idea of a strong attracting force residing at the fingertips was an extension of that same principle.

And I also began to realize that I had been applying the same principle in my right hand.

I had always played with the right hand by concentrating all my efforts at my fingertips. It was something I had gravitated to doing naturally, one of the benefits of not having ‘correct’ instruction in my early years.

I began to notice the same kind of focus in my right-hand fingertips, the same kind of directness and concentration of energy right at the fingertips.

That was when I began to realize that economy, efficiency and finger independence are all a matter of focusing your playing at your fingertips, not the knuckle, not the wrist, not even in your head, but right at your fingertips.

For me, this is the holy grail of playing, developing so much sensitivity in your fingertips, they begin to assume an independence so complete it feels as if they have an intelligence of their own.

This is a continuation of the previous post.

Most people think of economy as simply moving in small motions. But that’s just one small part of the equation.

Much more important than that is the aspect of efficiency in economy.

In other words, it’s not how small your movements are, but how fast you get to your destination.

Take two routes to a common destination, one is a small street with many stop signs, the other is a highway which brings you straight to your destination. The small street is a shorter route, the highway longer.

Which route do you think offers you greater economy?

Or take this oft-quoted cliché – the shortest route between two points is a straight line. That’s true if all you do is move from one point to another.

But what if you have to move back and forth between two points?

In this case, you’ll have to factor in the return journey back to the starting point and vice versa. If you move in straight lines between the two points, you’ll have to stop at each point to reverse direction to go back to the other point. That’s inefficient because it stops your momentum.

So the straight line may be the shortest route but it’s not always the most economical. The more economical and efficient way would be to move in circular motion between the two points. This way, you’ll be able to keep the flow of your motion going and maintain your momentum.

To translate this to guitar playing.

When we pluck, we seldom pluck just one note. The finger has to go back repeatedly to reposition itself to play the next note and the next one after that etc.

So part of an efficient and economical plucking strategy has to factor in the return journey to reposition the finger to play the next note or what I call the rebounding movement.

To do this, the most efficient way is to move the fingertip upward as soon as the finger has plucked the string and immediately move it back to get it in position to pluck the next note.

When you do this, you create a circular trajectory in your fingertips, a continuous flow of action in your fingers where they never have to stop even as they change directions.

From getting to the string to plucking the string to rebounding, to getting to the string again etc, all these actions are done in a continuous flow of action, giving you effortless speed and power because you’re able to keep the momentum of your movement going on, indefinitely, until you want it to stop.

So in your pursuit of economy, don’t get too fixated on just moving in small motions.

There’re other factors to consider.

If you want more power, allow your fingers to make the necessary adjustments to generate that power. If you feel like moving more to kick start a movement, there’s nothing that says you can’t do it. And if you have to move between several different points, don’t be afraid to take  a more circular path even if it means it’s longer.

And if you’re in the business of providing entertainment, you can add all the necessary frills and flourishes you want too, to make your performance more ‘convincing.’

The point, of course, is that these should always be done deliberately, and not because you lack refinement  in your technique.

The concept of economy is a no-brainer, few will question the logic behind it.

If you move less, you will get to your target faster.

The question is not its effectiveness but how to achieve it.

Many people try to achieve economy simply by trying to make the body move less.

If you’re plucking strings, try to make the fingers move less. If you’re fretting notes, try to keep the fingers close to the strings.

This method works to a certain extent, but it involves too much self policing – you’ll have to constantly watch your fingers to make sure they move in small motions.

It’s simply ineffective in virtuoso situations, where events often unfold so quickly you don’t have time to think, let alone monitor your actions.

There’s a better and easier way to achieve economy – play in such a way that economy occurs naturally and automatically.

The trick is to focus your movements at the point of action.

I’ve written about this before and in the AOV for Guitar.

To gain natural economy, simply focus your movements at your fingertips and you will automatically get small movements in your fingers.

This is what most natural players do, they move their fingertips when they play.

