The Art of Practising PART ONE The Art of Practi PART TWO ‘The Exercises...Page 8 PART THREE ‘The ideal basic position, and alist of problems to watch out for...Page 20 Left Hand Fingers and Nails, Hand and Wrist, Arm and Shoulder...Page 20 Right Hand Fingers and Nails, Hand and Wrist, Arm and Shoulder...Page 22 Torso and Sitting Position Holding the Guitar ‘The Guitar Itself...Page 24PART ONE ‘THE ART OF PRACTISING Since how one approaches the art of practising, and what one thinks about while doing it, are 4 great deal more important than simply how fast and in which ways one moves one’s fingers about, T hope the reader will forgive my prefacing the actual technical exercises in this book with a discus- sion of what one’s brain is supposed to be doing while one practises these or any other technical material. This book is intended to help guitarists to practise as effectively as possible—tc learn to develop the highest degree of precision and efficiency possible in the shortest amount of time. Its, ‘meant not only as a catalogue of pattems from which the student may choose and build exercises, most suited to overcoming his particular difficulties, but also should serve as a guide to help the student analyse his own faults and difficulties and enable him to choose what exercises he needs as wisely as possible, and use them as economically as possible. Some of the patterns given here are of the sort that any guitarist who has a fast and efficient technique has certainly worked on to some degree. (And there is usually 2 direct relationship between the relative amount of this sort of practice and the degree of virtuosity attained). Many teachers also offer some of these patterns to their students in some version or other, with words to the effect that if one practises them faithfully for fifteen minutes a day (or thirty minutes, or an hour, or whatever) all one’s problems will disappear. And sometimes they do work that way. But usually the patterns given out or printed. in books are only a very small fraction of the possibilities which could be derived from the same basic idea, and usually neither these other possiblities, nor the concept of deriving from them a further almost endless stream of variants, are ever mentioned. But it is this concept of many permutations and variants which can enable one to zero in precisely on a particular difficulty, and can enable one at the same time to avoid the boredom of a steady diet of a set group of often only. vaguely understood exercises. For many students gradually accumulate so many individual exercises, each of which is to be done for a certain fixed number of minutes per day, that they may Tose track of any goals-other than getting through an hour or more of tedium. (“Let's see—forty ‘minutes of Segovia scales (ter, minutes each of four right hand fingerings), ten minutes of Giuliani arpeggios, five of an Aguado Ewide, eight minutes of stretching exercises, ten minutes of tremolo, five minutes of chord changes, four minutes of barré exercises, six minutes of that nasty’ little exercise that so-and-so says is $0 good, and ten minutes of the even nastier one that whosit says Bream does every day, and now-thank heavens—I can get on to the pieces”). In this case alot of time is spent, usually without much thought or concentration. The aim of this book is to enable the student to spend less time, but use a great deal more thought and concentration, and end up with a lot more progress. (In fact I have found with myself and my own students that even as little 4 fifteen of twenty minutes a day of really intense concentration on some of these exercises can have a quite dramatic effect, even after only a few days, and that the more one learns to think analytically, the faster one can expect results from whatever amount of practising one does). One problem is that neither fingers, nor the muscles and nerves which control them, come in standard shapes and sizes. If Bream does a particular exercise every day, this does not necessarily ‘mean it will benefit everyone to do it. It may help someone else, but it will be of use only if the problem Bream designed it to correct is shared by the student, if the aspect of the problem causing the difficulty is the same in both cases, and if the student knows exactly what that aspect is and is aware of exactly how the exercise was designed to correct the fault. There are many potential reasons why a student may have difficulty with any particular passage he may attempt, and only a few of these reasons may apply in any given situation, and no amount of practising any of the other possibilities will help correct the problem. Nor wil simply playing the passage badly for a long time improve it. It has always amazed me that people seem to believe that if they do anything, no matter how badly, for long enough, it will improve. Why on earth should it? If I play a scale with an imprecise rhythm and a few messy