I can remember the few moments of musical epiphany in my life. One of the most profound is my discovery of Dinu Lipatti’s recording of ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring.’ I was struck by the easy languid feel of his rhythm and have tried to emulate that same rhythmic feel in my playing ever since. Here’s that recording, thanks to youtube:

The concept of anticipation is well-known in guitar circles. It is the basis of the technique of planting or preparation. (Planting or preparation refers to a technique of positioning your finger on the string before you pluck it.) To prepare, you have to anticipate.

In itself, preparation or anticipation is indispensable to good playing. It ensures accuracy and control. However, to be effective, preparation must be done correctly. (“Correct” here meaning delivering optimal results.)

The traditional practice of preparation is to place your finger on the string before you pluck it. This may work at slow tempos but it is ineffective at fast tempos because it stops the flow of your action.

At fast tempos, it’s crucial that the act of preparation does not stop the motion of your plucking. When you place your finger on the string, you must keep your finger moving even as you prepare each finger on the string.

Stopping your stroke in mid-action is inefficient. It slows you down because you lose momentum. Think of driving, imagine if you have to constantly stop at one red light after another, you lose momentum and you lose speed.

But how do you plant your finger without stopping your action?

The answer is in the tip joint. You allow it to give slightly at the moment of impact. This will enable you to stay momentarily on the string even as you continue to move through with the rest of the stroke.

Try this. Move your ‘i’ finger towards the third string. As the finger meets the string, allow it to flex slightly at the tip joint, producing a slight give at the tip joint. This give in the fingertip will allow the finger to stay on the string for a split second before it clears the string. It’s important to note that you must control the amount of give in the fingertip. Don’t allow the fingertip to give completely. There should a springy feeling in the fingertip.

This kind of preparation is dynamic.  It produces a relaxed and fluid stroke and will give you effortless speed. That’s because there’s no loss of momentum. You’re able to continue with the stroke without ever having to stop to prepare.

Three more points about preparation.

In fast playing, this kind of planting is very minimal, so minimal as to be almost imperceptible. The only hint that you’re planting will come from the sound. You will hear a slightly detached quality in the notes. This detached quality is actually highly desirable and essential for fast playing. It will give your playing the clear sparkling quality that you hear in all the good players.

Never try to force preparation. Allow the technique to evolve naturally in your playing through constant playing and practicing. In my teaching, I’ve found that most students develop preparation naturally, without having to practice it consciously.

Avoid doing full plants in ‘p i m a’ or ‘p i m a m i’ arpeggios. Full planting is putting all the fingers on the string before you play the arpeggio. It almost always results in choppy arpeggios. It doesn’t take much to understand this. Just place your thumb on a bass string and your fingers on the first three strings (full plant). Then pluck them ‘p i m a.’ Put the fingers and thumb back on the strings again, and play the arpeggio again. Keep on repeating the cycle. You’ll find that the arpeggio will be choppy and blocky. Planting in these kinds of arpeggio patterns should always be sequential

Finally, think of preparation as a dynamic process. Incorporate it into your plucking and most importantly, never allow the planting action to stop the flow of your plucking motion.

Nature is complex. There’s always more than one way to interpret its workings.

In my last post, I described how you can get nature to work for you by harnessing the power released in each stroke to create a self-propelled automated engine in your fingers.

Another way to think of it is through anticipation.

If you read the AOV, you’ll see that one of the key components of virtuosity is fluidity. Anticipation is central to that concept.

To create a self-propelled chain of actions, anticipate each action. Let one action drive the next one forward. Even as you finish one action, start moving to the next. Even as you pluck one finger, the next finger is already ready to strike.

Think of the pistons in an engine. When one goes down, the other goes up. This creates an endless loop of alternating actions, each one driven by the other.

The technique of making the fingers work together in tandem is crucial in two-finger scales.

