Over the years, I’ve devised a basic strategy to get a student from beginner to virtuoso in 4 years.

That might sound like a tall order but it is completely doable and I’ve done it with a number of students.

The secret is to free up the student and help them find their natural virtuosity.

Its success, however, hinges directly on one critical element—the student.

You need a highly motivated student, a student who will be practicing all the time.

Fortunately for me, I’ve been blessed with quite a few of these students. If you were to walk the halls of Del Mar College, you will see their faces on the walls, winners of the annual competitions.

So what is this four stage plan?

The first stage is to build the fundamentals.

This is the most critical stage—to develop a free and uninhibited natural technique in the student.

To do this, I focus on the free stroke technique and arpeggio playing.

I start students off with children songs arranged with simple accompaniment figures which get them to alternate their fingers on different strings.

From there, they soon progress to simple Carulli and Carcassi pieces.

Carulli and Carcassi studies are ideal as they are easy for the left hand and involve mostly pattern-based right-hand finger exercises.

But you can give them anything that is simple, do not require reading in the higher positions, and have plenty of finger alternation between strings.

In these early stages, the focus is on light playing.

Light playing is the basis of virtuosity and it’s important to instill it in the student at this point.

This means absolutely no concern with tone at this point.

Because working on tone usually means trying to get a full bodied sound which is not conducive to the light touch.

It usually involves trying to micromanage the student’s hand and finger movements which will interfere with the student’s natural learning instincts.

Finding your true authentic technique requires listening to your body.

If you have to make your fingers follow precise rules on how to pluck, how much follow-through to achieve, and which joint to move, you’ve effectively shut down your body’s natural self teaching mechanism.

Tone is a natural product of sophistication and it will come when the student gains in mastery and sophistication.

So minimal rules, and only very gentle guidance. (I do have one rule and that is to keep the thumb outside the fingers.)

The job of the teacher at this stage is to provide an open and free environment for the student to grow and thrive.

Here is a point by point summary of the first phase:

Beginner:

Objectives:

• Learn basic seating and hand positions.
• Learn basic right and left hand techniques.
• Learn note reading in first position.
• Develop right hand facility.

Method:

• Learn simple right hand arpeggios.
• Only free-strokes.
• No finger alternation in right hand.
• Right hand rule: ‘i’ finger plays third string, ‘m’ finger plays second string, ‘a’ finger plays first string.
• Left hand rule: ‘1’ finger plays first fret, ‘2’ finger plays second fret, ‘3’ finger plays third fret.

Repertoire:

Simple folk songs arranged arpeggio style and arpeggio pieces from Carcassi, Carulli, and Giuliani.

Next, the second stage.

In 1980, I spent six months in London. During that time, I met George Clinton, the editor of Guitar magazine and after some of our discussions, he suggested I write an article about scale playing, which I did. Here is the article in full.

To read the pages, click on the images.

It was in 1986, when I was a teaching fellow at a rather big name school, that I first became aware of a weird phenomenon—players who play only from the knuckles and with their middle joints locked.

Now, I had studied and watched players from New Zealand to England to Germany but I had never seen this kind of playing before.

At first, I thought it was a recent innovation and I wanted to believe in it.

But the more I saw the results of this kind of playing, the more I was convinced that it was completely unnatural and went against our body’s very instincts.

And the results bore me out.

Players who played this way almost always lacked fluidity and naturalness in their finger movements. Their finger movements were stilted and almost zombie like.

And the sad part was, these students were extremely serious players.

With the amount of time they were practicing, they should’ve been super virtuosos but instead their playing lacked both speed and accuracy.

As a teaching fellow, I had a few students who played this way.

At first, I thought it was a relatively simple thing to get them to start moving their middle joints again, but I did not know how hard it would be to retrain fingers to move differently.

If someone has been taught to play only from the knuckle while keeping the middle joints locked, it literally required a super human effort for them to get the middle joints moving again.

I managed to devise a simple way to get them to wake up the middle joints and get them moving again.