spots. and do it 682 times, I have only taught my fingers very emphatically, how to play a scale with an imprecise rhythm and a few messy spots. If I play a mistake $39 times, the idea that the 540th time, by a miracle, will be OK is sheer lunacy. Conversely, if | play a piece (at no matter What speed) perfectly $39 times, there is every chance that the 40th time will be perfect also EVEN if there are 2000 eyes watching and 2000 earslistening that 540th time. 4‘The art of analysing one’s own technical problems and prescribing remedies for them is not simple, but it is one of the things that makes the guitar such 2 fascinating and challenging instru ment to play. There is SO much that can go wrong. (Also, needless to say, there are so many infinitely variable things that can go right~things which give the guitar such tremendous flexibility and expressiveness). _In part three you will find short discussions of some of the basic principles of how one may best wrap oneself around a guitar and produce reasonable sounds out of it, combined with 2 listing of many of the more usual things that can go wrong, and why, which may be of some help to the student wishing to track down some of the sourees of his difficulties, (Please refer to Part Three at this point if you have any questions about holding the guitar, ‘deal playing position, use of hands, fingers, etc). ‘This list is certainly not complete, but a complete description and discussion of every possible problem would take up a volume of encyclopaedic proportions, which few people would wish to ead, and which Tam sure I woukl not wish to have to write. In any event, many of the factors mentioned do not lend themselves to mere explanations on paper anyway, and the student who finds himself in need of a full explanation and demonstration of any of the principles and ideas mentioned would be well advised to go to the best teacher he can find for any further elaboration. To the guitarist who basically does know what to do, however, this may serve asa sort of check list to go through in search of reasons why he may be having difficulties with any particular passage or with his technique in general. Of course this list of what can go wrong is really only 2 discussion and analysis of position and of finger and arm mechanics. But there are a few more factors which should also be borne in mind when practising, One of the most important things for players of any instrument (0 remember is, that Distance equals Time. The more movement a finger must make to do a given job, the longer it will take, and time is one thing in music that one cannot afford to waste. In a slow piece, inefficient use of time will spoil the smoothness of the phrasing, and in a fast piece, it will not only ‘make the playing choppy, but may even cause notes to be missed altogether or rhythmic exactness to be sacrificed. Also, if too much time is used just artiving at the note at all, then no leeway is left for subtleties of touch, volume, oF tone colour, not to mention precision. In fact one of the ‘most usual reasons for a player's failing to attain as high a speed as he might lke, is simply a lack of synchronization between the two hands, or rather between each pair of fingers—one from the right hand and one from the left—responsible for each note of the passage in question, And of course any fault in synchronization is nearly always a result of the unhappy fact that ifa left hand finger and a right hand finger have to travel different distances to reach their goals, and if they both start fo move on command, they will obviously arrive at different times. (Even if the distances involved are as small as a quarter of an inch (.6 em) versus one sixteenth of an inch (.15 em), that still would mean that one finger would have to move four times as fast as the other in order to arrive on time, and this isa great deal). Of course the faster one tries to play, the greater the percentage of the total note value this discrepancy will take up. Soa great effort should be made at all times to keep all fingers of both hands as close to the strings as possible, so as to have to move them as little as possible The other factor one should keep in mind at all times is the importance of Absolute Precision in placing the Fingers. IF one’s goal for the left hand is only to place the finger somewhere between ‘wo neighbouring frets, this leaves the finger quite a remarkably large space from which to choose a point to land upon. However, if the finger gets used to having this large leeway when one Practising comfortably in one’s own living room, the finger will never develop a really solid idea of where any fret is. Then when suddenly one is faced with 2000 eyes watehing and 2000 ears listen- ing, the fingers may begin to feel a bit wobbly and the brain may get a bit less reliable, and that leeway which the finger was used to (which, in the privacy of ones home, was maybe as much as an