When you play scales, don’t try to increase speed by trying to move the fingers faster. That’s too effortful and inefficient. Instead, use anticipation to drive the fingers forward. As one finger strikes, use the momentum in that stroke to drive the next one forward

It’ll create an incredible sense of forward drive and motion. You feel as if you’re being constantly pushed forward by some internal force. And the best part is, it’ll all feel effortless.

That’s letting nature do your playing for you. You don’t have to do much, just initiate the movements and let the fingers play themselves.

The secret to good playing is to let nature do it for you.

Nature always works effortlessly.

Take rain, for instance. It falls effortlessly from the sky, hits the ground, the sun shines, warms it up, and it evaporates back into the skies where it cools down and falls again.

Over and over, the same cycle. It never requires any energy, it’s all automated. Once set in motion, it keeps on going until something breaks the cycle.

That’s what good playing feels like. You don’t have to do much. You just touch the strings and the fingers play themselves, automatically.

Over the years, I’ve tried to understand the sensation and how it works, and I’ve discovered that the trick is to create a self-propelled engine in your right-hand fingers.

To do that, you must have an absolutely relaxed body, your fingers loose and light, your hand hanging loosely from your wrist.

There must be no effort in your plucking, you must pluck with minimal force.

Your movements must be spare and refined, with no unnecessary motion. This means focusing your movements right at your fingertips (not at the knuckles or anywhere else).

Once you have these conditions, play in big lines.

Don’t think of individual notes, think of the phrase instead.

If it’s a tremolo or scale, think of a stream of notes all occurring almost simultaneously, in one action.

When you play groups of notes in one single motion, each note in the group will seem to propel the next one forward, as if driven by an internal engine in the fingers.

Make sure that at the moment of plucking, you release all effort. The feeling must be a complete letting go. This is crucial. (Don’t try to push the finger through after you have plucked. This will only keep the tension in the finger and produce excessive motion after the stroke.)

Let your finger relax completely, and then use the power released to propel you to the next action.

Think of a rubber band. When you pull a rubber band, energy is created and when you release it, that energy is released. If you put a projectile on the rubber band, the release will actually send the projectile flying.

The same principle applies in playing the guitar. When you pull the string, energy is created. When you let go the string, this energy is released. Now, use this energy to propel your next finger forward to the next note. Repeat this action over and over, each plucking action setting the next one forward.

This will produce a chain of actions, each action occurring automatically and effortlessly.

This is the basic principle behind perpetual-motion type techniques such as scales, tremolos and arpeggios. You do not play each note individually, you create a chain of actions and let the notes play themselves.

Good playing is always light and effortless. You should never have to force your speed or power.

The trick is to tap into the nature’s effortless power and speed.

One of the secrets to effortlessness is to let nature do your work for you. Like using gravity to propel your actions, or the wind to drive your sail.

I heard about a region in China where all the bees have disappeared. Probably the pesticides got them. But what about all those fruit trees that needed pollinating? Without bees, the farmers had to collect the pollen and using a feather duster, hand pollinate the fruits themselves.

Now that’s effortful. How many fruits are there in a tree? How many trees in the orchard? And to pollinate them one by one by hand — that’s the very definition of menial and tedious work.

There’re a lot of roaches in Texas. Yes, I’ve seen them in other places before, the only thing is that in Texas, they’re super-sized, like everything else in the state. I used to call the exterminators and they would come and spray and the roaches would be gone, but then they’ll be back again after a few weeks, as if they were never gone.

The only viable option I found at control is to take away the one thing that’s attracting them to the house – food. Clean the countertops and dishes at night, make sure there’s no food lying around and they wouldn’t be so many of them running around the house at night. Instead of trying to exterminate them by force, create the conditions for them not to come.

That’s the secret of effortlessness – create good favorable conditions and let nature do the rest.

I read about this kingdom many years ago.

It had a crazy king. One day, the king decided to build a new palace and all his subjects would be invited to stay one night in it.

The subjects were excited.

They said, “Perhaps he’s not so crazy after all.”

