The principle of generating effortless energy lies in three basic components.

The first is to position yourself optimally, to allow energy to flow in your body unimpeded, with as little resistance as possible.

Martial artists refer to this body state as the rag doll.

This means holding your body with complete looseness (AOV principle 1), like a rag doll, allowing all the joints to relax with gravity, maintaining just enough energy to stay upright.

It also means not forcing your body in any way.

If the wrist wants to drop, let it drop; if the fingers want to rest, let them rest.

The rag doll state creates a well-oiled super efficient machine in your body and enables you to operate with freedom and maximum efficiency.

No energy is wasted fighting unnecessary resistance in the body.

The second component is in to connect your actions so that each action sets off the next in a continual loop.

Instead of thinking in isolated individual actions, think groups of actions, all interconnected, each one setting off the next.

The simplest way to understand this is to think of the piston action.

The piston consists of two actions—up and down.

The two actions work against each other. As one comes down, the other one is going up, the energy in one action producing the energy to drive the other one forward.

Transfer the concept to playing the guitar.

Let’s say you have two elements that you have to alternate quickly, we’ll call this the index and middle fingers.

Now you can try to move them individually as fast as possible or you can make them work with and against one another.

The first way produces tension, the very action of getting them to move as fast as possible will create tension that will ultimately slow you down.

The second way is the effortless way.

Instead of thinking of them as individual actions, you use the energy in one action to drive the next one forward, creating an endless loop of actions, each one driving the next one forward.

In the case of playing the guitar, as you move one finger down, you’re using the energy in that action to drive the other second finger up.

It takes a little practice but once you know how to produce energy this way, it’s effortless.

The actions almost play themselves, you just let them go.

But what if you have more than two elements?

You apply the same principle, except that instead of two alternating actions, you have three consecutive actions which we’ll call elements a, b, and c.

As you execute element a, use the energy in that action to drive element b forward, and as you execute element b, use that energy to drive element c forward, and as you execute element c, use the energy in that action to drive element a forward.

By working in this cyclical way, you’re connecting one action to the next, producing the same stream of interconnected actions.

Now take this further and bring in a more powerful source of energy to generate the initial energy.

This brings us to the third component, that of involving the core elements.

Core elements are stronger than secondary elements.

For example, the legs are stronger than the arms, the arms are stronger than the hands, the hands are stronger than the fingers.

This principle is mostly employed in performing groups of actions together.

For instance, if you have to pluck a series of chords, use the hand to perform the actions.

Instead of just moving the fingers, base your energy in your hand and arm, and let the fingers do the detailed work such as locating the strings and displacing it.

Playing this way will result in a bouncing action in the hand.

To the observer, it will appear as if the fingers are plucking the strings but in reality, the hand is behind the actions, the fingers playing only a passive role in the actions.

But the principle is also effective in producing an even stream of notes, especially useful in techniques such as the tremolo on the guitar.

The fingers on the hand are all of uneven lengths and strengths.

How do you get them all to produce an even touch?

By activating the strings with one entity—the hand— as opposed to four fingers, you’re able to apply the same force to each plucking action, resulting in even pressure and even tones.

This principle is the basis of the bouncing hand exercise which I have described elsewhere.

The difference in how energy is generated is the difference between those operating in virtuosity and the initiated.

The uninitiated sees the world in simplistic terms.

If you want more power, apply more force.

If you want more speed, make your body move faster.

The virtuoso understands that the reality is more complex, that there’re myriad ways to harness the hidden (hidden because it’s not immediately apparent) power in your body and sometimes, the straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.

Another track from the Laredo concert.

A few weeks after I played a recital in Laredo in 2005, a DVD arrived in the mail. They had apparently recorded the concert and streamed it live, without asking me.

Here’s one of the pieces on my program—Chopin Nocturne Op. 48, No 1. I think I’ve only played the piece twice in public; this was the second and last time.

One thing about guitar playing (and most things in general) is that nothing operates in isolation.

Everything operates as part of a whole, everything we do impacts something else.

For example, how we hold the hand impacts the trajectories of our fingers.

How we hold the wrist impacts the way our thumb and fingers work.

Over the years, I have played in almost every conceivable way possible, sometimes in experimentation, sometimes to try out other ideas, and sometimes unwittingly.

And I’ve found that to create the engine at the fingertips, you’ll have to focus on playing at the fingertips.

First, because the other alternatives of playing from the knuckles or middle joints do not give you the fine control you need at the fingertips.

And second, because generating the engine requires that you play off the fingers against one another and this occurs at the fingertips.

As you bring one finger down to pluck, you’re using that movement to produce a counter action in the next finger.

In the case of two finger “i m” picado, as you bring down the ‘i’ finger, that movement is producing a counter action in the ‘m’ finger to reposition it.

The two actions are working in tandem, like in a dance, all occurring at the fingertips.

That’s why the focus of your actions must be on the fingertips.

