I used three types of visualization. The first two are reserved for closer to performance time, the third is something I try to do every day because I feel it makes me more accurate.

Visualize the Piece

This is the most basic of visualization techniques. Simply find a quiet place and visualize the piece your wish to mentally rehearse. See your fingers moving and hear the piece in your mind’s ear. At first it’s okay to move your fingers a bit while visualizing, but try to ween yourself off of that habit as soon as possible.

I find this sort of mental rehearsal extremely challenging when the goal is visualize the entire piece. It divorces the muscle memory of a piece from the sounds and other memory types. That is, we can’t allow our fingers to go on auto pilot and finish the piece for us. Using this sort of visualization can greatly enhance memorization. It should be noted, however, that even when we mentally rehearse the portions of the brain involved with movement are active.

A variation of this is visualization accompanied by score study. Sit with the score, hear the piece in your mind ear, and visualize the finger movements.

A few other words of advice:

• Never pick up your guitar to get through a spot where the visualization failed (where you had a mental memory slip). Look at the score if needed, but avoid the guitar. Remember that we’re trying to avoid muscle memory by using visualization.
• Things like memory posts and other performance fall backs can be practiced with visualization. Just start from the memory post for a visualization session.
• This is, simply put, extremely challenging to do. It takes a lot of focus. Start with small sessions and small sections of pieces, work up to entire pieces.

Visualize the Performance

Ever imagine what it will feel like on stage? For those of us don’t play a concert every week, stepping on stage can be terrifying. Another mental rehearsal technique is to imagine yourself on stage. More importantly, imagine yourself after the performance. Imagine the feeling of success. See yourself walking on confidently and walking off after the successful performance.

Capturing these feelings of success before the concert can play a critical roll in building your confidence before even setting foot on stage. I first stumbled upon this concept when a friend gave me a book called Mind Power. When I started doing some short visualizations of successful performance, my attitude towards performance and my attitude after performances greatly improved. This method is worth serious consideration.

Think Ahead of Your Hands

The final method is so effective you wonder if you accidentally sold your soul for more guitar skills. This method should be done while playing or practicing, and is essentially thinking and looking ahead of your hands.

After your left hand plays a note, your eyes should shift to the location(s) where the finger(s) will be placed next. Imagine your left hand in this new position–see it there with your mind’s eye.

This method of mental rehearsal deals with preparation of the left hand. Unlike the physical preparation outlined sequencing the left hand, this practice method deals with mental preparation. It’s been my experience as a teacher and in my own practice that our hands don’t often need to be watched while moving. We’re much better off to look and think ahead to where they will be after the movements have finished. When I have students look at the fret/position where they’re moving to their accuracy immediately improves.

Incorporating this method into your practice time does take some work. It’s all to easy to go on auto pilot. Force your mind back into the game by thinking ahead.

Related posts:

1. Slow Fast Alternation
2. Think (and Look) Ahead of Your Hands
3. Practice Techniques: Chaining

Three Visualization Techniques from Classical Guitar

One of the most effective ways to learn a piece is practicing small units at tempo, slowing building longer and longer chains of little units. Most of us think of practicing a measure or beat at time, but that is not the way. We need to practice through the beat, incorporating work on the transition between the units while practicing small events.

Take this brief passage from Carcassi’s Op. 60, No. 2.

Etude, Op. 60, No. 2

Each chord change happens on beats one and three. In order to work on the first unit, we’d practice the bracketed section below. To be sure the transition is smooth, as we play beat three we’d move to the upcoming chord on beat three (note: don’t actually play any more than the low A on beat three, merely prep the fingers for the chord).

Step 1

After that unit is mastered, we’d work from beat three to the downbeat of the next measure. On the downbeat we prepare the chord as we did on beat three in our last step.

Step 2

With both of the smaller sections mastered, we can reassemble them into a larger unit. If we can execute the bigger unit at tempo without an issue, the practice method worked. If not, more work on the small units may be needed. As with the last step, we’re going to prepare the next chord on the downbeat of the second measure

Step 3

I’m using this method on Malcolm Arnold’s Fantasy (first movement) to learn some big arpeggios.

Related posts:

1. Slow Fast Alternation
2. Rethinking Slow Practice
3. Think (and Look) Ahead of Your Hands

Practice Techniques: Chaining from Classical Guitar

Think ahead.

Look at where your hands are going next, not where they are. One of the biggest problems with shifting I see in my students is inaccuracy. Most times the problem is easily fixed: I tell them not to look at their left hand as it travels, but to look at it where its going.