The palace was completed. But there was just one catch—whoever stayed in the room had to fit the bed perfectly.

If he or she was longer than the bed, two strong men would come in and cut off the legs until they fit the bed perfectly. If their legs were too short, two strong men would come in and pull them until they fit the bed too.

Sounds crazy, but I know of a country where all the children are expected to behave perfectly according to rigidly prescribed standards of what is considered ‘normal behavior.”

And if they do not fit the model, they are medicated until they do.

In the guitar world, I know of teachers who demand their students follow fixed rules of playing. And if their playing do not fit the standard model, they have to modify it until it does.

One-size-fits-all.

So convenient for those dishing out the rules and enforcing them, not so convenient for those on the receiving end.

When we buy shoes, we do not buy them based on some arbitrary predetermined size and force our feet to fit them, we try several pairs until we find the pair that fit the best.

It’s the same thing in life and in guitar playing.

Instead of forcing our body to follow some predetermined generic model of what constitutes “good guitar technique,” we should find a method that works for us and takes advantage of our particular unique situations.

One of the keys to virtuosity I described in the AOV is lightness, a lightness of touch in everything you do.

Imagine my surprise on reading this excerpt from The Ultimate Happiness Prescription by Deepak Chopra (page 43).

Lightness of being in my body will be my indicator of happiness. If I feel heavy or dull, I will pay special attention, because these feelings are signs that I am suffering from inertia …

I’ve always known that the principle of lightness extends beyond guitar playing and this excerpt reaffirms that conviction.

What does happiness and playing guitar well have to do with each other?

Because both describe a state of perfect equilibrium, of pure effortlessness, where you’re able to accomplish anything you want without stress or strain.

As the old Sage Lao Tzu said:

“The Virtuoso does not do and yet everything is done.”

One important qualification:

Lightness is not to be confused with weakness. On the contrary, lightness is the true source of power.

Only by being light will you be able to fully tap into your natural power, but that’s an article in itself, which you can read about in the chapter “The Art of Power” in the AOV.

I recently received an email from Bob Wooldridge who pointed me to this video of George Sakellariou. In Bob’s words:

I was just watching this video that was recently uploaded by Dave Schramm. Take a look at Sakellariou’s right hand fingers. There are several points in the video where the camera is looking at his hand from the left side and you can clearly see how his fingers are attacking the strings. I think you will find this interesting:

My own continuing youtube research also uncovered this video of Douglas Niedt:

In both these videos, one can clearly see the same upward motion in their fingers, in that same circular trajectory I had talked about earlier in my Isbin post.

There’s quite a bit of hand bouncing too in Niedt’s hand, which is absolutely essential in chordal playing, but is also very much a part of this circular type of playing.

Most good players develop the circular approach to plucking naturally and intuitively. It’s something they probably don’t even think too much about.

So why is this a concern?

Because for some players, developing this natural approach may not come so easily.

This is especially true if they have been subjected to the strict playing-from-the-knuckle methodology, (plucking strictly from the knuckle) or if they have been taught to exaggerate the follow-through in their fingers after the stroke.

The inevitable result of playing only from the knuckle is a loss of fluidity in the fingers. That’s because you wind up with stop and start pendulum-type motion in the fingers.

Exaggerating the follow-through also results in the same stop and start pendulum-type motion as the knuckle stroke.

The great thing about circular plucking as I explained in the AOV is that it creates a continuous flow of motion.

There’re two parts to plucking a string, the plucking and the rebounding (to reposition the finger). As soon as you pluck the string, you have to bring it back to reposition it. So there’re two points where you have to effect a direction change in your stroke.

If you move back and forth in a pendulum-type motion, you’ll have to stop at each point to reverse direction. This is inefficient. It stops the flow of your motion and you lose momentum.

But if you loop around each direction point, you can keep the flow of your motion going even as you change direction. That’s why circular motion is so crucial to speed and fluidity.

Circular motion of course is nothing new. It’s central to Tai Chi and Aikido.