ai tlic’, 2 800% dea to use a metronome on all technical material you may work on. Not only Will this help to develop a sure feeling for mete and rhytium, but it will help to keep the speed of any exercise steady. Often without a 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 a 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 Gifficulties in pieces, by using a metronome, then one becomes better able to control speed. In doing pieces, a good idea is to vary the speed at which one practises from quite slower than the true tempo to somewhat faster, 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 2 lot with a metron- ‘ome, 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, ‘exercises are: 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 with as little wasted motion as possible. Do them always with a GOAL in mind, knowing always exactly what particular problem you are trying to comect 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 each left hand finger in every possible combination with every other finger (so 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: 1234, 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 first string and work your way down to the sixth string, and then perhaps move up ‘one fret and work your way back to the first string. SLOWLY. (metronome 4 =48 or slower). Late, oie te 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: im, ia, ma mi, ai, am 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 ripht 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 complicited. Do be very careful, especially at first, and make sure that the right hand is really doing the pattern 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, iii and mmmmmmmmms.