It is important to note that the action occurring at the fingertips is only part of the picture. As I mentioned in my earlier articles, the hand is also very much involved in the total playing action.

So yes, it can get overwhelmingly complex if you were to try to analyze what’s going on in the hand and try to micromanage every part of the movement.

To avoid getting bogged down with details (and the centipedal quandary), I would break it down to two things.

First, focus on playing at the fingertips.

Then consolidate your movements by basing your movements off of your hand.

Finally, a little Zen story I read.

There was a young novice in a monastery who was seeking enlightenment.

Everyday, he would ask the Zen master how he could gain enlightenment.

The Zen master soon got tired of his constant questioning and one day, without warning gave the young novice a whack on the head with a stick.

With that whack, the young novice gained instant enlightenment.

Consolidating your fingers in free-strokes is easy compared to doing it in rest-strokes.

Playing a free-stroke arpeggio usually involves three fingers and thumb and it’s easy to work them together as a group.

With rest-strokes and I’m talking abut conventional two-finger rest-strokes, the problem is that you’re only working with two elements—the two fingers.

How do you consolidate with two fingers?

This was the problem I set out to solve when I decided to try to understand Paco de Lucia’s picado technique.

The key lies in “pushing” into the strings with the hand and letting the action release the fingers.

In free-stroke arpeggio playing, the way to employ the hand in the plucking is to pull it back slightly.

In picado playing, it is to push into the strings.

This is the source of a common misunderstanding—that you have to play rest-strokes from the knuckles.

When you push the hand and fingers in, all the joints are naturally locked against one another to form a small arch from the hand to the fingertips.

When you press in, to the observer, the movement in the knuckles would make it appear as if the you are playing from the knuckles.

In actuality, the action is originating from the entire hand, not just the knuckle joints.

You can try it by playing rest-strokes with your ‘i’ and ‘m’ fingers from the knuckles as fast as possible.

Not only will you tire yourself out quickly, you will probably not get much speed.

To find out how this works on the guitar, here’s a simple exercise.

Place the ‘m,’ and ‘i’ fingers on the second string. (I find the second string easier to practice on than the first string.)

Now, gently push the fingers through the strings. Let the pushing action come from the whole hand. This would include the fingers.

Do this several times.

The important thing to note is that you’re pushing the two fingers through together in one action, as if the two fingers are one.

Next, do this exercise again but this time, release the ‘m’ and ‘i’ fingers separately, while still pushing them into the string in one action.

As you do this, the two fingers should produce a kind of “blam, blam” effect. This is because you’re playing them one after another in quick succession.

It sounds simple but this is really the secret to fast rest-strokes.

You do not try to play the notes individually; instead you play them in groups of twos.

Again, in real life application, there’re other factors that come into play. For example, to connect the two-note groups and make them occur seamless, you would have to apply another principle which involves creating the ‘engine’ at the fingertips.

This principle is a little complicated so I will leave that for another article.

But the fundamental principle of pushing in the hand and allowing the two fingers to work as one remains the same.

Do this little exercise.

Place your three right-hand fingers against the side of a desk or any flat surface (or vice versa if you’re left handed.)

Now, push the hand through.

Your fingers will naturally follow, clear the desk and fall to the underside of the desk.

Now, do it again, this time letting the fingers clear the desk one by one in sequence. So as you push your hand through, let the ‘a’ finger first clear the desk, then the ‘m;, and then the ‘i.’

It is important that you do not apply any force in the fingers as you do this.

In other words, the movements in the fingers are totally passive.

Now,we’ll apply the principle to the guitar.

Place the three fingers on the first string. Pull the hand back (back as in toward your elbow) slightly, feel the tension in the strings as you do this.

Again, don’t exert any force in the fingers. Let them respond to the tension produced by the hand pulling at the strings.

Next, pull the hand back more and as you do so, let this action cause the three fingers to clear the string together. This is analogous to pushing your hand past the desk.

Do this again, this time instead of letting the fingers move together, allow them to release the string one by one.

Do this a few times to understand the sensation,

You’re not actively plucking the string. It’s the pulling action in the hand that’s causing the plucking to take place.

When you pull the hand back, this action is causing your fingers to release the string.

This principle is one of the secrets to speed on the guitar.

You’re actively playing with your hand and the fingers become secondary participants in the actions.

All they do is release the actions.

In actual application, it’s a bit more complex, because there’re other elements at play but the basic principle is the same.

So when trying to get speed on the guitar, think beyond finger speed, think of how you can utilize the energy in the hand to help you move your fingers.

Next, how to apply the principle in rest-strokes.

As I mentioned in the AOV, economy is a fundamental aspect of virtuosity.

It’s a simple concept and few will question it. The problem is in implementation.

As in many things in life, there’re two basic ways to accomplishing it, 1. You can try to enforce it or 2. You can create the conditions for it to occur naturally.