inch oF so (2.5 em) on the lower frets) may easily grow into a quite larger distance, so that the finger may start to land in all sorts of odd places causing everything from minor buzzes to a total collapse of the piece. If, however, when one is at home and relaxed, one never allows any finger to land in any but the most exact and consistent way, exactly behind the required fret, with no ‘more leeway than that which would not be detected by an electron microscope, then when one is faced with those 2000 eyes and cars, though one’s precision may deteriorate, that deterioration 5will be much less. For since, in this way, the finger has built up a very reliable and consistent idea of where any particular fret happens to be, even at worst, the deterioration is very unlikely to amount to even a small fraction of the actual space between two frets. ‘These are the sorts of things that have to be practised using only very simple material, It is no good trying to work on making small movements, or developing precision, or working to correct some fault that one has discovered one has, by trying to keep these factors in mind while clawing ‘one’s way through a Bach Fugue. Even most Btudes are basically too hard, and keep too much of the mind occupied with their complexities, to be really good material for use in trying to correct problems or in really working on improving one’s technique. What one needs is something so simple and so basic that one can immediately play it ABSOLUTELY right with everything exactly correct. It may seem at first rather silly to be asked to play a chromatic passage such as the following: eye and even so, to have the suggestion made that even THAT be done very slowly. But try now to do that, Keeping both hands very correctly placed, with the left hand fingers hovering exactly over the four frets, and precisely over the second string, snd not more than a quarter of an inch above the fingerboard, with none of the fingers touching the first string, and with the tip joint of each finger perpendicular to the fingerboard. Only the finger actually playing should be touching the string at any time, and all the others should be kept perfectly still just hovering right above the string. Unless you are already quite a good player, you will probably find that at least some of your fingers aren't very happy hovering exactly over the correct position ever so slightly ehind each of the four frets, and in fact, one of more Fingers may refuse to stay there at all unless pressed dowa stopping a string, If this is the case, it means that you are using friction against the string to keep the finger in place rather than using the muscles in your own hand. It also means you are needing to press a lot harder than necessary just to make the finger stay in place. (People often go to a concert of some virtuoso, and go out saying "Oh, it looked so easy when he did it". Well in fact they are right “it was easy-or at least was relatively so. If it were not, that virtuoso would not have been able t0 do such feats. No one could play difficult pieces if they had to press down as hard as the average beginner often does). You may also notice in doing just this very simple four note chromatic scale, that when one finger is pressed down, some other finger may seem to have an irresistible urge to pop up, Most people’s fourth fingers do this at first, and other fingers may try it as well, and this isa ‘thing that has to be eliminated. It is no good catching it after it has already popped up, and bring- ing it back down into position—it must be stopped from even making the slightest attempt at pop= ping up. And then there is the right hand to be considered. It should be relaxed and should hang With the fingers nearly touching the strings when not plucking, the stroke must be absolutely efficient, and absolutely synchronized with that of the left hand, and the tone of each of the four notes should be as close to identical as makes no difference. if you can get all that absolutely perfectly right the first time at high speed, then you don’t need this book. But also, if you can do, all that absolutely perfectly the first time at high speed, I would be willing to hazard @ guess that your name is Andrés Segovia, Julian Bream, John Williams, or some such thing. Since the chances are that your name is not Andrés Segovia, so the chances are also that you have by now realized that to do even this simple pattern ABSOLUTELY correctly, you have to do it quite slowly, and this is the most important lesson you could ever learn, Because anyone can play almost anything perfectly if he does it slowly enough, and if someone does a thing perfectly enough times at whatever speed, then he will eventually find it possible to do it perfectly at pretty much any reasonable speed. The virtuosos who go sailing through passages of transcendant speed and difficulty in concert are the ones who sit for hours at home playing things