But sometimes this natural instinct can be superseded by other factors. For instance, if you’ve been taught to move the fingers from the knuckle-joint.

Moving from the knuckle joint transfers the focus from the fingertips to the knuckles which automatically results in bigger movements at the fingertips.

As I’ve said before, I’m not in the business of converting people.

If you’re playing from the knuckles and it’s working well for you, you should keep on doing it.

But if you’re dissatisfied with your speed and comfort level when you play, you might want to re-evaluate how you play and try to focus your movements at the fingertips.

The logic behind moving from the fingertips is simple.

Imagine you’re trying to scratch an itch. How would you do it?

Would you scratch by moving your finger from your knuckle-joint or would you scratch with your fingertips?

Or imagine you have to reach out with your hand to grab an object, maybe a cup of coffee from a table, would you reach out from your shoulder joint or would you reach out with your hand?

The point is, we tend to focus our action in that part of the body that’s directly involved in performing the action.

If we have to grab a cup of coffee, we reach out with our hand. If we want to scratch an itch, we scratch with our fingertips.

It is important to note that no action occurs in isolation.

When you move one part of the body, other parts will naturally move in sympathy. That’s just how our body works.

But the primary initiator of the action must always be the part of the body that’s directly involved in performing the action.

In the case of plucking, it’s the fingertip because the fingertip is what’s plucking the string.

Focus your movements right there, at the fingertip, and you’ll get natural economy.

Having defined our set of basic elements, let’s move on to the concept of the optimal way

The concept of the optimal way is central to the AOV.

In everything we do, there’s an optimal way that gives us maximum returns with minimal effort.

Take a mountain spring. If you put all kinds of obstructions in its path, dam it up, and divert it, it will not run optimally.

The same is true of our body. If we put all kinds of obstructions within it, tense it up, force it to move in rigidly prescribed ways, it will also not work optimally.

To achieve virtuosity, it’s critical we find the optimal way, the way that encounters least resistance and that utilizes our resources to the max.

The problem is, it’s impossible to define what the optimal way is.

Not only does it differ from person to person; within the same person, it differs from technique to technique.

On the guitar, playing scales will have a different optimal way from playing tremolo. The hand positions are different, the ways of plucking different too.

So how do we find this optimal way?

Through practice. As I’ve mentioned before, practice is self-exploration, finding out what works, what doesn’t. It’s basically getting the body to teach itself.

However, for practice to be effective, you have to do three things:

First, make sure all the basic elements we’ve talked about earlier are in place.

Second, make sure there’s no bias in your approach. In other words, don’t start with any preconceived ideas about how to perform the move.

And third, trust your instincts. Your instincts will tell you if you’re on the right track or not.

The optimal way explains the many contrasting styles and approaches between different players. Segovia, Williams, Yepes, Barrueco – you can’t find four players with more different approaches and yet, each one of them has found a way to make it work, and achieve incredible virtuosity in the process.

The optimal way means you have to take responsibility for your own learning. You can’t base your playing on someone else’s playing, you’ll have to find the way that works best for you.

The great thing is that when you do discover the optimal way that works for you, you will know it right away.

Because it feels so right, so completely natural. It feels like you were born with it. There’s no strain, no struggling, no need to keep checking whether you’re doing it right or wrong, you just do it and it’s done.

I’ve stressed the importance of skills in virtuosity.

In a way, finding the optimal way is finding the skills to work with your body. It’s understanding all the latent potential within it, and working in a way that optimizes all its possibilities.

Going back to our friend, Cook Ting, when you find the optimal way, you wouldn’t be hacking away at the ox anymore, you wouldn’t have to sharpen your knife every three days.

Because you know all the best places to cut and because those places offer so little resistance to your knife, you never have to sharpen it and nineteen years after you bought it, it’s still as sharp as the day you bought it.

The AOV is a compilation of the basic elements of virtuosity which I had identified over years of playing and teaching.