The strategy was to go the opposite direction, to lock the knuckle joints and to pluck only from the middle joints.

This required a rather drastic measure; I had them tape their fingers between the middle joints and knuckle joints (I believe there’s a name for this part of the anatomy) to keep the knuckle joints from moving.

By taping the fingers this way, the students were forced to pluck only from the middle joints. After a few weeks of playing this way, the tape would be removed.

The results were amazing.

The students found that they were able to engage the whole finger again in plucking the strings. All three joints were moving again as a unit, each joint supporting one another. This led to immediate greater facility and speed.

One student in particular went from having not much speed and accuracy to playing extremely well, with great speed and accuracy.

I remember his senior recital where his fluid and clean arpeggios in Asturias and Giuliani’s La Sentinelle were especially impressive and received many compliments.

Fast forward 31 years—little did I dream at the time that I would still be talking about the middle joint in 2017.

But there’s a positive development.

Recently, I became aware of a thread on an online forum where someone has been posting slow motion videos of professionals playing.

And in every one of these videos, the evidence is all too clear to see.

Real players play mostly from the middle joints.

Yes, there’re still some unanswered questions.

For instance, how much should the middle joint move in relation to the tip-joint? And is the rebound movement a natural reflex action or is there conscious effort involved?

But these are small details which can be worked out. (Although I think even that is quite unnecessary as these are natural impulses which are best left to our body intelligence to work out.)

The big picture is that there’s a growing realization that our finger movements are incredibly complex and to try to lay down strict rules on which joint to move and which joints to lock while playing is perhaps over micromanaging the body.

Even as I write this, I’m aware that there’s still a large group of teachers who still subscribe to the knuckle playing theory.

As someone said in the thread, there’s always going to be some hostility when you get to the truth from people who are insecure with other ideas.

To which I say, yes, I do know something about hostility. I’ve been dealing with it for over thirty years.

I believe someone once also said, the truth shall prevail (and sanity too, I might add).

A short video on controlling the amount of give at the fingertips.

Here’s a short video on focusing your playing at the fingertips.

They say a picture paints a thousand words. If that’s the case, a video should paint 10,000 words.

I shot a simple video with my phone showing the three different ways of plucking—from the knuckle joint, from the middle joint, and with the fingertip.

You can see that in all three plucking methods, all three joints are moving. Our fingers work as a unit, and when we say we are moving from one joint, it doesn’t suggest the other joints are completely stationary.

However, there is a distinct difference in sensation between plucking from the knuckle joint as opposed to plucking from the middle joint as opposed to plucking with the fingertips.

These differences are not psychological, they’re very real. You physically feel one specific part of the finger or joint activating the stroke and the other joints moving in support.

(In the video, I mentioned plucking from the tip joint. That’s not wholly accurate. When it comes to the tip joint, it’s really more accurate to say that I’m plucking with my fingertip rather than the tip joint.)

I use all three strokes but my primary and default stroke is the third one, playing with the fingertip, because it is so economical and efficient.

People, especially politicians and bureaucrats (but also some educators and academics) tend to simplify the learning process.

For example, they lump everything together and do not differentiate between the learning of knowledge and the learning of skills.

What is the difference between these two?

To use current techie terms, the first is data-type knowledge and the second apps-like knowledge.

Data-type knowledge is just that—data, information.

Apps-like knowledge are specific skills, such as the ability to perform certain actions or routines.

The learning and teaching of data-type knowledge is easy.

All you need is a receptive student and you transfer the knowledge to him. It’s like copying data from one drive to another.

In humans, the teacher imparts this knowledge and the student memorizes and absorbs it.

But not so easy is the transfer of apps (called skills) from now on.

Humans are not like machines where, if you copy an app to a device, it will start running immediately.

Skills in humans have to be built up, developed, and assimilated into the body before it can perform them on autopilot.

And this is a key difference between data-type knowledge and apps-like knowledge.

Apps-like knowledge has be completely absorbed into the body so that they can occur on automatic reflexes. Because most of the time, you wouldn’t have time to think when you’re performing the actions.