at a snail's pace and watching their fingers like a hawk for the slightest sign of inefficiency or lack of precision. But the people who practice at more normal tempos are the ones who keep finding that somehow they never seem to get much better, and that the piece that they couldn't quite manage to get through some years ago, they STILL can’t manage to get through now:It is a good idea to use a metronome on all technical material you may work on. Not only will this help to develop a sure feeling for metre and rhythm, but it will help to keep the speed of | any exercise steady. Often without ¢ metronome, one may start to play at a slow speed and then accelerate without noticing, or one may slow down in the hard spots without realizing it and so may have a quite untrue idea of what speed one can really play a certain thing at. This also frequently may happen in pieces, so that the hard parts of the piece may end up being played at a slower speed and the easier parts may go 2 lot faster, and this can completely destroy any sense of tempo. If however, one gets used to keeping strict tempos both in exercises and when practising technical difficulties in pieces, by using a metronome, then one becomes better able to control speed. In doing pieces, « good idea is to vary the speed at which one practises from quite slower than the true tempo to somewhat fuster, for in this way one will build up flexibility and not become locked into only one possible speed for a given piece. Ironically, it appears that working a lot with # metron- come, rather than making people more likely to play stiffly and “metronomically” usually gives them such a greater control over their rhythm and tempo that they are freer to use more rubato and to play more sensitively. Those who don’t use a metronome, fearing it will make their playing too severe and mechanical, often end up playing the most mechanically, since they often have such a vague sense of time that they must expend a lot of effort just to keep any sort of tempo at all. Or if they do not expend that effort, they may play so unmetronomically that no one can even guess what rhythm they are trying to do. So the main things to bear in mind with these, or any, Do them SLOWLY. Do them ABSOLUTELY PRECISELY, both in terms of precision of finger placement, and in terms of rhythmic regularity and exactness, Do them as little wasted motion as possible. Do them always with a GOAL in mind, knowing always exactly what particular problem you are trying to correct. Do them PERFECTLY. Anything that would not do as és for an LP recording in no good, and ‘means you are going too fastPART TWO. ‘THE EXERCISES ‘To begin with, the simplest thing you could ask for in an exercise is a chromatic scale of four notes. If you want to use cach left hand finger in every possible combination with every other finger (o that any possible pattern of movement from finger to finger you could ever find in any piece would have already been practised before you ever started working on the piece) you get the following 24 patterns: 234, 1243, 1324, 1342, 1423, 1432 2134, 2143, 2314, 2341, 2413, 2431 3124, 3142, 3214, 3241, 3412, 3421 4123, 4132, 4213, 4231, 4312, 4321 If, for instance, you wished to work on the first pattern in its simplest form, you could start anywhere on the fist string and work your way down to the sixth string, and then perhaps move up fone fret and work your way back to the first string. SLOWLY. (metronome ¢ =48 or slower). aed 12 Be aa et gas , 3 9__. @___ 9 —_ 9__ 0___ In this way you can work your way up and down the fingerboard, going across each fret and then shifting up or down one fret and going back the other way. If you find your present stretching ability does not permit you to place each finger exactly as it should be with a correct hand position when playing on the lower frets, then don’t try to play at all on the lower frets until your stretch improves, Go only as far down as you can do perfectly. If you try to do something clearly impossible for your fingers, you will only teach them to compromise and destroy the point of the exercise ‘The simplest way to pluck these patterns is to use the right hand patterns of two fingers Do not be fooled into thinking that im and mi are identical. ‘They are far from that, as the right hand has to change strings differently in each case, and if you practise accenting the patterns, the accents will be different as well. At first try whatever patterns of both hands are the easiest for you and watch both hands to make sure you are doing everything right. Then while still Keeping a simple right hand pattern, you might try some more complicated left hand patterns, and when the left hand gets fairly automatic for any pattern, you can try making the right hand fingerings more complicated, Do be very careful, especially at first, and make sure that the right hand is really doing the pattem you told it to. Many right hands will start off doing a given pattern, and then, the minute one looks the other way, they will start doing anything they like, including strings of iif and mmmmmmmmms. 