Float Like A Butterfly

I'm asked quite often how to play fast.  I'm sure most people who ask that question know that it won't be a simple answer.  They are just hoping that maybe I can put them on the path.  We are going to talk about playing fast but only focusing somewhat on physical technique.

The first instinct when trying to play fast is to hit the strings hard.  What happens here though?  It takes more back swing on our plucking fingers.  We are also challenged with strings that are hit harder therefore vibrate in a larger way.  The downfall is getting more of a percussive tone from the largely vibrating string ricocheting off the fingerboard.  Another angle I find is greatly missed is, playing an instrument much of the time is about efficiency.  If you get a big 'ol back swing going on with your plucking finger so you can play harder to play faster, how much longer will it take to get back to the string compared to if you were just using your moderate plucking strength.  So in the end are we gaining anything by striking the strings harder?  I think we're just giving ourselves a sense of dominance so we can will the bass into sounding fast.  If you want it to be in time and articulate, it ain't that easy.

Allow me to retract my last sentence in the last paragraph.  It is easy, as long as you don't make it difficult on yourself.

Don't get me wrong, there's moments when the bass sounds great when were beating the hell out of it.  Yes, sometimes I hear a track I need to play on and I tell myself, "I think if I could pick out a bass that sounds great when I beat the hell out of it, I'll be happy with the sound."  I'm not implying that you just need to feather or just scratch over the top of the strings to play fast.  Pluck!  Pluck but look for any points where the string resists you too much.  Ask yourself if the movements on your right hand could be smaller or less exaggerated.  Does your tone not sound as good as when you were playing a big open groove?  Can you only get a good rolling sound when your right hand is based off the bridge pick-up because it has more tension?  It shouldn't have to be that way.  For some passages, I find the tone can get thin with that approach.

I'm sure a few of you have noticed that I haven't mentioned the left hand technique yet.  I could write many blogs on left hand technique.  To be simple, I'll leave it at a few points.  Keep your thumb behind the neck and don't let it creep up over the top of it unless it's for a special technique.

The left hand does need to develop speed as well.  There's two very simple ways.  Firstly, focus on making the most efficient movements you can.  Secondly, the strength you need to hold down your strings is dictated by how hard you are plucking with your right hand.  Experiment with holding down a fret on the low "E" string.  Use your everyday strength.  Now pluck with your right hand lightly, then pluck progressively harder.  Meanwhile, keep that left hand strength the same.  You'll notice how for a lot of the right hand plucking, the note fired off just fine.  As you started to pluck the string with more force, the note you were trying to hold down started to buzz.  Hey!  Some folks make a living with that sound.

If your right hand plucks lighter in an effort to play fast, your left hand doesn't have to hold the strings down as tight.  In turn, they can move around faster as they don't have to exert as much energy.

We should touch on practicing speed or fast passages in general.  Probably the most common way to develop speed is to plow through the part at full speed and let the clean and rhythmic accuracy appear over time.  This is the worst, long standing, widely used practicing habit I see.  Don't let your patience beat you!  It IS the long way.

Let's say you have a passage in a tune that's at 160bpm. Chalk full of 8th notes and faster.  Play it at the absolutely slowest you need to to play to be intelligible and clean.  Make sure at that speed you can still think strait and your not just using "The Force".  Find that speed your comfy with and practice with a metronome.  Let's say your speed is 80bpm.  Two days later, crank the metronome up only 5bpm more.  At first, you'll find 5bpm fairly seamless.  After a while at higher speeds you may find you need to spend a few extra days on one tempo.  Even if your tempo is easy, stay there for a few days.  If your already good at it, get better.  In a week your speed can be up to 94bpm.  You can get there with ease and you can get there playing just as clean as when you were playing slow.  In a month,  you can reach your goal.  Two months, maybe even faster.  If you are honest with your progress, these are much better results than the standard approach to gaining speed.  I see a lot of people waste years just moving their hands fast thinking that over time their notes will make sense.

Speed can get frustrating and comes in different forms in music.  You may work up a rhythm at one tempo, but it may not work out at the same tempo with a different rhythm.  It's good to get into practicing various rhythm groupings with the metronome.  It doesn't have to be a part of a song, it can just be an open string or one fretted note.  If your at a lack for rhythmic exercises, ask a drummer friend, or pick up a drum rudiment book.

In this blog, I'm not diving too much into the subject matter of which direction your fingers should pluck at faster speeds.  There's a lot of ways that work for many great players.  I'd like to eventually spend time talking about various right hand techniques.