The same principle can be applied any time you look at the left hand. Imagine what comes next, look at the frets and positions and strings you need to be at; imagine what the next thing to come sounds like and looks like. Don’t dwell on what your hands are doing at a given moment, always think ahead.

I find that thinking and looking ahead takes your accuracy to an entirely new, much better place.

Turn it into a practice method.

This can also be a practice technique. Play a piece or section only paying attention to one finger. What does it do? Is it accurate? If you have problem fingers (my left hand second finger tends to have the most issues), start by focusing on those.

Related posts:

1. Slow Fast Alternation
2. Practice Techniques: “Thunk” Practice
3. Rethinking Slow Practice

Think (and Look) Ahead of Your Hands from Classical Guitar

Why practice slow?  What do you get out of it?

Slow practice is very beneficial for a variety of reasons.  Obviously the results of slow practice are different with each individual.  However there are certain things a student/practicer is able to do while practicing slowly.

1. Listening.  Not just hearing that you are playing music, but really listening to what is going on in the piece of music.  Listen to each individual note, how one goes to another.  What kind of tension is created by the moving line?  Listen to the harmonic structure under the melody.  Does it add or take away from the melodic tension?  Is your piece contrapuntal, or have parts where there is counterpoint?  Listen to how the voices move in relation to each other.  Playing slowly gives you time to listen to all of these aspects and allows you to solidify your musical interpretation.
2. Resolving Technical Issues.  What does practicing slow give  you in terms of working on technical issues.  Well, it gives you time to create habits that you’ll use when you play faster.  I’m constantly telling my students about training their hands.  The time that we train them is when we are doing slow practice.  It gives us the time to actively make our hands do what we would like them to do.  We can catch movements or things that we don’t want to see, especially if we are rebuilding a technical issue.

These are just two points, but I feel are very important ones.  I also believe that these points apply to people just starting to learn how to play and people who have been playing for years.  This points are universal, and if applied while using the slow practice method can be very rewarding.

Incorporating Slow Practice into your routine.

Chris states that slow practice doesn’t get a piece to concert tempo.  With that point I have to disagree.  While it is true that just playing slowly will not get a piece or section up to concert tempo, using slow practice to clarify your physical movements is quite useful.  There should difference in how you play slow verse how you play fast.  It should feel the same.  As a matter a fact you want to strive to have your fast tempo technique feel the same as it does slowly.  Playing guitar (or any instrument for that matter) shouldn’t feel like it is work.  It shouldn’t be hard, or painful to do (if its painful…that’s BAD!).  Rather, playing should feel effortless, like the body understands and knows exactly what it needs to do.  This comes about not through playing fast, or playing slowly, but through clarifying what you need to do to make a certain passage work.  I use a system of 4-5x’s slow for every 1x fast.  The purpose of practicing slowly is to integrate certain movements into the body.  Things like “efficiency of motion” and limiting excess movement shouldn’t be worried about.  If you are looking for effortless playing, that will carry through into the faster tempi, as long as your goal is keeping the same feeling between the slow playing and fast.  The movements and motion of your technique will naturally become smaller due to the speed.  However, if you create the smaller motion because you want to play fast, that is creating tension.  The playing at the fast tempo is to confirm what you’ve been working on.  At this tempo you shouldn’t be trying to do anything, rather just observing.  How do the hands feel?  Are they working the same way fast as they did slow?  At what point are you forcing the speed rather then allowing it to happen?  These points, and more, are ones that I’m looking at while playing fast.

Recently I’ve started to use slow practice in a completely new way in my own practicing.  With pieces that I’ve been playing for a while, I’ll play them at a variety of tempi; 1/4 speed, 1/2 speed and 3/4th speed.  I’ll very rarely actually play at tempo, maybe once or twice in my practice session of a piece.  Rather I’ll work on sections of a piece (or even a full piece depending on the size and length) at these varied tempi with a few goals and objectives in mind.

1. Refining and clarifying my interpretation.  I want to make sure that everything from phrasing, to my dynamic shape, rhythmical accuracy, color changes, to rubato is clearly defined and understood.
2. Right and left hand balance.  Here is a pure technique thing.  If I feel that the left hand during a shift is out of balance, I’ll work on how to land with a balanced hand, or see where the imbalance occurs.  Things like buzzed notes, unclear chords or slurs and other technical aspects as well are also looked at.  With the right hand, things like chord balance and balance of voices as well as balancing a single melodic line (making sure that individual notes don’t spike out of the line) are looked at.  To me its hard to separate these things from my musical interpretation.  In my mind, its these technical aspects that allow me to create and communicate musically what I want to say to an audience.
3. Memory work.  Playing slower then what you hands are used to doing forces you to rely on other aspects of your memory of the piece, not just the fingers.  Things like your knowledge of the piece, what it should sound like, and visual memory are all worked while your muscle memory is challenged because the movements feel foreign.  With slow practice you can really see how much of the piece is being forced through muscle memory, and how much of the piece you really do understand and know.