But as I wrote in my last post, you don’t have to take my word for it, you can identify your own list.

In that post, I suggested two ways of identifying these crucial elements.

Here, I’ll share a third.

Instead of focusing on our playing and on the playing of others, we’ll approach the problem from a more academic standpoint. We’ll approach it from the point of achieving goals.

What are the goals we’re trying to achieve in our pursuit of virtuosity?

It’ll be hard to list every detail, so we’re narrow them down to the most essential elements.

Which are speed, power and precision.

These three elements are at the heart of every human pursuit and sport.

Watch any martial artist, athlete, sportsperson, and you’ll see the same striving after these universal goals. (There’s a fourth element, endurance, which doesn’t concern us so much here.)

And among these three elements, speed is at the top of the list.

Why? Because the other factors are actually subsets of speed.

Power, for instance, is dependent on speed – if you can move faster, you can create greater momentum and this increases your power.

And if you can move faster to your destination, you can usually locate it more accurately, so precision too is a function of speed. More about these points later.

The thing about speed is, it’s a great rationalizer. It forces you to become lean and economical in your execution because you don’t have a choice. It’s either that or be left behind.

In thinking about speed, one way to approach it is to think of cars.

If you were to build a car, how would you build it so it’ll run faster and more economically?

The obvious would be to:

1. Make it light, build it with light materials.
2. Reduce moving parts to minimize resistance.
3. Lubricate moving parts to reduce friction.
4. Eliminate unnecessary components.
5. Put in a more powerful engine.

That’s just a list I made up. I’m sure real car builders have a more extensive list.

The point is, there’re basic things we can do to make cars go faster and there’re basic things we can do to make ourselves go faster too.

With that in mind, what are the equivalents of those factors we just listed above for cars, factors we can apply to our playing?

1. Lighter – we can lighten our touch.
2. Reduce moving parts – we can reduce movements in our body
3. Lubrication – looseness in our body so there’s minimum resistance.
4. Eliminate unnecessary components – eliminate unnecessary moves, unnecessary notes even.
5. Put in a more powerful engine – develop more power in our fingers.

I must confess that I didn’t derive my list of basic elements by looking at cars, I discovered them from years of teaching, trying to find out what works for my students.

But using the car model is a good way to help us define the parameters we’re dealing with. It’ll help us focus on the real issues at hand, the concerns facing all performers, which are speed, power and precision.

I’ve been writing about the basic elements in virtuosity.

To me that’s the way to go – identify these basic elements, work on them, absorb them into every part of your playing and let virtuosity occur naturally to you.

The AOV is basically my list of those essential elements, and came from my own personal experiences – years of playing and teaching.

But you don’t have to go with what I wrote. You can draw up your own list of essential elements.

There’re two ways to do this.

You can do it by analyzing your own playing.

Every time you feel you’re playing well, take note of what’s happening in your playing, the sensations at your fingertips. Try to identify what these sensations are and memorize them. Use physical terms to describe those sensations, terms such as light, heavy, soft, hard, flexible, etc.

Do the same after your performances too. If it was a good performance, ask yourself why it was good, or if it wasn’t so good, ask yourself why it wasn’t so good.

In other words, do a post-performance analysis.

Focus again on physical sensations, what you’re feeling in your hands and fingers, on your rhythmic control, and on anything else that you think made a difference.

Start to catalog these sensations. If you keep on doing it, you’ll begin to notice the same sensations recurring every time you played well, and when you didn’t play well, you’ll notice those sensations were missing.

Especially when you experience a breakthrough, try to remember what it feels like at your fingertips and replicate that feeling and you’ll be able to reproduce the breakthrough every time you play.

The second way is to watch good players play.

Watch their comfort level, their rhythmic control, the economy in their fingers, but especially watch their physical demeanor.

Make a list of all the things that impress you about their playing.

Perhaps it’s their speed, or perhaps their power, or their clarity or control.

