There’s an old Chinese saying that goes: “If you go to the mountain often enough, you will meet the tiger.”

What that means is, if you only go once or twice, chances are, you’re probably not going to meet the tiger, but go more often, and the odds increases that you’re going to meet it one day.

In other words, if you go more often, you’re pushing your luck.

It’s a kind of folk wisdom that needs no scientific validation or empirical data. We just know it’s true.

I’ve found that the principle works in reverse too.

And it applies to guitar playing.

If you practice one hour or two hours a day, you’re probably not going to get that breakthrough you’re looking for. To increase your chances of getting that breakthrough, you’ll have to practice a lot more.

So if you really want to meet that tiger (and that breakthrough), you’ll have to keep on going up that mountain.

And if you go enough times, it’ll appear one day.

I’ve written about letting your fingers do the playing, about walking them.

There’s a trick to doing this.

Think of walking. What do you do when you walk?

You put one foot forward, you put it down, you lift it, and then you do it for the other foot, and you repeat the cycle and you do it again.

The main part of the process is putting the foot forward. The stepping part happens almost like an afterthought, it just completes the cycle.

That’s the same sensation when you walk your fingers.

When you pluck, you put the finger forward, you place it on the string and then you pluck. But the plucking happens almost like an afterthought. You don’t actively pluck, you just let it happen.

Try doing this in Villa Lobos’ Etude #1.

First, make sure your fingers and wrist are light and loose.

Start the exercise by touching the sixth string with your ‘p’ thumb, don’t try to pluck the string, just release it, then find the fourth string with the ‘i’ finger, touch the string, then release it. Don’t try to pluck it. Do it for the next finger in the sequence and the next after that.

The whole point is to touch each string, not to play it. If you do make a sound while releasing the string, that’s okay. Again, the point is not to consciously pluck the string but to find it.

Think again of walking. Focus on putting the next foot/finger forward. Let the stepping/plucking happen like an afterthought.

Remember to do it very lightly. Don’t exert any force. Lightly touch each string and move on to the next.

Maintain a continuous flow. Don’t stop and start between each movement. Even as you let go one string, the next finger is already moving forward.

Again, think of walking, when you walk, you walk in a continuous flow of motion, there’s no stopping and starting between each step. It’s the same sensation when you pluck.

This is only an exercise. When you play normally, you’ll have to focus on the plucking stage, that’s a given, but you’ll find that you’ll be able to exert very fine control over the amount of tension you want to put into each stroke.

This exercise will help you focus your actions on the pre-plucking stage. It’ll give your playing greater accuracy because it’ll focus your actions on finding the string rather than on plucking it. It’ll also result in natural economy enabling you to move faster. And it’ll also reinforce the feeling of moving your fingers at your fingertips, of isolating your plucking right at the fingertips.

And when you master it, it’ll create an automated engine in your fingers. You’ll feel as if your fingers are completely automated and all you have to do is walk them like you would walk a dog.

One final note, this is just one of several techniques I employ in the right hand.

It’s incredible relaxed and produces a very light fluid sound that’s ideal for moto perpetuo pieces like La Catedral or Etude #1, when you just want to create a wall of sound and you don’t want to emphasize individual notes.

I just posted a response to a comment on youtube.com where I tried to summarize my approach to playing guitar in one sentence.

The sentence was, ‘Keep your movements light and small and focus on the long line.’

This basically summarizes the AOV, particularly the point about keeping your movements small.

Moving in small movements is the old concept of economy.

It’s just common sense. If you move less, you have less distance to cover, if you have less distance to cover, you can get there faster.

It’s a concept that is universally recognized, from the martial arts (Bruce Lee the finest proponent of the concept) to the new model of business efficiency, Lean Six Sigma. The ‘lean’ in the latter means doing less.

On the guitar, applying the concept is relatively easy.

All you have to do is to focus all your movements at the fingertips.

(This is a point I covered in some detail in the AOV. The concept applies to the left hand too. When you fret notes with the left hand fingers, isolate the actions right at the fingertips. The sensation is almost as if there’s a little magnet at the fingertips that make them want to ‘stick’ to the fretboard.)

When you play, focus all your actions in the fingertips.

When I play, I feel as if all the action is concentrated in the fingertips and all I’m doing is just wiggling my fingers.

It almost feels as if I’m just walking my fingers across the strings.

The concept of economy is a simple one.

Yet it’s interesting to note that some guitar teachers actually teach techniques that run counter to it.

