Members Jesse Jordache Posted June 21, 2004 Members Posted June 21, 2004 I picked up the "speed mechanics" book, and two things he keeps emphasizing are finger independance, that is, what one finger is doing shouldn't affect what the other fingers are doing, and keeping your fingers resting about half an inch above the strings in a state of readiness. So I came up with the most difficult exercise I could think of to try to work on this: I play trills with my middle and ring finger, and keep my unused pinky and index a small distance from the strings, and try not to move them. I want them not even to twitch. It is IMPOSSIBLE. no matter how slow I do the trills (and I'm doing them so slowly that they can't even be considered trills), my index finger twitches around at least a little bit, and gradually works its way up until it's almost straight up. My pinky shoots straight up in the air almost immediately. I can do it on a table or on my arm so long as I don't use any real pressure with my "fretting" fingers - but as soon as I'm in a real situation where you have to depress the strings and therefore use force, it's completely different. I ran it by a friend of mine who's not a shredder or anything, but he's quite good and is very "classical" in terms of his technique - no bad habits. He couldn't do it either and he wasn't any better at it - his fingers moved exactly as much and in the same way that mine did. I don't mean hard as in when you first learn to use just the tip of your pick and your tendency is to use more, or hard like barre chording the first fret before your hands are strong enough. I mean hard as in the sensation I get in my hand makes me think that it's not humanly possible, like sneezing with your eyes open. Should I drop this exercise completely? Am I taking the point of the lesson too literally? If it's possible then I want to keep at it - my hand will learn a lot from it. Give it a try - what do you think?
Members Auggie Doggie Posted June 21, 2004 Members Posted June 21, 2004 Remember that proper technique applies to proper music; there will always be things to play that fall outside of 'proper' when it comes to technique.In a real-life musical situation, how often would you ever need to execute a trill using those two fingers AND keep the other ones motionless? It will NEVER happen.Yes, it's imperative to keep your fingers close to the strings whenever possible, but it's not ALWAYS possible. However, when you're doing that exercise, when your other fingers start to wander, STOP! Don't practice it wrong; that's worse than not practicing at all.Remember that exercises aren't for building techique; they build strength, endurance, coordination, and flexibility, just as though you were an athlete in training. Technique is a set of skills, not a feat of strength, endurance, or flexibility. Exercises are useful to prepare you for practice...to get yourself in shape, as it were...but nothing more.In your example, realize that trilling requires strength (which means you need to 'wind up' a little more to exert enough force...your body will do whatever it has to in order to achieve that, in this case, your fingers pull away), but you can execute the trill whether or not your unused fingers fly around. In other words, your exercise doesn't match up with what you're trying to achieve....ditch it! The best way to keep your fingers from pulling away from the neck is by making sure that you use all of them as often as possible. Practice things that ensure that your fingers can't fly away, and they will be trained to not fly away. There are some aspects of physics and physiology that simply can't be unlearned...they're human.
Members Jesse Jordache Posted June 21, 2004 Author Members Posted June 21, 2004 Using all my fingers as often as possible is good advice, and probably better at for I'm trying to achieve (mainly finger independance and proper positioning, which I'm weak on). I also think what I'll do is go back to more human and natural exercises. Just to clarify - I would stop when i saw my fingers flying off the fretboard, which would happen immediately. And I know in a real world situation I'd never trill with those fingers. The point of the exercise was to develop independance in my fingers, and to prepare me for other things - not to be able to execute a trill. Thanks for the input.
Members bassmantele Posted June 21, 2004 Members Posted June 21, 2004 Classical players - piano, violin, flute, etc. - don't practice many purely technical exersizes. Most of whan they practice is either etudes - short pieces of music that focus on particular skills - or actual performance pieces. That way, you practice what you actually want to play, not just abstract movement. You' d be better off taking a song you already know and trying to play it perfectly. Slow it down, and be very fussy about your fingering, making sure to nail every phrase. Then use a metronome, and gradually speed it up while keeping your technique flawless.
Members apokas Posted June 22, 2004 Members Posted June 22, 2004 I dont think that it is nessesary to keep the other fingers frozen. I believe that would be bad since you will force them and tense them up which we all know it is bad. I will allow my fingers to move everywhere they like as long as they are relaxed and since they are relaxed they will not hit on any string since I have to "comand" them to tense to push the string. Im very lucky that I had a friend when I started to play guitar and told me to place one finger per string so now I basically grab with my index and move the other fingers where it is needed. I feel that it works out pretty good for me so far.
Members Little Dreamer Posted June 24, 2004 Members Posted June 24, 2004 The idea with Speed Mechanics is that the more you do those exercises, the stronger your hand becomes. the more strength you have, the less effort it takes to do the exercises. The less effort, the more relaxed. The more relaxed, the easier it is to keep your fingers from doing things you don't want them to do. With that trilling exercies (exercise 6), my middle finger used to stick straight up, tense as could be. And my pinky was curled back and also extremely tense. I had to stop a couple of times during that exercise to shake the cramp out of my hand. But after a couple of weeks, I trained my middle finger to stay relaxed. Basically, I only used the minimum amount of effort to do the trill, hammering on and pulling off very lightly, and when I did the pull offs, my ring finger would only come about 1/8th inch off the string. So, once I got my middle finger relaxed, the exercise became easy. I could go through it several times before I got tired. I guess it's stuff like that that you're supposed to always keep in mind while doing those exercises. Maybe you can't do it at first, but if you work at it for a while, it'll come.
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