Coupling

It has been said "virtuosity is in the mind". That is true. However, it is also true that virtuosity is in the body. In practice, we must know how to use the mind to train the body, as well as how to allow the body to train the mind. We will look at a way of doing both.

In "The Principles", I have defined practice as "knowing the right thing to do, and making sure you do it", and that is a true and most useful definition. But it is a little like defining how to win a football game as "getting more touchdowns than the other team". It is mostly good for letting you know to look out for whether it is happening or not; it doesn't quite tell you how to do it! Both parts of the definition of practice pose enormous challenges; figuring out the right thing to do, and then getting our fingers to do it! The Foundation Exercises in The Principles begin the process of educating the fingers as to the right way to do the most basic functions on guitar. As we progress on guitar, we find ourselves in an ever expanding series of playing situations, in many of which we find we have no clue as to the right thing to do! Our only choice then, is experimentation and analysis, and/or seeking help.

The person beginning to learn "The Principles" learns many fundamental concepts that serve as the foundation for more sophisticated practice procedures. Two of these are "stress points", and "awareness points". A "stress point" is a discrete move within a passage that causes us physical tension, with its associated mental tension, withdrawal of awareness from the body, and the stopping of the breath. They are what most people simply call "the hard parts". Hitting them during playing is like hitting a pothole while driving; hit one big enough, and you might very well be stopped dead in your tracks (and in guitar playing land, potholes are all over the place for everybody!) In any case, going down the same road and hitting the same potholes gives you a pretty shaky jalopy after awhile. There are two remedies for this situation: either find a way of repairing the pothole, or find a better road to take that still gets you where you want to go.

With correct practice, we  repair potholes in playing by replacing "stress points" with "awareness points". We do this in a variety of ways. If we are lucky, we may untangle the knot of tension in a stress point by the simple expedient of practicing slowly, with extreme attention to the body, and working the passage up through the tempos using the Basic Practice Approach ("The Principles Of Correct Practice For Guitar", p.74  ) Very often, and especially for those new to the process, playing problems will magically disappear as unfelt tensions become conscious, and replaced by a new, relaxed way of moving. The reason it happens often with players new to correct practice is because most of their problems are caused by tensions locked into the muscles through all their time spent playing with unawareness. So, stress points are relatively easily replaced with awareness points.

However, there are also many times when the problem is not occurring because of how we are doing what we are doing on the guitar. Often, the problem is occurring because of what we are doing; we are simply doing the wrong thing! This is when we need to find a new road to take. The way we have arranged our moves, our fingering, the exact configuration of forces that we are bringing to bear on the strings, right and left hands, is not sufficient or appropriate in order to obtain what we are attempting to obtain, at least not at the speed we are attempting it. And so, all of the movements and conditions of the playing process must be examined and re-evaluated to determine where the trouble is coming from, and a new approach must be developed, applied, and evaluated.

In "The Deeper I Go, The Deeper It Gets", I explained that a player must regard a note differently than a listener. To a player, a note, in addition to the actual sound we hear, is also the entire set of events that are "causes" of the "effect" we call the note. When we are having trouble it means that we are producing unknown causes, and those causes are creating unwanted results. We must strive to make all of our "causes" known, and to learn what "causes" will produce the effects, or notes, we desire. If we can do that, and then train ourselves to produce those causes when we play, we can solve any playing problem we come across. A master player is simply one who is proficient in this process.

Creating Coordination

Most people are familiar with the meaning of the word coordination, and we would pretty much agree that coordination is a good thing to have if you want to play the guitar! Coordination means to bring into alignment two or more "ordinates". An "ordinate" is a specific point in space and, when it comes to the movement process of playing the guitar, it means a specific point in time as well. Finding the right ordinates, in space and time, and bringing them into alignment, is what practicing is all about. In fact, Eliot Fisk, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, classical guitarists in the world from a technical standpoint, has said " I tell my students that the secret of great playing is timing. Just look at Michael Jordan play". This statement indicates much more than the usual meaning of the word "timing" in music. He means the precise timing of all the movements that go into making each note. However, that tells us nothing about what those movements should be, or how to train ourselves to do the movements with the precision timing required. We can "just look at Michael Jordan play" all day long, but that hardly means we will play basketball like him at the end of the day!

So how do we train ourselves to move with coordination, to move in a way that  brings into alignment the various ordinates of a particular note? There are many parts to the answer, many of those parts are in The Principles. Right now we will look at a more advanced technique I call "coupling". Coupling is the bringing together, into one playing moment and motion, of two or more events necessary to produce a note. It is done by intense focus on the tactile sensations of fingers on strings during the movement process, and this focus is reinforced during repetitive practice at various levels of speed, from no tempo to slow tempo to performance tempo.