One such technique is that of playing from the knuckle, Playing from the knuckle is inefficient because it isolates the movement at a point far from the points of action (where the actual plucking is taking place.) When you focus your movements away from the points of action (your fingertips, that’s where the action is taking place), you lose precision and economy because it’s harder to control what’s going on at the points of action.

Think of reaching out for a cup. When you reach out to grab a cup, you reach out with your hand (fingertip equivalent), not your shoulder (knuckle equivalent).

The second technique is the emphasis on the follow-through after the string is plucked. I’m not sure of the rationale behind this, but it does have the effect of exaggerating the follow-through, resulting in unnecessary and excessive movement.

If you’re not used to playing at the fingertips, it may feel strange at first, almost as if you’re not playing, because the actions are so small.

But once you get used to it, playing the guitar becomes incredibly easy, you feel as if you don’t have to exert any effort and speed just happens, you don’t have to force it anymore.

You feel as if your fingers are completely independent, as if they have a life of their own, and all you have to do is walk them through the notes.

This article came out of a lunch conversation with Dr Sam Logsdon, Chair of the music department at TAMU/CC. Sam is one of those highly enlightened individuals who also happens to be an administrator. I am honored to have him as a colleague.

The tendency these days, in many corridors of authority, is to adopt the objective approach.

The emphasis is on facts, data and evaluations, supported by copious documentation.

Objectivity is fine. It’s a worthy goal, but in itself, it’s missing one crucial element of the human condition – magic.

What is this magic?

It’s the indefinable, the unquantifiable.

But is there anything that is unquantifiable? And if there’s such a thing, why do we need to factor it into the equation? After all, we’re living in an objective world, and dealing with science and hard facts, not superstition or voodoo.

The answer lies in the human body

According to science (and hard facts) the human body is made out of chemical ingredients, which, if sold across the counter, costs about $4.50.

If we agree that we should concern ourselves only with things that are quantifiable and measurable, then that leads us to an inescapable conclusion, that all of us are worth about $4.50.

Yes, I can hear the howls of indignation.

But what’s the missing component that makes us think we’re worth more than $4.50?

That’s the magic I’m talking about.

When you put together a bunch of chemicals costing $4.50 and get a human being, that’s magic.

That’s the magic that we’re missing in our obsession with hard facts, measurable data, evaluations and figures.

Some guitar teachers seem to think that all they need to do as a teacher is make sure the student follow all the ‘rules’ of good playing and he or she will automatically become a great player.

Some administrators seem to think that all they need to do is make sure everybody follow the rules of the organization and they’ll automatically have a great thriving organization.

By that same logic, if we want a human being, all we need to do is go to the store and purchase $4.50 worth of chemicals and we’ll have a human being too.

They’re forgetting one basic ingredient – magic.

It reminds me of what someone wrote some years back, that you can go to pretty much any college campus in the US and find a composition professor who will be able to write a better fugue than Beethoven, better in counterpoint, better in construction, better in overall technical mastery, but who would want to listen to it?

Logic is easy, magic is much more difficult.

My goal as a teacher has always been to help each student discover his or her own magic.

It’s not easy. It requires you to be extremely responsive, to recognize the strengths and weaknesses in the student, to allow for unusual configurations, positions, to go against conventional wisdom. The focus is not on imposing a fixed system on the student but to allow him or her to come up with their own system, one that’s optimized for their unique situation.

It would be much easier to prescribe some generic formulas on hand placement, correct finger motion, which joint to move (I think the general consensus is the knuckle) and how much follow-through to effect after a stroke and leave the student to deal with all that information.

But I’ve never been one to shrink away from a hard task.

I derive inspiration from the fact that this bag of $4.50 chemicals can still play a tune, write a blog, spend time eating lunch with a colleague on a beautiful fall day, and strike a polemical note on the direction our data-driven ‘objectivity-conscious’ society is taking.

It suggests to me that my real purpose in life is to work on magic, and to leave the logic to the paper pushers, the bureaucrats, because they don’t have a clue as to what this magic thing is all about.

And of course, not to forget to supply them with all the ‘data’ they need, after all, they need to have something to do, to justify their paychecks.

I’ve been teaching for a number of years and the longer I teach, the more I realize how hard it is.

How do you describe the sensation of a technique to one who hasn’t experienced it?

It’s like trying to describe a place to someone who’s never been there before.

Like trying to describe Houston to someone who hasn’t been there before, you can fall back on analogies and say, “Well, Houston is a bit like Dallas,” (assuming he or she knows Dallas) but that still doesn’t convey what the real Houston feels like.