Enforcing requires work; you’ll have to constantly monitor what you’re doing. And most of the time, it doesn’t work, because the underlying conditions may be against it.

Creating conditions is a much better option—conditions for it to occur naturally.

To do this, you integrate the principle into your body mechanics.

In the case of the right hand, you’ll have to move in such a way that your movements naturally produce economy.

As I’ve written before, this means focusing your movements at the fingertips.

Focusing your movements at the fingertips means that you initiate the strokes with your fingertips.

You’re not concerned about which joint is moving, you’re focused only on moving your fingertips.

The best way to understand this is to think of the action of scratching.

When you scratch yourself, you’re not thinking about which joint is moving, or in what order or whether you have any follow-through in your fingers.

You just scratch, and you let your innate finger intelligence do its work naturally, the way nature intended, in the background.

But there’s another angle to playing at the fingertips which has not been dealt with much before.

And this is what happens in the fingers, beneath the surface.

When you watch good players play, do they look like they’re working hard at being fast; do they look like they’re trying to get their fingers to move fast?

No, they make it look easy and effortless.

And to them it is easy and effortless, because they’ve learned to tap into the energy that resides at our fingertips.

They’re able to make them work together in what might be best described as an ‘engine’ within the fingers,

To illustrate this ‘engine,’ think of the three fingers and thumb as one unit.

When you pluck a series of notes, you move them as one integrated unit, they do not operate alone.

Let’s take an example of playing a “p a m i.”

When you pluck the “p” the movement creates momentum which produces a strong forward push to the “a” finger, which in turn produces a strong forward drive to the “m,” which in turn produces the same drive to the “i” and then back to the “p.”

This forward motion is built into the strokes.

And it is the secret to the effortless technique of good players.

One way to try to experience this technique is to think of a corkscrew motion in the fingers.

If you were to do a corkscrew movement with your thumb and fingers, you will see that as one finger moves in, the next one is immediately following, and the next, and the next in a chain of interlocking actions.

As you move your thumb forward, the ‘a,’ ‘m,’ and ‘i’ fingers are already moving in sequence, one following the other.

It is this chain of movements that produce the sensation of each finger setting off the next.

To be able to apply the technique, it is crucial you position the fingers in an optimal position, all with similar curvatures, hovering right above the strings.

And it’s absolutely critical that you focus all your movements at the fingertips.

In the next two articles, I’ll delve into how the principle works in free stroke arpeggios and in rest-strokes scales.

One of the basic ways to produce effortless power as described in the AOV is by releasing energy rather than by exerting more force.

You store power and then you release it in one spontaneous action.

The important thing to note is that the release is a complete letting go. It’s like an exhalation, completely effortless.

An analogy I like to use is that of letting go a bowstring. This analogy is especially apt on the guitar because you can think of the guitar strings as bowstrings.

When you pluck, you’re letting go each string like a bowstring.

The release I’ve been writing about occurs at the moment of plucking—the action of plucking is the moment of release—the two are one and the same.

However, the principle of release occurs at another level—during the initiation of a stroke or series of strokes.

Let’s see this in the context of the tremolo.

A tremolo is a smooth sequence of notes with a repeating pattern of ‘p a m i’. These four-note consolidated patterns are performed in one action as opposed to four separate motions.

Now you can initiate the strokes by simply doing them as a group.

But a more efficient way to perform them and to generate speed is by thinking of each note in the group as a ‘trigger’ to the next.

As soon as you pluck one note, let the release of that stroke propel you to the next note.

Here’s a description of the sequence of actions.

1. Pluck the bass note with the thumb; use the energy released in the release of the thumb stroke to bring your ‘a’ finger to the string.
2. Pluck the ‘a’ finger; use the energy in the release of the ‘a’ finger to bring the ‘m’ finger to the string.
3. Pluck the ‘m finger; use the energy released to bring the ‘i’ finger to the string.
4. Pluck the ‘i’ finger; use the energy released to propel your thumb to the string.

In actual performance, these actions will occur in a split second.

The critical factor in all these actions is the release.

Each stroke is a release of energy and this release becomes the ‘trigger’ which drives the next note.

The difference between the ‘trigger’ concept and that of simply playing the notes as a consolidated group is that there is tremendous forward motion in the ‘trigger.’

The ‘trigger’ produces incredible energy which drives your actions forward.

And because it occurs at the individual note level, you have good control over each note even at high speeds.

The speed produced this way is absolutely effortless because it’s based on the release of energy and because it’s so effortless, you can achieve much greater speed than you can otherwise achieve by simply trying to get your fingers to go fast.

The concept is easy to understand but implementation is much more difficult.

This is because to execute these actions effectively, the hand has to be positioned just right—all the fingers lined up above the strings, each one having equal access to the strings.

The energy in the fingers has to flow completely unimpeded by tension or artificiality and following the most natural paths in the fingers.