Think of driving a car or playing the guitar.

When you drive, your actions have to occur on autopilot, you wouldn’t have time to figure out all the complex moves involved in driving.

Guitar playing is even more complex, because it involves not only technical skills (apps) but also complex pieces of music which may include many pages of notes (data).

When I teach guitar, I’m acutely aware of these two different types of learning process.

And over the years I have developed a simple four stage plan to getting students from pure beginner to virtuoso player in the space of only four years (which is all I have in the college undergraduate system).

Next, the four stage system.

An efficient free-stroke must incorporate several essential properties.

First, it must have a built-in rebound mechanism. Meaning that the stroke must not only pluck the string efficiently, but also has a mechanism to return it to plucking position again.

Second, it must occur in a continuous flow of action—the movement of the finger to the string, the plucking action and the rebound should all occur in one motion.

And if you have a series of notes (plucking actions) there should be no stops and starts between the actions. The series of notes should occur in one continuous motion.

Third, it must have a built-in tension-release mechanism.

All actions produce tension. This tension must be released dynamically as you perform the actions (otherwise it will accumulate and you will choke with all that tension).

Fourth, it must not impact the other fingers. In other words, minimal sympathetic motion between fingers.

Fifth, it must move with extreme economy. There must be no wasted motion. The purpose of the stroke is to pluck the string, nothing more. There must be minimal follow-through of the finger after plucking.

So how do you produce a stroke that incorporates these properties?

I’ve found that the key is the vertical stroke.

(Relatively speaking of course—vertical to the soundboard and relatively vertical compared to more traditional plucking methods.)

Most people think of the plucking motion as a horizontal stroke. The finger pushes through the string in a motion that is horizontal to the soundboard.

With the vertical stroke, the finger actually pushes into the string slightly before plucking it.

To achieve this, you’ll have to focus your plucking at your fingertips.

By plucking with your fingertips, you’ll have automatic economy in your movements. The movements will be so small, you’ll feel as if you’re not even moving at all.

The actual sensation of plucking is that of brushing upward across the string as opposed to plucking it directly.

Playing with the fingertips takes care of the fifth property, that of economy.

Next, the actual plucking motion must be the moment of release.

This is important. Think of letting loose an arrow from a bow. That’s the kind of release, a complete letting go of the tension at the fingertip.

This takes care of the third property, the dynamic release of tension.

With this stroke, the instant you pluck is also the beginning of the action to reposition your finger.

Think of the plucking action as a movement to reposition the finger. As soon as you pluck, your finger is already traveling back to playing position.

This takes care of the first property—the built-in rebound mechanism.

When we pluck, we’re essentially moving the fingertip from one point (the beginning point) to another point (the ending point).

How do you move back and forth between two points without stopping and starting every time we change direction?

By moving in circular or oval shaped trajectories.

Circular motion produces the continuous looping actions required in the second property.

When you push into the string, the release is upward rather than inward (into the palm).

This automatically produces the oval trajectory that you see in many good players. With this stroke, you don’t have to worry about trying to produce the oval trajectory. It’s built into the stroke.

Finally, the vertical stroke reduces sympathetic motion in the other fingers.

You can try it. Move one finger inward as if you’re closing a fist. You’ll find that the other fingers will want to move inward too. This is sympathetic motion.

But if you move your finger downward and upward (relatively speaking), you’ll find the sympathetic motion is minimal.

An additional note about these descriptions.

Firstly, the upward motion is not to be confused with the hooking up motion that some beginning players do. Your plucking motion should still be pushing through the string to pluck it, but as soon as the string is plucked, the fingertip relaxes and moves upwards.

Secondly, (and I’m aware I’m repeating myself here) the words vertical and horizontal are meant to be taken relatively. They refer to the plane of the soundboard and are not meant literally.

Vertical is not meant to be straight up and down.

It’s only the feeling of moving the fingers vertically. In actuality, the finger is still moving across the string to pluck it, but the sensation is that of pushing into the string vertically and releasing vertically.