Table of Contents for Getting More

1. Getting More out of Your Guitar Lessons

In our last installment, we discussed how to get more out of your practice time.  Next, we’ll discuss how to get more out of your guitar lessons. While lessons can be expensive, they can also move your playing forward much more quickly than if you study on your own. This post will cover how to get more for your money. Also, I’ll briefly cover supplemental forms of study that the Kritzer Studio provides which will work as a substitute for those who can’t afford private lessons.

Schedule Regular Lesson Times

As discussed in the last installment, consistency in practice is an important factor in your improvement. Consistency of lessons is also important. Make sure you have a regularly scheduled lesson and that you keep them, even if you don’t feel prepared. Some of my best lessons were the ones where I came in with my tail between my legs.

Consistent Lessons Build Consistent Progress

And remember, just because you don’t feel prepared doesn’t mean you haven’t made important progress. In fact, it’s very hard to monitor your own progress—but your teacher can. It’s like watching your lawn grow. It does so in-discernibly, but in a week, it’s time to mow the lawn! And if you truly aren’t prepared, your teacher can help you with a ‘restart.’

So, the bottom line is don’t miss your lesson!

Arrive Ready

Before your lesson, take a little time to review your week and preview what you’d like to accomplish in the lesson. Is there a piece that’s given you special difficulty? Is there a question that you’ve been meaning to ask?

Scott Ponders Charlie's Question

Arrive a few minutes early so that you can check that you’re tuned to A=440 and that your nails are nicely buffed. Also, have your check filled out and hand it to your teacher upon entering; you’ll more likely receive the ‘velvet glove’ treatment.

When you sit down, take a little time to make sure that your sitting position represents the one you use at home. In my studio I offer three different-sized benches, as well as fixed and adjustable footstools. So, get yourself comfortable.

Start slowly—make sure you start playing slower than you think you do in practice. Often you don’t realize that you are nervous until you miss a few notes, the rhythm feels rushed, and you don’t feel that you are playing at your best. Well, you’re not. If you want to be judged on your best playing, take a few breaths, and keep your tempos a bit on the slow side.

Make it a habit to bring all your music to your lesson. Many of my students copy their music from books and carry it in a folder to save space. Also, don’t forget to take your music home with you!

If You Think of It, Write It Down

As you practice, questions and ideas will arise. It’s natural. Keep pencil and paper handy and jot them down. Often, by the time you arrive at class, you will have forgotten them, so keep a small journal with you and bring it to class. Sometimes the best learning comes from asking the hardest questions. Don’t miss an opportunity to stretch your creative learning even farther.

Don’t Trust the Memory! Record Your Lessons

When listening, the brain tends to filter out some details, and some of these can be very important instructions! You hear about 60% of what your teacher says and retain about 40% of that. Recording your lesson is a simple way of retaining 100% of your lesson. First, ask your guitar teacher if you can record your lesson. My students listen while driving home from the lesson, while working out, or even as they drop off to sleep. I think the best way is to take notes while listening. If your time is short, you can use a practice session to accomplish this important task. You can archive the notes and thereby revisit the lessons.

There are a variety of digital recorders available. Choose one which will easily record, replay, and manage the digital sound clips on your computer or on disks. Some devices will allow you to listen back at a faster speed. Learn how to use the device before your lesson—and check your batteries.

Here’s another benefit: recording your lesson keeps your teacher on his or her toes! (C’mon, we’re only human!)

If you’d like to see what some of my students are using for recording devices, go to my forum and read Recording Devices for Learning Tools.

Ask your Teacher to Recap

Ask your teacher to help you recap your lesson. Asking the teacher what he or she expects to see at the next lesson is a good starting point. If you need clarity, ask how best to achieve those expectations, including how often you should practice and for how long. I send my students home with a detailed practice log, one that they use daily, and that I use to review our previous lesson. This keeps us both on track!

Alternative Forms of Learning

Lessons can be expensive. I like to offer students an alternative through my Phases. These are designed to allow the student to learn progressively, beginning with technique, then continuing on to tone production, expressive elements, how to learn music, practice directives and practice management, and finally, how to deal with performance anxiety.  I send written and videotaped instruction to the student, who then responds with his or her own video. I then comment and add the next step!