8Now you have the simplest version of the sort of exercise this book is about. Where do you go. from there? Most people will think of getting out their pocket calculators to figure out that so ‘many patterns times so many other patterns times so many minutes per pattern equals so much time, and the total they are likely to come up with is frightening enough to make anyone give up right there. But this is exactly what NOT to do. Because the main point of this book is that these exercises are to be looked upon as merely a catalogue of possibilities from which one may select, only what one needs, and from which one can design further exercises made to fit just the problems (of one’s own fingers So how does one select? At first just doing anything at all relly correctly may be enough of a problem that one should just stick with the simplest possible versions for a while, unt the hands become used to working well. After the fingers get more accustomed to doing very simple things well, then one should start to notice which patterns of the left hand are the handest. Not only should one make a note of the two or three or four hardest patterns, but one should try to figure fut why they are hard and perhaps what they have in common. Maybe every time you have a 34, the 4 tends to leap up more than usual. Maybe if 4 follows a 1, itis less sure of landing correctly than if it follows some other finger. Maybe 23 is hard because 3 can’t stretch away from 2 very well, Whatever your worst problems are, write down what they are, and set about doing any patterns that have the difficult combinations in them, MAKING the fingers do correctly what they don’t want to do. Then if you don't find enough different versions of what your fingers like least in the patterns of four fingers, you may want to look through all the possible ways you can play six notes without repeating any finger and using two groups of three fingers to make up each pattern. ‘These are listed under headings telling how many of which fingers are used in that group Of patterns, to make searching for particular combinations easier. Two Is, two 2s, and two 3s, 123123, 123213, 123132, 321231, 321312, 321321, 231231, 231321, 231213 132123, 132312, 132132, 312312, 312321, 312132, 213123, 213231, 213213, Two Is, two 2s and two 4s 124124, 124214, 124142, 4ni2ai, 421412, 421421, 24i2al, 241421, 241214, 142i24, 142412, 142142, ai2ai2, 412421, 41214: 2idi24, 214241, 214214, Two 1s, two 3s.and two 4s, 134134, 134314, 134143, 431341, 431413, 431431, 341341, 341431, 341341, 143134, 143413, 143143, 413413, 413431, 413143, 314134, 314341, 314314, 2, 3, and 4 only, two of each per pattern 234234, 234324, 234243, 432342, 432423, 432432, 342342, 342432, 342324, 324234, 324342, 324324, 423423, 423432, 423243, 243234, 243423, 243243,123124, 231241, 312124, 124123, 241281, 412123, 123134, 231341, 312134, 134123, 341231, 413123. 124134, 241341, 412341, 134124, 341241, 413241, 123234, 231234, 312342, 234123, 342312, 423123, 123412, 231421, 312412, 124312, 241321, 412312, 123413, 231413, 312341, 134312, 341312, 413231, 12414, 241413, 412413, 134214, 341412, 413412, 123423, 23143, 312432, 234231, 342321, 423231, Two 25, two 3s and two 4s. 123214, 123142, sni24i, 321412, 231214, 132124, 132412, 312421, ; 213124, 213241, s24213, 124132, 421231, 421312, 241213, 142123, 142312, 412321, 412132, 214123, 214231, ‘Two Is, two 35, one 2, and one 4. 123143, 321341, 321431, 231431, 231314, 132134, 132413, 312431, 312314, 23134, 213413, 134213, 134132, 431231, 431312, 341321, 143i23, 143213, 413213, 413132, 314231, 314312, Two Is, two 4s, one 2, and one 3, 124143, 421341, 421413, 2at43i, 241314, 142134, 142413, 412431, 412341, 214134, 214341, 134142, as1241, 431412, sai42i, 341214, 143124, 143412, 413421, 413142, 314124, 314241, ‘One 1, two 25, two 3s, and one 4, 123432, 123243, 321234, 321342, 231324, 231243, 132342, 132423, 312324, 213234, 213423, 234321, 234213, 432123, 432312, 342132, 243123, 243231, 423213, 423132, 324231, 324312, 10 sztazt 132142, 213421, 4is21 142132, 214321, 321314, 132314, 213431, 431321, 143132, 314321, 421431, 142314, 214314, 431421, 143214, 314214, 321432, 132432, 213243, 432321, 243213, 324321, 321214, 213214, 421213, 214213, 132143, 213143, 431213, 314132, 142143, 214143, 143142, 314142, 321324, 132324, 432132, 324132,One 1, two 28, one 3, and two 4s. 124234, 124342, 124324, 124243, 421342, 421423, 421432, 421243, 241234, 241423, 241324, 241243, 147342, 142493, 142432, 142324, 12342, 412423, 412432, 214234, 214324, 214243, 234124, 234261, 234214, 432412, 432421, 432142, 342124, 342412, 342421, 342142, 243124, 243241, 243421, 243214, 423241, 423412, 423421, 423142, 324124, 324241, 324214, 324142, One 1, one 2, two 35, and two 4s. 234134, 234341, 234314, 234143, 432341, 