Let's make all this theory real by looking at an example. Here is the opening riff to Arlo Guthries "Alice's Restaurant". It is a traditional Travis style picking pattern on a dominant 7th cycle pattern in the key of C. I have detailed 4 places where the ease of playing will be greatly improved by "coupling" two events into one playing moment. The first two involve playing a note with one right hand finger while at the same time touching another string with another right hand finger. The 3rd one involves touching an unused string with the 4th finger of the left hand while playing a bass note with the thumb. The last one has the index of the right hand touch the 3rd string while using the thumb.

These moves have been discovered by a careful analysis of the music, and now must be trained into the fingers. Internally, we will focus on the tactile sensation which occurs at that playing moment, the feeling of the fingers actually touching the strings, and that feeling will be our experience of that playing moment when we play the music. These are all example of what I have described elsewhere as "tightening the action" (Deeper, p. 14)

Can the music be played without making these moves? Yes it can, but not by everyone. People with enough natural talent will often be able to overcome the extra difficulty of playing with less than optimal technique (until they try something sufficiently complex). By optimizing the movement process in the way we have, anyone can learn to play this passage easily, and those that could play it without doing these moves will play it even more easily, and the easier something is, the more our musical selves can come through the music.  Most importantly, by learning to think in this way, and practice in this way, anyone can continually improve the level of their skill, and master increasingly complex music, and as music becomes more complex, these approaches become increasingly necessary.

Always look for ways to streamline and optimize the movements your fingers make to create the notes. If you look (and if you know how to look) you will almost always find them. It will often involve the grouping together of two or more events into one playing moment, with one or more of those events serving the purpose of preparing for upcoming notes. The discovery of these events is achieved through an intelligent analysis of the music, and the combining or coupling of these events is trained into the fingers by systematic workups using the Basic Practice Approach.

Dear Jamie,    

For some folks, it seems, there is a bit of bad news too. The bad news is that you are going to have to actually WORK to acheive excellence on the guitar! Oh my!

As our forum members explain The Principles to newcomers, the point is often made  that The Principles is not a quick fix. GuitarPrinciples is NOT "learn guitar in 7 days". It is more like "learn to play, better and better, every day of your life". The Principles are not for impatient people, and they are not for lazy people. They are for winners, and for people who want to be winners. They are for people who really want to play, and play well. They are for people who want the guitar to be an ongoing, intense, and rewarding part of their lives. In my years of teaching, I have found that most people WILL work hard, as long as they are shown how to work, why they should work that way, and then see for themselves what wonderful things happen when they do---"wow, I can really do this!".

There is no question as to whether The Principles "work". There is so much proof on our site and in our forum, that the question can only be asked by someone for one or more of the following reasons: the person asking:

1. is simply an irrational skeptic who refuses to believe something even when presented with every good reason for doing so (do you think we have made all those success stories up??!!) Some people really do think it all sounds too good to be true!
    
2. has not spent any time looking on our site or in our forums
    
3. is in reality full of self doubt about their own ability to work, or achieve.

To the first type of person, I really have nothing to say, except if I were you I would try to find out who in your life burst all your bubbles and took away your power to believe in life's potential wonderfulness. To the second type, yes, I understand, we are all busy and impatient; we want it all and we want it now. But, just to save our beleaguered forum members from answering the same skeptical questions a hundred times, I have collected a number of threads from people asking "do the Principles really work". You will find your answers here. You will see that the real question is not whether The Principles will work, but whether YOU will work.

From The Forum...."Do The Principles Work?"

Finding my way - is this the right place? Hello All, I am new to this forum and to this website. I would like to take a few moments to introduce myself and then ask for your advice.

The Principles - How have you benefited?   I am new to the Principles and was wondering how others have benefited from using this book. Did it make a big difference?
buying the book?   Just found this site a little while ago and now I'd like to know if there's anything in the Principles book that's not on the web site.

To the third type, I recommend you realize the real root of the problem. Lack of confidence, inner doubt, is nothing to be ashamed of, I have certainly had to deal with it myself.  But do deal with it, get rid of it. It totally ruins your ability to have fun in life. And when you start to use The Principles, and you see yourself turning into a real guitar player, you will get rid of it. Make it your New Years Resolution. You can be like the many people who write in our forum about reaching levels of ability they never thought possible. If you don't believe in yourself, believe in The Principles, soon you will believe in yourself.

Here are some threads to help you see it is possible for you too. By next year, when your friends are clapping after you finish playing, telling you how good you play the guitar, you'll be glad you did!

From The Forum..."Wow! The Principles Really Do Work!