Scott Teaching on the Internet

If you’d like to learn a specific subject, such as technique or performance skills then you can take one of my six week courses. Its great for those who don’t want to lay out the time and money for regular lessons but do want to improve their skill sets. To learn more about my workshops go to Workshops. Some of the most popular ones are listed and include Technique, Performance Anxiety Rehab and How to Learn Music. These workshops can be taken by the local as well as remote student.

If you are currently looking for a teacher, I want to invite you to take a look at the Kritzer Studio. Lessons (in person or remotely), PAR PODS (free performance-anxiety-rehab meetings), Ensembles, and Master Classes will keep you active with the classical guitar. And if you want to put it all together, in one intense week, I’d highly recommend that you join me for my Classical Guitar Immersion.

Next up, Getting More our of Your Master Class Experience…..

Artclectic PDX Interview of Scott Kritzer

I’d like to offer a short program of music for classical guitar as well as classically arranged popular songs by my first teacher and brother, Jack Kritzer. It seems fitting to have Jack (my big brother) a self-taught guitarist, here at this special event as he was my inspiration for learning to play the guitar. This will be the first time we’ll be sharing the stage together!

My first Guitar

When I was 9 years old my older brother Jack was 18, cool and 60′s hip. Like most 60′s guys he got a guitar and somehow found time to teach himself when he entered the Air Force.

Brothers at Work

Hard at Work

So it feels appropriate that at this momentous time in my career that I share this evening with all of you along with my brother.

The Gathering will take place at the Scott Kritzer Classical Guitar Studio located at 1235 SE Division, Suite 102 located at the corner of S.E. 12th and Division. (Available on Google Maps.) This is the same location of Euphoria Studios where our private performance will be held. See the schedule below:

• 7:00-7:15 Greetings in Main Hall
• 7:15-7:30 Kritzer Studio News
• 7:45-8:30 Private Debut Performance from the Kritzer Brothers at the Euphoria Studio

The chunking theory of learning is based on the concepts that:
• Performance consists of known patterns (chunks) inherent in the task you are performing
• Practice consists of acquiring the necessary patterns (chunks) that you build out of tasks already mastered.

High levels of performance are made possible by the magic of chunking. The time required to process a larger chunk is shorter than the sum of the times to process all the component chunks that comprise it. Hence, acquiring skill consists of building up increasingly larger-scale chunks, such that tasks of increasing complexity can be performed much more rapidly and fluidly than all of the underlying component skills required would imply.

Psychologists have known the power law of practice since the 1920s. It states that the time it takes to perform a task decreases as a power-law function of the number of times the task has been performed [Snoddy, G.S., “Learning and Stability” Journal of Applied Psychology, 1926]. The basic model of practice is to acquire the skill to perform a task correctly (albeit slowly), and then to repeat that task slowly but perfectly (practice) so that the time it takes to perform it correctly improves. The power-law of practice has been shown to hold across a very wide range of human skill acquisition endeavors. A sample graph of a power-law distribution is shown below (on a linear scale).

Chunking Graph

The Learning Curve on Guitar

This curve also matches what most of us have experienced with respect to acquiring skill on the guitar. Improvement at first is rapid and gratifying. However, as we progress towards intermediate levels of ability, each new increment of improvement takes increasingly more input of practice. This decreasing return on practice investment can be discouraging, even causing some people to jump to other areas of skill acquisition (such as taking up golf), where they are at an earlier (and therefore more gratifying) spot on the improvement curve. However, as their skills eventually plateau there as well, they are tempted to jump to yet another arena (“maybe I’d have more fun learning to paint”). Thus, the average person either reaches his level of frustration or his level of sufficient satisfaction, and is therefore not sufficiently motivated to continue putting in the increasing additional practice input required to move further out the performance curve.

The vertical line shown past midpoint on the X-axis represents the edge of the proverbial goal of “world-class” or “virtuoso” performance. It has been proposed that to achieve world-class ability in any significant skill endeavor requires 10,000 hours of intense, focused practice. This idea seems to apply well to skills varying widely from music, to athletic performance, to chess. The message behind the 10,000 hours theory is that experts do not possess some innate talent that the rest of us lack, but rather they are extreme outliers on this power-law of practice curve. They managed to, firstly, have the quality of instruction to teach them how to perform a task correctly, and secondly, have the opportunity and drive to put in enough practice that they can perform that task correctly in a fast, effortless, and reliable way. Malcolm Gladwell’s popular book Outliers: The Story of Success is a very readable presentation of the 10,000-hours hypothesis.