432413, 432431, 432143, 342134, 342341, 342431, 342314, 243134, 243413, 243431, 243143, 423413, 423431, 423143, 324134, 324341, 324314, 134234, 134342, 134324, 134248, 431342, 431423, 431432, 431243, 341234, 341342, 341432, 341423, 143234, 143423, 143432, 143243, 413423, 413432, 413243, 314234, 314342, 314324, Before getting too involved in the left hand though, you should test the right hand as well and soe in which ways the fingers work best and fastest. You probably already know that perhaps for you, imimi is faster than amama, or that iaiai is, or is not, a comfortable way to play scales. But test yourself and find out if you can go faster, for instance, from i to m, ‘or from m to ion the same string from a lower string to a higher, and visa versa,” After you have tried all these things, ‘you should have a pretty good idea what you need to work on improving, and which combinations Of fingers need extra practice. When you have found which directions, and from which finger to Which, give you the most trouble, you might try practicing the worst combinations with both accents and dotted rhythms. For instance if you find you can generally go quite fast from a to m, but not so fast from m to a, you might try aecenting the 2 in any ma combinations you practice Or you might try doing both the ma and am pattems with the following ehythms: ov This can be done quite slowly and still force speed on the sluggish finger if the dotted rhythms are kept tight enough. It is also easier in this sort of exercise, to Keep from getting tense hands and fingers, than if one were to try to simply play everything quickly, and one also has plenty of time to think about what one is doing during the 2 to m interval so as to be well prepared for the quick m toa interval. This sort of thing should not be done at first in combination with a complex left hand pattern. In fact it might not be a bad idea to try just using the right hand alone at the very beginning, and then trying next several repeated notes in the right hand for each left hand change, for instance:In oder to sharpen you sense of rhythm, you might alo want to try sometimes using J) YS JA rhythm and contastngitwithtte Q) NY When you have got the left hand patterns of four notes behaving reasonably well, and wish to complicate matters further with the right hand, you might try doing those same patterns of four in the left hand using the following patterns for three fingers of the right hand: ima mai aim ami mia iam So, for instance, with a pattern of 1324 in the left hand and mai in the right hand, you could get the following: H gun pees Rats @ pee eee SS ©__19_.©_6 © __.0 ‘Try first accenting the fours, and watching the right hand carefully to make sure the patterns of threes aren’t thrown off. ‘Then you might try to put accents on the first of each three notes and make sure the left hand doesn’t fall apart. With all of this, particularly at first, GO SLOWLY, Don’t chargelin at high speed, and after piles of mistakes and garbled patterns, finally resign your self to going slowly, Play any of these exercises ata speed at which, the very first time you try any combination, you can do it perfectly, and never build up the speed beyond a point where you have enough time to think about everything sufficiently to get it right Le fim mal 3 m You may ask why one should be able to play four left hand notes against a pattern of right hand fingering in threes. Afterall, one is rarely required to do that in pieces. But one does often have left and right hand fingerings that are completely independent of each other, and which require complete independence of the two hands. One has to be able to tell a hand to do some often fairly complicated pattern, and be able to rely on it to continue to do that pattern without much supervision while changing strings, often illogically as faras the fingers are concerned, and in spite of whatever the other hand may be doing. So any exercise that will get the fingers of one hand maintaining a pattern against a conflicting pattern in the other hand will help develop this capability. (Of course there are meny ways a given left hand pattern may be used other than the most obvious already given. For a start you might try skipping strings and doing the pattern on the first string, then the third, then the fifth, then the sixth, fourth, second, then first again on another fret efe efe, Or you might go from the first to fourth to sixth to third, and then start Over on a new fret. Or you might try shifting a given pattern up and down different distances on the same string. Or perhaps you might want to try shifting up or down a fret after playing each pattern on one string only- for instance: heb ee yp gag gts(Or you might try shifting within a pattern in any of many ways, for instance: ®—0—_- 9—_ 0 or 442 2. 