List all these qualities down and ask yourself how they achieve these qualities.

For instance speed — how do they get so fast? Look at their movements, try to find clues that will help point you to how they achieve their speed.

Or power, try to discern what it is in their playing that enables them to play with such force and clarity, even at great speeds.

It’s important to note that you must do all this without any preconceptions.

Don’t superimpose your own bias into their playing. For example, don’t try to explain your own particular approach through their playing.

Be completely impartial, open yourself up to new ideas, even to those that may contradict your favorite points of view.

Watching others play is one of the best ways to learn.

But it has its limitations too.

You wouldn’t be able to know what they’re feeling at their fingertips. All you can do is interpret what you see.

That’s the problem with teachers who don’t play. They watch others do it and they try to draw their own conclusions based on what they see. Sometimes they get it right, but more often than not, they get it wrong.

For instance, watch this video of John Williams playing tremolo. (Go to 1:51 in the video.)

When you see this great virtuoso play, it’s quite clear that he’s bringing his fingers upward as he plays and there’s minimal follow-through in his fingers. This totally flies in the face of those who will argue that you have to push in your fingers toward the palm as you pluck and exaggerate the follow-through.

Theory and practice often diverge and none more so than this theory of the follow-through.

It brings me back to the first way, through practicing.

That’s the best way to find out whether something’s just theory or whether it actually works in practice.

Practicing to me is self-exploration. You’re trying out different options, you’re searching for the best way to do something and you’re embedding specific moves into your muscle memory. And you’re experiencing all this at a physical level.

If you do it long enough, sooner or later, your body will know exactly how best to perform what it is you’re practicing and in the simplest and most efficient ways possible. (I should add that to derive maximum benefit from it, you should bring to your practice the same lack of bias as you bring to your observations of other players. Don’t try to impose any preconceived ideas of what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ to your playing.)

No amount of thinking, theorizing, or arguing your point of view will give you this kind of deep personal knowledge.

When you achieve this level of mastery, this is the time that you should try to identify these basic ingredients that I’ve talked about, the basic elements of virtuosity.

And I’m positive you’ll arrive at the same conclusions as I did years ago, and come up with the same set of basic elements that I wrote about in the AOV.

I wrote in my last post that virtuosity is about knowledge and skills. If you want to master a task, you must know how to do it.

In other words, like uninstalling the old lock, you need instructions on how it’s done.

But where do you get these instructions, where do you gain these skills and knowledge?

The answer lies in a few places.

You can be like Cook Ting and gain this knowledge from constant doing — over nineteen years of carving oxes until you know every detail of the ox’s anatomy and you’re able to slice through effortlessly where you want to go, even with your eyes closed.

Or you can be like Cook Hii and have an expert in the field teach you.

Or you can just go to Youtube and watch others do it.

All these are important sources of information and knowledge.

But nothing can substitute for real practicing.

Practice is important because it puts you directly in the driver seat. You’re no longer just discussing it, talking about it, theorizing how best to do it, you’re actually doing it and experiencing the sensation of doing it.

And sooner or later, if you keep on doing it, the answer will come to you in a flash of insight, and you will understand how it’s done.

When that happens, you’ve made a breakthrough.

The breakthrough moment is what most of us live for. It’s like finding a nugget after years of digging, it makes all those years of toiling worthwhile.

And when it happens, you know straightaway you’ve found it. That you have the nugget in your fingers because it feels so right and it sounds so good.

You feel a lightness in your fingers, you feel as if your fingers are on fire, as if they have a life of their own. And the notes just ripple out from your fingers effortlessly.

These are key indicators that you’ve arrived at virtuosity.

You can also use these indicators to determine whether you’ve achieved the breakthrough too.

If you’re still struggling through the task, if it feels hard, if your fingers feel tight, if you find yourself rushing through the piece, or if it sounds choppy and uneven, those are clear indications that you haven’t experienced the breakthrough yet.