With this kind of work, I don’t worry about how far through a piece I get, but rather the quality of the work that I do.  I remember using this method for the first time with the Fugue from J.S. Bach’s 2nd Lute Suite, BWV 997.  On the first day that I did this (a 30 minute practice session) I barely got pasted the 1st page!  But the clarity that I got was astonishing.  Even better, the next day that I went to practice the Fugue in this same way, a majority of what I worked on from the previous practice session was still there.  This allowed me to move further through the Fugue the next day, and more importantly it becomes easier to work.

I do agree with Chris that slow practice is not dead.  However, I do think that as with anything else there needs to be a purpose to why you are working slowly.  It’s great to listen to your instructor when they tell you to slow down, but strive to understand why.  What do they want you to get out of playing slowly?  What’s the purpose?  Work towards those goals and objectives.  As with anything else, these things are constantly changing, and we have to be able to adapt.  One week you’ll have an issue, and the next a new one might come up, its our flexibility in dealing with new challenges that helps us produce results that we want to see.  The most important thing of all is to become the detective.  Try these things out for yourself, don’t wait for your instructor to tell you to do something, especially if it is something that you’ve been told to do in another piece before.  Start creating a bag of tricks for yourself to use in practicing.  The more you use them, the more you’ll be able to address certain issues in your own playing.  That leaves more time for the instructor to work on newer concepts or refine older ones.

Related posts:

1. Slow Fast Alternation
2. Practice Techniques: “Thunk” Practice
3. Rethinking Slow Practice

Rethinking Slow Practice — A 2nd perspective from Classical Guitar

For intermediate and more advanced guitarists, I think the value of slow practice shifts. That is, the traditional advice of, “play it slow a lot and you’ll be able to play it fast,” may not be as applicable as it is to beginners.

How Well Do You Know Your Technique?

By technique, I mean how we physically move. Most times we do slow practice on pieces that are meant to be very quick. We do this in the hopes of “programming in” movements so they can be executed at tempo.

There’s a thing about this sort of logic: most of us (including myself) don’t know our technique well enough for slow practice to work well in this sense. In other words, how we move at tempo can differ significantly from how we move at half tempo or less. Playing quickly involves technique going in overdrive — our movements have to be ultra efficient and direct. Slower tempos do not necessitate this type of efficiency in movement.

That’s a strike against slow practice as a way to get to concert tempo. Unless you are absolutely sure how you will move at tempo, and can practice those movements with slow practice from the start, it’s possible that slow practice will not produce the desired results.

That doesn’t mean slow practice is useless, however.

Think Small

As I explained in a previous newsletter thinking small is a powerful tool. Anyone can play quickly for a short period of time. What if we practiced a piece at tempo, first doing only one measure (or a few beats), then working the second measure, then putting the two together. In short, chaining little units together by practicing them at tempo as soon as possible.

This method for learning a piece and programming movements and interpretative decisions is, I’ve found, much more effective and efficient than slow practice from the start.

For the past few months, I’ve been avoiding slow practice — I had found a new, better way. I was wrong.

Slow Practice Last

Slow practice, for intermediate and advanced guitarists, is still useful after the piece has been learned and programmed at tempo. You’ll know the movements that work at tempo and will be able to practice them slow. This can create a more secure feeling with the piece, and offers the opportunity to work on smaller units of note grouping.

For pieces that have been in your concert, memorized repertoire for a long time, slow practice offers another advantage: it challenges the memory. Muscle memory will often not work at less than concert tempo, which shifts your reliance to other forms of memory. You’ll find out very quick whether a piece is really memorized or just “in the fingers.”

Slow Practice is not Dead

But perhaps we should rethink how we use it. Perhaps by reversing traditional wisdom for a bit, we can better understand our own, unique technique and use slow practice more effectively.

Related posts:

1. Slow Fast Alternation
2. Practice Techniques: “Thunk” Practice
3. Mental Music Practice

Rethinking Slow Practice from Classical Guitar

A left hand event can be anything. It could be a big shift or an awkward jump or something that requires a change of hand position. A LH event is just something that gives you trouble.