For myself, I use three fingers on my right hand for the really fast stuff. 1,3,2,1,3,2,1,3 etc.  I always attack with my index finger as long as it's logical for the phrase I'm playing and my plucking pattern always stays in the same direction despite any variations in the rhythm.  My fingers are always crawling in the same direction while using three finger technique.  As of the last years, I've used two finger technique for as much as I can until I've reached my limit in speed.  Tonally, I prefer it.  It's also fair to mention I don't exclusively use but favor the "floating thumb" technique on my plucking hand.  For those of you that don't know about "floating thumb", look into it!    I will for sure do a little blog on it in the near future.

I'd love to hear from some of you who might try out some of my techniques from this blog.  Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Thanks for reading and don't forget to warm up!

Confidence and Preparedness.

For those interested, my goal is to write 2-4 blogs a week.  So sign up for updates and check back frequently!

I feel that between my own experiences past and present I could write volumes on the subject matter of "confidence" for musicians.  Being fortunate to work on many projects, I've been able to observe how other musicians use and abuse confidence for good and evil.  Like any task, confidence would seem like a no-brianer as far as music goes.  It's a requirement.  It gives you permission to close your eyes when you are playing your instrument, to try some off the cuff lick on stage, or create the most awesome ensemble of vocals on an album.  I feel it gets lost much of the time though.  Sometimes through experience, and sometimes by someone's lack of preparedness.  

First, I'd like to point out how people can often mistake confidence for "will".  Sometimes "will" can give us a push physically as a musician just like it can athletes, but people forget to nurture the cerebral parts of music and in those moments "will" can't help you.  Did you feel "confident" on that test you never studied for?  Did you "will" to have this weeks winning lotto numbers as they popped up on the TV screen?  Did you "will" that high note to come out of your voice just because it was important you nailed it?  Did you pull it off?  We're your chances better if you had the confidence of preparedness in your corner?  I hope after reading this, you will find that "confidence" and "preparedness" run many parallels.

Below is a list of a few key places I feel confidence and preparedness can make or break one's progress as a musician.    

Lesson Plans and Goals:  I can't tell you how many times I've mismanaged my practice time by undermining what I feel I could accomplish with the time I'm given or where I'm at as a player.  You can't lie to yourself and decide your going to learn to sweep pick on the guitar before you've learned how to construct an arpeggio.  Actually, you can.  You can just learn a pattern and the mechanics.  The problem here is you limit yourself and this in turn limits not only your creative ability but your "confidence".  How many times have you set out to learn a tune or technique and only moments in you decide "forget it, it's too hard or ain't gonna happen today"?   

Live Performance:  It can still happen to this day!  I'm on stage and I realize I'm not paying much attention to the audience and focusing too much on the notes of the tune.  In those moments, I may lack confidence in my knowledge of the song.  In turn, I don't have much of a mental or physical capacity to be entertaining on stage or look up at the audience and connect more frequently.  We'll get into my philosophies on live interaction some other time.   

In The Studio:  "I never had this much difficulty when practicing."  These are words I hear during lessons and in the studio often.  First off, there will be plenty of blogs about being prepared for the studio.  

The studio is the last word in where the quality of your playing is that day and overall.  There is nothing to obscure all those little swiping sounds on the guitar like a loud band.  Let's face it, the studio has been developed to reproduce our performances the best it can.  Many of us can all agree that at times, it reproduces a bit too well.  It can be a very sterile environment and without a good deal of experience and/or "confidence" it can be a creativity killer or send a project into the depths like an anchor.  Learn about the sonic qualities of your instrument, the frequency ranges,  how live tone doesn't always mean album tone.  How live technique or even the strings you use may not translate the same.  There's been a few times for sure where my confidence was broken in the studio because I couldn't use my favorite bass because it wasn't right for the song.  Maybe I was struggling to find the right tone.  Does this mean I intend to lay down a lack luster track?  "confidence" will determine that.  

Creative Process:  The more confident I am with my song writing, the stronger it gets.  It's that simple.  Am I confident I can even play this very technical section I'd like to write?  If I'm not, it's probably not going in the song.  Am I confident that this really simple section in the tune is going to be effective?  If I'm not, the section will probably sound small.  

Sense of humor, patience, desire, knowledge, and persistence.  All these things are granted through "confidence".  Most everything else is just a reason why very little has been yielded.

My final thought is this... The biggest let down when your lacking "confidence" is, it's very difficult to have fun at what you do.  I feel this is the biggest sin of them all.             

Check out this little guy full of confidence, he's having a blast.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z4PKBNzmuo