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The Secret of Speed: Finding the “Incredible Lightness”
By Jamie Andreas
In my essay "Discover Your Discomfort", I urged
you to become aware of the sensations of discomfort you experience
while practicing and playing. The reason is very simple. Until
you do, you will not be able to be aware of the sensations
(that is, your mental awareness of the physical feelings in
your body) a good player has, the sensations that you must
have to play well. I call this sensation, or feeling in the
body, "The Incredible Lightness". I call it this,
because once you experience it, and allow it to grow by Correct
Practicing, well, it’s Incredible. This feeling of lightness
is what makes fast, accurate playing possible. Unfortunately,
because of ignorance of how to practice correctly, far too
many players create for themselves "The Incredible Tightness".
I am going to quote from my book, The Principles of Correct
Practice for Guitar, to bring this point home.
"The relative state of tension or relaxation in the muscles
is one of the hardest things to be aware of. I once saw a
person play with so much tension in her right shoulder that
it was up to her earlobe! Always trying to be helpful, I pointed
this out to her when she finished. As she let her shoulder
down a few inches to it’s normal position, she told
me I was wrong, she wasn’t tense, but very relaxed!
The reason she felt this way is because we very quickly become
used to whatever we experience, and consider it normal. We
never question whatever tensions we experience in learning
new skills on the guitar, and in fact consider it part of
the doing of it. And it often is, but it doesn’t have
to continue to be that strenuous. We can learn to do the movements
with less effort.
However, when we first try something, it is often not possible
to do it without a lot of excess tension. The mistake is,
we assume that the tension is inevitable, and never realize
we can get to a point where we can get the result we want
without all the huffing, puffing and straining. Often, more
stretch or muscle development is required, which will come
with a correct approach.
Of course, as we continue to try the new skill, and assume
the effort we feel must be that way, it becomes ingrained
into our approach, and gets worse. So we have a vicious circle,
that leads to frustration and bad playing.
So extra tension in the muscles, which every advanced player
knows is the number one cause of playing difficulty, becomes
a blind spot for us. Usually we are only aware of the result
of the tension, which is that mistake we just made. Often
it happens we are not even aware of that, because we start
to filter out those unpleasant reminders of our troubles.
As you will see shortly, the correct approach to dealing with
"mistakes" caused by tension, is to repeat the movement
extremely slowly, with a great focus on keeping all muscles
relaxed. With each repetition, the muscles learn the relaxed
way of moving to produce the result you want. "
So you see, it is lack of understanding of how the body/mind
functions, and lack of honest attention while practicing,
that gets us in to trouble.
You must start to observe your own "Tightness",
and replace it with "Lightness", then you will see
your level as a player change upward, what I call Vertical
Growth. Since many players have no idea what this lightness
feels like, here is a very simple way to connect with it.
You must then begin to cultivate this feeling in actual playing.
Believe me, it feels good! In fact, when you see a good player
"making it look easy", it’s because it is
easy, when you have the "Incredible Lightness".
Let’s discover "The Light Finger"
The first step in finding "The Incredible Lightness"
is to discover The Light Finger. The Light Finger is the completely
relaxed finger, brought to the string, and touching the string,
with only the weight of the finger. It does not press the
string down until told to do so. To discover the sensation
of the Light Finger, do this:
1. Raise your arms in front of you, without
the guitar, and take hold of the index finger of your left
hand with the thumb and index finger of your right hand. Completely
relax the left index, and wiggle it around with your right
hand. This is the Light Finger.
2. Touch the palm of your right hand with
your left index. Raise the left index two inches from the
palm. Now let it drop by it’s own weight back to your
palm, touching it very lightly, with no pressure. This is
how the finger feels when it first touches the string.
3. Now hold the guitar, paying attention
to the being comfortable and relaxed throughout the body,
and slowly raise your relaxed left arm up to the neck, bringing
the hand up so that the index finger is lined up with the
ninth fret. Have your fingers in a relaxed curl over the 6th
string. Allow your Light, relaxed middle finger to fall to
the 6th string, behind the 10th fret, so that it touches the
string, but applies no pressure. Look at the string under
your finger, and see the distance between the string and the
fingerboard. Make sure the string does not get move at all
down toward the fret.
4. Raise your finger an inch, and then bring
it back to touch the string again in the same way. Do this
over and over, touching the string with the Light Finger,
bringing it away, and touching it again. This is called Finger
Flapping. Do this a few times with each finger every day.
Make sure you keep the inactive fingers as relaxed as possible
while touching the string with the active finger. This will
get you used to the feeling, and over time, very sensitive
to the feeling of complete relaxation.
This light feeling is how your fingers will be when they first
touch the string to play a note, and it is the feeling they
will return to when they release from a note. It enables them
to be prepared for their next job. Many people never have
this light feeling, and play with tense fingers all the time,
and their playing suffers greatly because of it.
This exercise is what I call a Foundation Exercise, one that
should be done regularly, no matter how long you have been
playing. It will continually act to increase your awareness
of the correct and necessary sensations you must have in order
to play well. Learning how to bring this feeling in to all
playing situations is often a tricky matter, and there is
much else to know, but we have to start somewhere!
Now I know I haven’t mentioned speed yet, and here is
why. Speed, or the ability to execute movements rapidly and
accurately, is simply the result of continuous correct practice
that promotes "The Incredible Lightness". If you
are creating "The Incredible Tightness" when you
practice, you will suffer because of it. Think of walking
and running. Does a little kid have to practice running? No,
it just happens after balance is mastered, and the ability
to place one foot in front of the other, and have all the
body parts work together to keep the movement going. After
the two year old gets that down, don’t worry, he’ll
be running!
In closing, let me say that all the preceding is founded upon
the first two Principles of Correct Practice. I will state
them pretty formally, and they apply to all instruments.
Principle of Correct Practice #1: Your aware,
thinking mind is your primary practice tool.
Principle of Correct Practice #2: Control
of the fingers is developed by infusing conscious awareness
into the muscles through the mechanism of attention while
practicing.
Remember, as in all things in life, you get out of it what
you put in to it (and believe me, it makes me feel pretty
old to hear myself saying that, but it’s the truth.)
So read this over and over, and do the exercise, and apply
these understandings to your practice. Good Luck!
Copyright 1999 by Jamie Andreas. All rights
reserved. Used by permission.
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