The name pretty much explains it all. Play something, STOP, move to the next thing, GO.

Let’s take a look at the first measure of Carcassi’s Etude no. 2, Op. 60.

There’s a shift and and a chord change. You’d play the first two beats. STOP. Then move to the next chord shape, and hover just touching the strings. Then GO, pressing the fingers down and beginning to play at the same time. After practicing this way and getting the movement patterns ingrained, the development is very similar. Play the first two beats. STOP. Consider carefully what your hand must do to get to the next chord cleanly, but don’t move. GO, shifting, placing the fingers and beginning to play again at the same time.

The time in between events gives you time to think. Strive to for the perfect hand position and no biffed notes or mistakes on the second two beats. In short, this method allows the left hand events to be practiced perfectly. After practicing like this, shifts and chord changes and other events giving you trouble will often recede into the background. A good measuring stick of effectiveness (and whether or not it’s time to move on from stop/go) is comfort. When we deal with a difficult left hand event, it feels hard. It feels like we’re floating on the edge of disaster at concert tempo–ready to slip up at any time. After practicing stop/go that comfort level increases, the section should no longer feel on the edge.

Related posts:

1. Slow Fast Alternation
2. Practice Techniques: “Thunk” Practice
3. Mental Music Practice

Practice Techniques: Stop/Go from Classical Guitar

In short, the research around mental practice outside of music can be summed up in two words: it works. Well, the subjects mentally practicing improved more than the control groups which did not practice. Studies found, however, that the exclusive use of physical practice was superior to the exclusive use of mental practice. Those same studies also showed that the combined effect of mental and physical practice can be as effective or more effective than physical practice (taken from the research review in Ross and Coffman).

A 1985 study (Ross) measured the effectiveness of various kind of practice on college trombonists. The musicians (30 college or graduate level music studnets) were divided into five groups. No practice (control), mental practice only, physical practice only, combined mental and physical practice, and mental practice with simulated slide movements. Each group aside from the control was asked to practice the etude given as a pretest three times. For the physical group that meant playing it three times (any tempo); the mental group had to sit there and mentally rehearse it without physical movement. Mental w/ slide movement mentally rehearsed while holding the trombone in position and moving the slide to the notes as if playing. The combined practice group played the etude once, then mentally rehearsed it, then played it again. Following the practice session, the same etude was played again.

To score the exercise, 1 point was given for each perfectly played measure. Dynamics and other musical elements were not considered; rhythmic accuracey and pitch were the only factors. There were 34 total points. As expected the no practice group saw the least improvement. The combined group saw the most. Mental practice alone actually saw the second least improvement. The study’s author suggested the following as a reason:

In traditional physical practice, both auditory and kinesthetic feed-back provide important and necessary information to the performer regarding the degree of deviation and the position of the muscles associated with these deviations in performance. Based on this valuable information, corrections can be made and accuracy gradually increased. Embouchure and slide movements are adjusted as feedback occurs. This helps explain, in part, why the physical practice subjects improved significantly more than the no practice subjects.

That physical feedback is important. Knowing what it feels like is important. This can be defined as a “knowledge of results.” Another study (Coffman, 1990) sought to find out if 1.) mental practice was effecitve and 2.) if knowledge of results mattered. The study diveded forty subjects (music therapy and education students) into 8 groups. The instrument was piano, and none of the students involved were piano studyents–though all of them had completed some group piano classes. There were two no practice control groups, one heard the piece to be played for the post test (though were not told what it was or that they would be playing it) and another heard nothing. The other groups has six 30 second practice intervals separated by five seconds of silence.

Physical practice was divided into two groups. One heard the synthesizer as they practiced, the other did not. Mental practice groups had to sit without moving but saw the notation. One group heard a tape recorded version of the post test composition to be played and were told to imagine themselves playing. The other mental group heard only metronome clicks along with which they were supposed to practice. The combined group was similarly divided. They spend three trials mentally rehearsing and three physically practicing–alternating methods. One group was allowed to heard the sythesizer as they played and heard a recording of the composition during mental practice. The other had the synth turned off and heard metronome clicks during mental practice.

Evaluations were done blind for this study. The performers were scored on both the pre and post test based on performance duration, pitch accuracy and rhythm accuracy. Again the study found that physical practice alone or combined with mental work was more effective than exclusive mental practice or no practice. Knowledge of results did have a positive influence on improvement.