1 gg oo #3 es i iy a pH «yen The possibilities are endless. You would probably choose to do any of these, or any other variants, depending on what you found your fingers needed to work on, or what problem you found in a piece that you needed to practise. If you found, for instance, that you had trouble keeping a consistent hand position when reaching from one string to another with the left hand, then some of the string skipping variants would probably help. They would help also with any problems of accuracy in the left hand. If you feel the need to narrow dawn the problem even more, you might break down this idea into Some exercises using only two fingers at @ time in the following fashion: 7 sou ; ys Te ps ce Jad I at 2 ow 2 . ear ott ‘The possibilities for this sort of thing on all frets and strings are endless also, but don’t kill yourself ‘working too fanatically on the hardest ones you can make up. Developing a stretch takes time after all, and the world is full of people who can't reach the sixth string with their fourth finger ‘when their third finger is on the first string. But whichever combinations you try, make sure thet your wrist stays quite stil as well as your elbow, so that it i the fingers that do the work. There is fo point in putting your shouller out of joint when what you are trying to do is move two fingers. Also make sure in any of these reaching or skipping exercises, that the fingers come down straight ‘onto the strings, because if they land at any angle trom the perpendicular, they may fend to push and pull the strings sideways towards or away from the hand. This not only causes the note being played to be out of tune, but will aso destroy the possibility of developing in the finger a true sense Of where the string actually is. (If you suspect you may be shifting the strings around in this ‘manner, yout might try to watch yourself in a mirror since it is much easier to see what you are doing this way) 10} If you find that you have difficulty shifting, or if you find that some fingers are unreliable to land on after a shift, then you might want to choose some of the shifting exercises thet emphasize the things you find hard, Any combinations of left and right hand patterns may be used with shifts and skips of any Sort. Shars may be added to any patterns in any ways, a8 may any sorts of tills fete. OF perhaps you simply Find that your stretch is inadequate, and doesn't allow you to keep a good position on the lower frets. Or perhaps some fingers stretch better than others. In this ease, rnot only can you practise stretching by simply doing any left hand patterns on as low frets as 13possible without compromising, but you might also want to try leaving an extra fret’s space between any two adjacent fingers in any patterns you practice. For instance, if you wished to do a 1432 pattern, you would get the following possible variants: 14 9 2 o1 4 3 2 dgaide - g Such spaces can be added to any patterns and worked up and down the fingerboard in any manner you may wish. Not only that, but if you want to get fancy, and if this seems to be a thing you heed to work on, you could combine some stretching variants with the string skipping andor shift- ing variants in any way your imagination can devise. Most such variants will probably be suggested to you by actual problems you may have in pieces. In fact whenever you encounter a difficult spot ina piece, a good idea is to figure out why itis difficult, and then take whatever that difficulty is and work it into some chromatic pattern, and then practise it up and down and across, all over the fingerboard. Whatever you may have to do in a piece that is difficult can always be reduced to one finger’s doing one particular job, followed by another finger’s doing something else, and once that sequence of motions can be isolated, it can be made into an exercise For example if you play Sor’s Sonata Op.15 Number 2, you will encounter the following spot: um = ei, wa J —= etc. A nasty little thing to play and containing quite a number of difficulties which can be isolated and worked on separately. First there is simply getting up to the B with 4, For that you could just try Jots of patterns of 3214 with a shift up to the 4, such as 4 4 a a2 ie = may = - turn sae = on = ete into 6600 O@—0 6248 ‘Then you may realize that the problem is not so much getting to the B, as getting there fast enough and solidly enough that you can manage (0 get right off again into the slur, which will lead to the following sorts of things; sett ap! Ons Og tomas Maybe by now you have discovered that the 4 will land pretty well if the whole pattem is done on. fone string, but if the 3 is on a lower string it makes it harder for the 4 to teach back to the first string. That idea will give you not only the following exercises: 4ete, Si 3 ——1—t © 09 @ O but will also probably get you running back to the previously mentioned exercises of two fingers jumping back and forth alternately between two strings. Or fo continue, you may find that after the 4th finger has made the supreme effort of getting the first slur ftom B to A, its too exhausted oF t00 out of position to be able to get back to the A to do the following slur. The first thing to tackle there would be simply repeating 43 slurs, so you might try doing the following patterns of six notes allover the place with shurs on the 42s: 421383, 1423, 1238, 1843, 3261, 3818, B31, B31B, 3838. 