Let’s go on with the guitar playing technique and I was previously talking about an important part of the techique – the playing mechanics. So what is a good material for developing your mechanics?

The term “playing mechanics” came prominently to my mind unfortunately when I already had done my BA degree in classical guitar but luckily before starting the MA so I took a year off to develop my technique and mechanics before moving on. The initial material that catched my attention was the Ricardo Iznaola’s “Kitharologus“. In first place it was not the actual exercises that attracted me but the exact workout plans that he suggests. Indeed – playing the guitar on the professional level can be demanding and no sportsman wouldn’t ever expect good results without daily practicing routines. 2-3 a day. Of course, it takes time! But if you don’t deal with it conciously the time will fly away anyway and then there is no wonder that you have fears about going live or recording something.

So strict plans and rules for yourself is the key. People are lazy. Me too. For a start I followed the Iznaola’s suggested daily practicing routines and after about 5 years started to do things my way. I would take a piece of actual music and turn the smaller parts of it to an exersice in the same fashion. More and more I found that I even don’t have to think about my playing techniques any more and I can concentrate on the music. Don’t believe the guys who tell you that the guitar is the most challenging instrument in the world as there are so many different movements involved. The fact is that every instrument has developed its repertoire to the utmost limit of the instruments playing technique. Playing the “Flight of the bumble bee” on the piano is a job for an average student but for the tuba player it is only a dream. Of course, I would now question the idea of playing such things on tuba anyway (as for me it is still unclear why people struggle with Bach on guitar when the harpsichord does the job many times better) but this is another topic.

The other book that I found useful in some ways, was the Scott Tennants “Pumping Nylon” but it is more a handbook than a method book. I mean – you cannot learn a language from a dictionary although we all agree that the information presented in a dictionary is correct and often very useful.

But lately I discover a less known author. That is Bryan Townsend and his “The Guitarist’s Complete Technique Kit” gathers together many important principles that I have been using in my work both as a player and a teacher. Although many of the ideas don’t seem to be authentic but hey – you need a good tool, and here it is, so do your job and don’t waste time with thinking “who’s made the hammer that I find so useful ”

As promised before – let’s dig a little deeper into the subject of practicing and this time I’ll express my thoughts about developing guitarists’ playing technique as this is a very important factor in successful guitar playing.

Sometimes people say that one or another guitarist (or other instrumentalist or a singer or an athlet) has a good technique. How to get it and why do we need that at all? A simple formula would tell you that technique = talent+hard work. Some people seem to learn many activities without even noticing it – takes the rollerblades on off he goes! Takes skis and again – elegant from the first moment. Takes up the guitar and from the first moment the playing position is as taken from a good method book. The rest of us just need to compensate the talent with hard work. But the physical talent depends greatly on the previous experience so sometimes it isn’t really talent but it is work, too. But this work has been done from early age on and sometimes without noticing. From a certain level the hard work is the only thing that gets you further. So called talent is a pleasant thing to start with but it takes more than that. It may be different in other fields of music but the classical playing techniques explore the utmost abilities of human body and mind.

Studying the classical guitar techniques takes about 16 years if done regularly. It is a normal and average estimation as most of players start at the age of 6-7 and go through all the schools with about 16 years. Nevertheless, there have been interesting experiments through times and I remember it was Štěpán Rak who put some Finnish students on a right track with just a couple of years. There were people who said that those students were lacking the musical expression. Truth is that we can compare playing and instrument with doing some sports but in music there is more than just a good technique. Techique must be applied to a musical material to make any sense at all. That’s why it may take time for understanding more complex music forms than just a song. (Ironically, I have now moved from sonatas to songs:)

One can compare it to learning to speak – if you know and can articulate a bunch of words in any language it doesn’t automatically mean that your speech makes sense. But apart from music a specific field of action can be practiced separately – the playing mechanics. So what the hack is this?! Mechanics are the actual finger movements and a playing technique is made up of different mechanical elements. For example – if you are good at playing scales then I would say that you have a good scale-technique but you need many different mechanical skills to execute a scale on the guitar: producing the sound, position of left hand, position of right hand, moving from string to string in both hands, shifting positions, cooperation of hands, ability to articulate everything rhytmically, ability to press down the strings correctly with your left hand, knowledge about where to press and so on.. So it may very well be that a player can do all the mechanical aspects but can’t put them effectively together and the result is weak technique. Can be the other way, too. There are players who do everything “wrong” but still don’t make a mistake and can rely on their technique. But this is an exeption as there alwasy are some.

The older guitar method books doesn’t address playing mechanics but think that if you practice a scale then you will automatically practice everything in it (the mechanical elements). It is true only when you already know how to execute those different mechanical movements. If not, then the most effective way to improve your technique is to deal separately with your playing mechanics.

The fact is that a human being cannot concentrate on more than 2-3 things at the time and the other aspects of mechanics must act automatically. If you now add to the 9-10 mechanical elements the other important things – the music, expression, performance, memory, action on the scene etc. then you will find that there is no way that you can control all of those aspects conciously. So the work with mechanics and more generally, playing techniques, must be done previously and act automatically.

In my next post I will share you some of the study material that I have used to improve my technique.

Before getting down to the business and starting actually to practice the pieces for the guitar songbook let me share some ideas and principles about practicing that I have used over past years whether practicing myself or teaching my students at the academy.

At music schools it is quite common to ask from friends: “Well, how much do you practice these days?” The answer is a number of hours from 0-8 and some crazy guys clame to practice more. But it is very rare that somebody asks you: “How do you practice?” And if you would have to answer this question, what would you say? Here we meet some uncomfortable questions:

Then what is practicing? Mostly it means repeating and when you repeat something then your movements become automatic. The same works well in sports or in any field of action that involves human body. The most common mistake that one can do while practicing the guitar is that he or doesn’t repeat correctly. Indeed – imagine that you try to memorize a poem and repeat it freely and with mistakes. What are the chances that the actual version will be memorized? But many people do the same on the guitar. It is practicing, too. It is practicing mistakes.

So how to make the repetition more effective and what is worth repeating at all? I will get back to this topic soon. Meanwhile let’s try to repeat our exercises precisely, that’s a good start!

Welcome to my new blog! This small webspace here is dedicated to my new classical guitar CD entitled “The Guitar Songbook”. It doesn’t exist yet but producing a CD is a long term process so actually things are half-way already.

My new album will be recorded in the beginning of September by Estonian Public Broadcast and as I am writing this post in February it means that I have a few months left for fixing the tracklist and practice the music. In this blog I will start describing the process of choosing the music and editing the scores and practicing.

I did the same kind of thing with my previous album – “The Dance Album”  and still update this blog once in a while when I have performed the program live or have other things going on because a project never dies, I’ll play the music that I like always.

So follow me if you are interested in how a guitar CD will be born and if you have suggestions or experience to share with my