Other Mental Practice Mentions

In previous posts I’ve reviewed some books that address the mental aspects of performing. The Inner Game of Music talks extensively about the mental aspects of performing, and much of the material in Piano Technique
deals with mental rehearsal. Gieseking goes as far as to recommend students memorize something completely away from the piano! Richard Provost has also written an extensive article on visualization techniques.

___________________
Works Cited

Ross, Stewart L. “The Effectiveness of Mental Practice on Improving the Performance of College Trombonists.” Journal of Research in Music Education. 33.4 (1985): 221-230.

Coffman, Don D. “Effects of Mental Practice, Physical Practice, and Knowledge of Results on Piano Performance.” Journal of Research in Music Education. 38.3 (1990): 187-196.

Related posts:

1. Slow Fast Alternation
2. Practice Techniques: Changing the Rhythm
3. Practice Techniques: “Thunk” Practice

Mental Music Practice from Classical Guitar

For the Right Hand

Try just laying your left hand across the strings, muting, and play any right hand arpeggio pattern. This is a great way to hear and correct any rhythmic unevenness in the fingers. It works great while changing note durations to achieve a more even, consistent rhythm.

This works best with repeated patterns and is solely for practicing right hand things. The second method is more about the left hand.

For the Left Hand

Another good way to use thunk practice is to the play the piece as normal, but don’t actually apply any pressure, just let the fingers tips rest in place on the strings. Be sure to strive for super accurate placement–left hand finger tips right behind the frets, etc. If there’s an open string just let it ring.

This produces a great feeling of lightness in the left hand which carries over to the next time you try the passage normally. I’ve been using this technique a lot on a particularly challenging section of Bach with a lot of bars and awkward position shifts. It’s a great way to get rid of excess tension in the left hand.

Related posts:

1. Slow Fast Alternation
2. Practice Techniques: Changing the Rhythm
3. Practice Techniques: Dynamics

Practice Techniques: “Thunk” Practice from Classical Guitar

Loud and Soft

It feels different when playing loud or quiet. Practicing quietly feels almost like your fingers are floating, and it takes a lot of control to not have certain notes accent; practicing loudly gives the impression of fingers flying wildly and it’s a challenge to avoid crashing. Practicing quietly makes it easy to go quick; practicing loudly* feels heavy, awkward and slow.

In short, it’s a good idea to practice a pattern both as loud as possible and as quiet as possible. It forces your hands to go further than may be necessary on a pattern and makes that pattern more secure at a normal volume.

Crescendo/Diminuendo

The concept is easy. Keep playing a right hand pattern, start quietly, slowly swell to as loud as possible, then take it back down. It’s hard to actually do this. The benefits is the same as above: takes the pattern further than necessary and teaches control and makes the pattern more secure.

Not everyone can jump right into this right away, but it can be built up. Start with just two dynamics (piano and forte) and keep alternating between them every few patterns, being careful not to stop. Then add in another dynamic level: start piano, then play mezzo forte and finally forte, then step back down. Then mezzo piano can be added in making four steps. Finally try swelling up and down more naturally.

The whole idea behind using dynamics as a strictly practice method is to develop control. The Crescendo/Diminuendo technique is very close to guitar magic (seriously,it’s that good) because it’s develops some extreme control. Try it out! Let me know how it works!

*Loudly and Forte, in this article, mean as loud as possible. In the same way, quietly or piano mean as soft as possible. Sometimes piano can even mean sort of ghosting (barely playing) the right hand.

Related posts:

1. Slow Fast Alternation
2. Practice Techniques: Changing the Rhythm

Practice Techniques: Dynamics from Classical Guitar

It’s as simple as it sounds. Have a passage in fast 16th notes? Try playing in triplets or quintuplets–the notes don’t have to move faster or slower, the accents just shift around. The options are infinite. This technique can work with anything, and it does help expose hidden issues.

For instance: I have a quick chord to play that is essentially rolled, but it’s notated in 32nd notes. The tempo is pretty slow, so the composer obviously meant the chord to be measured and even–the 32nd notes are to sound like 32nd notes. So I tried it with various rhythmic permutations. Here’s the original on open strings, the RH fingering p p i m a:

And here are some of the rhythmic alterations I tried out:

The end result is that I discovered I have the tendency to play m a as a unit. This is not something that happens when I just play a quick ascending arpeggio p i m a. Whenever I have to drag my thumb in time, it throws off my hand position a bit, requiring some compensation. Because I noticed what was going wrong, I can now work on controlling it.

Altering the the rhythm of a passage is a great help.

Related posts:

1. Slow Fast Alternation

Practice Techniques: Changing the Rhythm from Classical Guitar