How Power-Law Practice and Chunking Work Together

One model that explains the power-law of practice is the chunking theory of expertise. Various researchers have shown that experts do not have any inherently superior cognitive abilities over the rest of us. For example, chess masters who can reconstruct entire games from memory, or bridge masters with total recall of hands they played days before, do not possess measurably better memories than normal. However, studies in which the experts are requested to think aloud while completing representative tasks in their domains have revealed that experts encode information in larger “chunk sizes” than do less trained people. Experts do not simply know more; rather, they encode what they know in a way that makes domain- relevant information rapidly and reliably retrievable. A famous study in this area showed that expert chess players did no better than the average person at remembering the configuration of chess pieces when they were placed incorrectly on the board. But when shown a position from an actual game, they could reliably reconstruct the configuration from memory at far superior levels of success compared to non-chess experts.

For another example of increasing chunk size, consider the way an expert football quarterback scans a defense in the seconds before the snap. An inexperienced person sees 11 opponents in various places on the field, and in various stances, and has to reason through what each might do.

Quarterback Peyton Manning Previews the Defense

The Answer to a Paradox

The chunking theory of skill acquisition consists of recognizing the patterns that make up a task to be accomplished, and then practicing to build up the ability to perform those patterns, based on patterns already mastered. This is the answer to a basic paradox, “How can you acquire the ability to do something new by repetition of something which is not that thing you want to be able to do?” For example, if I can’t play a difficult passage, simply trying over and over is unlikely to make me able to play it. Rather, we have to take advantage simultaneously of the laws of increasing chunk size and the power-law of practice. First ,we have to build the new skill that we cannot yet do, out of more primitive chunks that we can do. (A corollary of this is that the definition of something that is too hard for us at our present level of development is that we have not yet mastered its component skills.) Once we have recognized what are the component chunks that must be sequenced to carry out the new task, then we can begin to sequence them very slowly. Through applying repetition, we can link those component chunks into a higher-level chunk. For example, a series of independent finger motions such as P A M I (four chunks) can be practiced until they become a single gesture (one higher granularity chunk) which can then be called upon to produce a tremolo pattern (an even higher-level chunk).

The Myelin Connection

Recent advances in neuro-physiology appear to explain chunking and the power-law of practice. When we perform a task, the neurological circuit in our brain that encodes that task gets reinforced with an insulating layer of myelin. The production of the myelin is called myelination. The effect of myelination on a neural circuit is to increase the speed of propagation of signals along the fiber and to provide a path for regeneration of the fiber if it is damaged. The more a neurological circuit is fired, the more its myelin is reinforced, and hence the faster it can fire, and the longer it will last. Further, circuits can be made of other, more primitive, circuits. A good book explaining this phenomenon is The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.” by Daniel Coyle. For a guitar example, the circuit to play a free stroke with the P finger can call on the circuit that flexes the knuckle of P. Then the circuit which plays tremolo can call on the circuit that plays P, followed by the circuit that plays A, followed by the circuits for M and I. By practicing tremolo slowly, the circuit for correctly sequencing P A M and I is further myelinated, thus improving its speed and reliability. Hence, a larger tremolo chunk is built out of already-mastered chunks, and taken along the power-law of practice curve by myelination through repetition.

Fluency

Most of us have achieved expert-level performance at talking. When we have a thought to convey, we don’t have to think about what position to hold our tongue in to produce the first sound, or how much to tighten our larynx. We hardly even think about what words to say. Rather, we think in concepts and the sentences spill out, full of their meaning. This is the level of fluency of guitar playing we should aspire to. The beginning guitarist plays notes. The advancing guitarist links those notes together into lines and phrases. We move beyond where to put our fingers, and how hard to pluck, instead conceiving of whole musical phrases which our body just knows how to produce as easily as uttering a spoken sentence. Increasing the chunk size from motions of fingers, to notes, to chords, scales and arpeggios and finally to phrases and sections of pieces is what happens over the course of the 10,000 hours of focused practice. Eventually, the real skill that is practiced is the translation from a musical image that we conceive of in our brains to the production of a good approximation of that musical image, as fluidly as we speak in our native tongues.