To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, “How do you describe the cold to someone who’s warm?”

If you’re not careful, you might emphasize the wrong thing, miss an important detail, or miss the big picture altogether, like the seven blind men of Indostan.

Zen masters like to use the analogy of the finger pointing at the moon.

Don’t confuse the finger for the moon. Don’t confuse the directions for the destination.

That’s what directions and instructions are, just fingers pointing at the moon.

It’s why Lau Tzu had to start with a disclaimer in the Tao Te Ching.

“The Tao that can be described is not the Tao, the name that can be named is not the name.”

And then proceeded to describe the Tao and name all its eighty-one names.

Perhaps that’s what we teachers should do too, start with a disclaimer.

“What I’m teaching are just words, to understand the real thing, you’d have to experience it yourself.”

And then try to describe or explain it anyway.

Control is essential if you want to achieve mastery in any field or activity.

You have a set desired outcome, you want to achieve that outcome, control gives you the tools to influence that outcome.

The problem is usually not with control but with too much control.

That’s because we all have a bit of the control freak within us. We think if we can control every aspect of our execution, we might have a better chance of achieving our goals. This need for control is especially pronounced in high stakes situations, such as when we want to master something as complex as the classical guitar.

There’s a term they use in the business world – micromanagement.

That’s what you do when you try to get into the details of your body functioning. You begin to micromanage your body.

When you dictate precisely to your fingers how they should play, which joint to move, in what order, how much follow-through to effect, you’re micromanaging your body. When you prescribe detailed instructions on how to hold the wrist, what angle to hold the hand, you’re also micromanaging your body.

You’ve already predetermined for your body how it should operate.

I believe we all have an innate body intelligence, that our body knows best what works for it and knows best how to optimize its inner workings.

When you micromanage it, you kill these natural instincts, you prevent your body from reaching its full potential, because you’ve preempted the need for it to discover those innate gifts.

Much the same thing happens in the business world. When you micromanage your subordinates, you kill their natural initiative and creativity, because you’ve preempted the need for them to think for themselves. You end up with a bunch of yes-guys who think their only job is to follow your orders precisely, and not much else.

Ironically, one of the things you lose when you try to control your body by micromanaging it is control itself.

Micromanaging your movements by enforcing a fixed system of playing on your body usually goes against the natural grain in your body. It creates conflict in the body. As a result, you’re much less likely to achieve control because you’re so constricted with tension.

So why do we still micromanage?

The answer is trust.

You don’t trust your body to perform its functions properly, so you think you can do better by giving it precise instructions on how to do it.

It comes back to the question of body intelligence.

Is there such a thing as body intelligence?

I’ll let two observations answer that question.

First, if you have an itch, no one can scratch it for you. Only you know where the itch is.

Second, I have yet to see one documented case of a baby teaching himself or herself to walk by following precise instructions on how to do it.

I’ve talked about two ways to let nature do your playing for you. The first is to use the power in a string to propel you forward, the second to anticipate each action.

There’s a third way and it is to consolidate your movements, to do many actions in one gesture rather than in many separate ones.

This is a concept I have written about elsewhere in practicing the tremolo. When playing the tremolo, it’s important to play the ‘pamipamipami…’ movements in one action. Don’t try to do them individually. That requires too much effort.

The analogy I often use to illustrate this technique is to think of knocking down a row of bowling pins.

If you have a row of bowling pins and you want to knock them down (for whatever reason), don’t try to knock them down one by one, that’ll involve too many separate movements. Instead, sweep your hand across the pins in one sweeping motion, and knock them all down in one action.

Now instead of bowling pins, think of notes. If you have to play a bunch of notes, it’s more efficient to play them in one movement rather than in many separate ones. This is particularly true for fast passages like tremolo and scales. Don’t try to play the notes individually. That’s too much effort. Instead play them in groups.

That’s one of the secrets to speed.

Consolidation is not to be confused with block or full planting. I have written elsewhere why full planting is to be avoided. It restricts the fingers and results in the clumping of notes.

The trick is to play freely, release the fingers one by one, but think of them as a group. As soon as you play one finger, move the second into position, play it and do it for the next and the next.

Yes, it sounds like the anticipation technique I talked about in an earlier post. That’s true, because it is the same technique, only seen from a different perspective.

The three techniques I’ve described of letting nature do your playing for you are just different takes on the same basic technique, which is to create an automated self-propelled engine in your body (in this case, the hand and fingers).

Another recording that is pure poetry in rhythm:

Part I:

Part II: