| Author |
 Topic  |
|
|
Kapila Kane
Ha`aha`a
USA
1051 Posts |
 Posted - 03/06/2014 : 09:53:55 AM
|
I'm so stuck...
lots of reasons--excuses.
cracked finger tips...hey, it's Colorado and still a little winter like.
but mostly, FEAR to even try, frustration, and such slow progress in actual playing ability that I just don't practice, or rarely.
I did a lesson with a classical guitar friend....but such a dreadfully slow approach...
first lesson: 2 finger rest strokes, and 1st grade/(day?) and really basic Thumb rest strokes. Kinda forbade me to do the other stuff, my way.
Hey, it'd be nice to play life Jeff Peterson, but at this point in my life...
really just want to have joy, be good enough, and, Hopefully,
PRACTICE WITH ALOHA towards myself.
THE BABY STEPS approach, even though I understood why he felt that is the path just makes me crazy!
I will do basics, but don't want to totally have to do a "1st grader/zen/baby steps approach.
so basic need is to stabilize and educate the right hand.
I mean, slack key players just want to have fun...and play...NOW!
any philosophies of a sane, fun and productive way to improve, even out the right hand articulations, but not give up what playing I have and is somewhere in there?
|
|
|
TerryLiberty
Lokahi
USA
207 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2014 : 10:52:08 AM
|
Gordon:
Been there with what you're experiencing. No easy answers, of course (You weren't expecting any, I'm sure.) but I've worked on changing some long-term habits and find that I disagree with the teacher some. Yeah, if you want to put your musical life on hold for a year you can stop doing all the old stuff until you've totally replaced it with the new stuff. Less than fun, not to mention all the kanikapila time you'll miss and all those ono grinds people bring.
When I started to revamp my right hand jazz picking style I did lots of reps of the new exercises but continued to play the old way. As I got comfortable with the exercises I started trying to incorporate them into the tunes I already knew. For a while it took a lot of concentration. The result was a real hybrid way of playing but the longer I worked on it, the more I saw the old being replaced with the new. It's been gradual and has never gotten perfect but now I know (and can choose) either way. In a couple of years, who knows?
So my advice is to learn the new way and work it slowly into the old. The longer I stay at it in a concentrated way, the more I find available to me when I play. As far as getting to where Jeff is... I sure wish I'd started playing as a kid rather than at age 58.
Good luck. |
Terry
Olympia, WA
Forever a haumana |
Edited by - TerryLiberty on 03/06/2014 10:54:24 AM |
 |
|
|
thumbstruck
Ahonui
USA
2168 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2014 : 12:14:59 PM
|
| Remember Slipry1's mantra: THE MORE YOU DO IT, THE BETTER YOU GET! Playing an instrument is based on muscle memory. When I started playing with fingerpicks, it took me a full 3 weeks to feel comfortable, in spite of playing with picks when I played Dobro. I realized that the difference was in the angle and that it took time to get used to new things. |
|
|
|
Retro
Ahonui
USA
2368 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2014 : 8:03:04 PM
|
| It also sounds like you may have hit a plateau; those are sometimes tough to move up from, but you'll find the motivation. (Sorry - more philosophical than practical advice.) |
|
|
|
Kapila Kane
Ha`aha`a
USA
1051 Posts |
Posted - 03/06/2014 : 11:18:12 PM
|
Even the small posts/advice/encouragement are nice "visits" with friends...and welcome encouragement!
Kind words...and so much of this is just psychological...
and we don't seem to have the kanikapila gatherings and tradition here in Colorado...
maybe we should change that!
Hey if it was easy, EVERYBODY would do it.
Mahalo for small, kind thoughts.
That's practicing with Aloha!
|
|
|
|
Admin
Pupule
USA
4551 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 07:17:39 AM
|
Kapila Kane,
I know that you are a pro so I do not doubt that you will persevere. IMHO, learning is definitely a series of peaks, valleys, and plateaus. The key is to simply keep moving forward. |
Andy |
|
|
|
Russell Letson
`Olu`olu
USA
504 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 07:36:32 AM
|
There is a technical and cultural gulf between classical guitar and every folk-based guitar tradition I've encountered. Classical technique is designed to facilitate playing the classical repertory in the classical manner on a classical instrument, and while there is much to recommend about that technical approach, it is neither necessary nor even always appropriate for players in folk traditions. If, for example, you maintain the left-hand position I was shown years ago, you will never play Piedmont style, which requires the thumb to wrap around the neck. And the learning protocol, which emphasizes very basic physical skills, which are often embedded in musically uninteresting practice pieces, is not "music" in the way most of us want to experience it.
I've played for coming on sixty years, and while I've acquired or adapted various techniques and approaches, the classical take on guitar--especially the way technique is taught--has proved irrelevant to actually playing in the traditions I pursue: folky-fingerstyle, Piedmont, slack key, and swing. If I decided I wanted to add classical items to my repertory, I would take a look at the technical basics that the compostions and arrangements assume or require. But as I pursue slack key, I look at the practice of practitioners and (most of all) I work on repertory. That is how I learned to play swing--every tune I learned helped with the next one. Slack key is no different. (If I were starting from scratch and were twenty years younger, I would learn enough Hawaiian to be able to sing the songs with minimal offense to my Hawaiian friends. That was also a part of learning swing and the Great American Songbook.) Within a tradition, you learn by playing the tradition's repertory, mastering along the way whatever stylistic and technical elements are required to pull off a tune. Repertory rules. The gradus-ad-parnassum approach classical tradition takes puts technique ahead of everything else. Folkies just wanna have fun.
On the emotional/morale side: I agree with Retro that you might be on a plateau or at a stale spot. One way past that is to work on material that has attracted you in the past but that has been just out of your reach--to master some technical bit or figure or turnaround that has resisted you. There's nothing like a newly-acquired lick to brighten up one's playing day.
|
Edited by - Russell Letson on 03/07/2014 07:38:11 AM |
|
|
|
Allen M Cary
Lokahi
USA
158 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 10:04:33 AM
|
I haven't asked him, but I suspect that Jeff Peterson has come back to Hawaiian music (from Classical) for many reasons, but one is probably that it is much more fun to play. Most of the time when I hear or see a classical guitarist play, the music is not particularly enjoyable, but it is hard. It seems almost that classical guitar pieces are designed (i.e., composed) to be difficult, rather than beautiful to listen to. Hawaiian music is almost the opposite--beautiful to listen to, and not necessarily difficult to play. I find that I cannot sit down to learn a piece if it isn't pretty. Some are a challenge (e.g., Jeff Peterson or non Hawaiian Tommy Emmanuel), but they are beautiful, pleasing tunes.
Learning from Jeff, Keola, Ozzie has never involved mind numbing exercises of "wax on, wax off" technique--as the Master himself says--jus' press!
Aloha,
|
|
|
|
Kapila Kane
Ha`aha`a
USA
1051 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 12:27:12 PM
|
what a crew, well, maybe I'm crew!
I kinda knew, I have to find the middle path...
I have flaws with my violin/fiddle playing, and darn if I'm gonna totally relearn.
so the same goes for slack.
I'd love to play a couple of light classical,...
Bourree, or something else from Christopher Parkening I...etc.--maybe some spelling too.
So, as we look at Led, or George, or Keoki...or all the Hawaiian greats...
hey, lets' just make it sound good.
fluidity, maybe eveness.
but no meaness.
I've never understood the "don't EVER thumbwrap to grab a bass note! It's just like letting the hinge adapt, or like driving a little 4 wd vs. a Limo...you don't drive them the same.
I'd love to see Jeff do a split second thumb wrap!
when I hear him, I love it, but know when listening to his arrangements he NEVER grabs a bass note that way. It might be the classical way, but "it's not the Cowboy way!"
anyway, I swear, the thumb-hinge can shift back to a near classical position in a second-- if that's your "center".
I would tend to agree that an extremely high left thumb on the neck is probably limiting.
But there's always exceptions.
Most of the good to great "folk" style players, (and this is the way I play fiddle/violin--and NO I'm not putting myself in that category!), adapt their best useable position, and go for it.
Darn the kelp, full speed ahead.
Oh, and hey, HO--it's snowing!
maybe some practice by the fire.
|
Edited by - Kapila Kane on 03/07/2014 12:38:36 PM |
|
|
|
thumbstruck
Ahonui
USA
2168 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2014 : 5:36:08 PM
|
It's hard to do the left thumb wrap on the low string on a classical guitar, the neck shape works against it and the fretboard isn't radiused.
Retro's comment about being on a plateau rings true -- been there, done that. I always tell my students to look forward to the plateaus, it precipitates a jump ahead. Progress is by fits and starts. |
|
|
|
Russell Letson
`Olu`olu
USA
504 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2014 : 07:59:35 AM
|
Two things, Allen: If what you're hearing from classical guitarists is "not particularly enjoyable, but . . . hard," you might be listening to the wrong part of the repertory. There's plenty of deeply beautiful music that also requires a high degree of technical skill. The point of classical-guitar discipline (or the other classical disciplines with which I'm familiar) is to develop technique to the point where the difficult parts of those beautiful tunes sound easy. The art that conceals (or, in this case, reveals) art.
Last night our folk music society hosted a singer-songwriter-guitarist who is classically trained--in fact, he's a university guitar professor. His songwriting is clearly influenced by the facility he has gained via conservatory training--think Stephen Sondheim on guitar. But aside from one show-off piece (which he announced as such: "Here's a finger-buster"), his arrangements did not sound strained or difficult--they fit the songs. Any guitarist in the audience would recognize the level of skill being deployed, but we weren't listening to the difficulty; we were listening to the music enabled by his command of his instrument.
And Led's "jus' press" ought to include the codicil "for several decades"--something he would never, in his good-natured and profound humility, probably even think. Charlie Parker is said to have played so much as a kid that he would fall asleep with his horn in his hands.
Kid with violin case: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Cabbie: Practice, practice, practice.
|
|
|
|
slipry1
Ha`aha`a
USA
1511 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2014 : 11:17:05 AM
|
Re Retro's post (Thumbs', too. Indeed, IMHO, improvement comes in spurts, preceded by a lot of angst and soul searching. What the player imagines (vertical axis is improvement):
| |
-----|-----| - you go along, and then, suddenly, you "get" something.
What REALLY happens:
|----
|-----|
-----|
You actually improve, but, to you, anyone can do what you can do, which is not true. It is a common self delusion, and, as uncle Keaka says, there's no delusion like self delusion ;).
|
keaka |
|
|
|
garson
Lokahi
USA
112 Posts |
Posted - 03/09/2014 : 1:32:41 PM
|
| Technique has been a bear for me. My right hand was horrible and my first finger had focal dystonia - it froze in an extended position when the playing was hard for me. So I played with my thumb and second finger only. Last year I tried playing only with the thumb and the bad first finger, and then switched back to the old technique when I got too bored. Then I "gave up" on that and just played anyway I wanted, with emphasis on staying relaxed. Gradually I noticed that I was using my bad finger more and more. Now I am able to fully use the first finger and have a more normal and relaxed hand. After many years of a technical plateau I got a breakthrough. My moral? Play as much as you can, play however you feel, do what you enjoy, and stay relaxed. |
Jim Garson |
|
|
|
thumbstruck
Ahonui
USA
2168 Posts |
Posted - 03/09/2014 : 2:08:45 PM
|
| As my Dad told me: learn slow, play clean, and don't hurt yourself. It's relaxation, it's sharing with friends, it's personally challenging. Your ear will always be ahead of your ability to play. That's how you learn. |
|
|
| |
Topic |
|
|
|
Fear vs. Aloha-- restarting practice/R;H ideas?