14218, B33, and B1BI. Or if you want to make life more interesting, you could try combining 43s with the 42s and get another pile of possitiltes. Try these with some shifting added in relevant spots. That gets you to the last chord which not only must be landed on, but needs an added A on the frst string played by the 4th finger, but not plucked, in order to stop the open F from sounding on throughout the next measure. So fist you have the chords to practise separately us td 4 until they are very reliable. ‘Then you have the fun of getting from the F sharp on the first string to the second chord which will give you more patterns to work on if this isa problem. Each aspect of getting to and from each note can be separated from the passage and worked on if necessary. ‘Then there is the right hand. In the previous passage, the right hand doesn’t have anything too horrendous, though even so you might want to work on getting the i finger from the first string {nto the middle of the chord which follows, in which it needs to play the third strings, or you might find you needed to practice the first arpeggio pattern to get the three notes absolutely simultaneous- ly. But in things like the following passage from a Dowland Fancy, the right hand certainly will benefit from being practised alone: O-"t imi a imi aimi By doing this you will get a better idea of where the trouble spots are, and you may find, incident ally, that the right hand alone is harder to play than the two hands together. (If this is the case, it ‘means that your left hand has been expending a lot of effort in dragging the right hand through the piece, and you will find that once the right hand thoroughly masters its part, the left hand will seem a lot easier as well O-rt aimitimi mimi aim; mig Limi aimiaimiMost of this is simply a matter of doing aimi through thick and thin, and should be practised as such. Once that aspect is under control, the only remaining problems will be getting from i on the fourth string up to mimi on the first string and back down to mim on the third, which can easily be made into a simple exercise. Most right hand difficulties will resolve themselves in this way, and if you find a certain part of a piece hard, don’t just assume that the problem lies in the left hand, since as often as not, it will be the right hand that is sabotaging the passage. (Though these examples from pieces are both quite difficult, this method of analysis may be applied to the simplest pieces any beginner might attempt, as well. Anything you play that you find difficult should be worked on in this manner). This Dowland passage may serve as a reminder that there ate still the right hand patterns of four to be considered. They are: imam, mami, amim, mime mia, miai, aim, aimi ‘These can be combined with the left hand patterns of six if you really want to drive yourself crazy, They can aso be used merely with the left hand patterns of four, or with any sorts of scales. (They are also, once they have been practised enough to be reasonably automatic, some of the most efficient ways of fingering fast passages in pieces-such as that Dowland—as are the right hand patterns of threes also). ‘They may be done as repeated notes om a single left hand note, if itis the right hand that is to be worked on particularly. Rhythms and accents may be added of course, Then to take a different tack, the left hand patterns may be transformed into right hand patterns (this time including the thumb) which may be used not only in running passages, but also as arpeggio exercises. For instance 1234 may, be substituting p for 1, i for 2, m for 3 and 2 for 4, become pima. The patterns of sixes are particularly good for this purpose, with the ones using all four fingers and having only one I (ie one p) giving the most generally useful patterns for arpeggiation. Or the patterns of fours in the left hand may then be developed into pattems on two strings at once giving a multitude of possibilities for exploitation, many of which are some of the most valuable exercises I know of. The basic patterns of fours on two strings ar 1324314241143223 241342313223 4114 1234214314413223 3472432143223 1441 1221433413314224 43341232144%32413 31 For instance, the first of these would mean that the firs finger should play on a higher string while the second finger would play a lower string. and then this should be followed by the third finger playing on a higher string while the fourth finger would take a lower string, Within those limits, anything is possible-for example: O77 @7 0265