1. Power law functions produce linear plots on log-log scale graphs.

The following video is an excerpt of a lesson with student Nigel Stadick, working on Prelude from J.S. Bach’s 1st Cello Suite.

I’m quoting here from my Phase I – Free Stroke

Prevalent in my early studies was the concept of ‘minimum motion’. The theory went like this; the more my finger moves the farther it is from the string which slows my response time to get to the next note. A shorter motion keeps the finger poised to play. This may sound good in theory but it’s mechanically unsound. If a finger is stopped from moving within the optimal range of motion it done so by employing the opposing muscle group. In other words if I flex my index finger but stop its motion before the sarcomeres are exhausted (while those fibers are fully overlapped) I do so by contracting the opposing muscles, the extensors. The near simultaneous contracting of the extensor and flexor muscle causes hand tension. (Remember the analogy of breaking and accelerating your car simultaneously). In the short term this causes tension and in some extreme causes the hand to shake. Over the long term it can cause a mechanical breakdown. So if one keeps employing this minimum movement one wil experience unwanted tension which causes errors, errors cause us to tighten the stroke even further, which causes more errors, tension, and eventually erratic playing. I know this as for years while I employed the principles I teach here in my technique practice I never really applied them to repertoire, assuming they would assimilate. When playing concerts I would noticed that my hand would become more and more tense and it wasn’t until I watched my hand in detail that I found I was minimizing my motion, in effect, negating the technical advances I had made in my technique work. I can’t tell you how deflated I was. I began the concept that we’ll get to later in this Phase called Right Hand Mapping where we integrate the primary motions into repertoire.

Flexed position is when the finger aligns with the first knuckle of the P, extended position is when the finger aligns flush with the tip of P. Both positions consitute Range of Motion and adhere to the natural range for the classical guitarist.

Maestro Segovia was to be awarded the Albert Schweitzer award for music, coincidentally, at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, where our year long master class with Michael Lorimer was held. Having heard that Segovia hated beards I shaved mine off the night before and arrived only assured that I, along with the other students, would get to meet him.

Michael and Jude met with the Maestro first as we all nervously awaited our introductions.

Jude and Michael with Segovia

After introductions and a few autographs Segovia sat with Michael and began to speak. We sat at Segovia’s feet with a ring of newspaper and television reporters forming a ring around the group, cameras clicking and whirring. Eventually Segovia asked if some of Michael’s students would like to play. Fear ran though my body like an electrical shock. But as each student got up to play I was envious.

Dominic Bertucci playing for Segovia with Elias Barriero looking on

Envy would return to fear as each player finished and I kept my gaze away from Michael’s but alas, my name was called.

I was working on the Tarentella by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. The Tarentella represents a frantic 17th century dance which a tarantula bite victim was to engage in to save his life. A more fitting piece I couldn’t have chosen.

As I began to play I noticed how fast I was playing. Wow, I thought to myself, I can’t slow this thing down. Faster and faster the piece went, I was in ‘no-man’s-land’ and on the verge of a total wipeout – feeling like I was riding a roller coaster and the car was cornering on two wheels. But, hey, I finished! I remember being somewhat pleased with myself.

That's me performing the "Tarentella" by Tedesco

A long pause followed. After each student’s performance Segovia had made a few nice comments, smiled and clapped lightly. But for my performance he was silent. He then turned to Michael and said in a thick Spanish accent “he, ah plaze ah do fayst” (“he plays too fast”). With a look of strained anger he turned to me and repeated, “you ah playa do fayst, DO FAYST!!!!”. Next came more comments, this time in Spanish, accompanied by the waving of his hands and while the cameras whirred in the background he stood up (at which point, in reference Michael and I stood also) and looking at the crowd, just in case my humility hadn’t reached the media, Segovia said to everyone “Do fayst”, turned and stormed out of the room. As Michael followed I got a glance of utter disgust. There I stood, all the world to see, my fellow students, the media, for all I know my mother, my father, Gail Truesdale, my first girlfriend in grade school, all shaking their heads in disgust.

I’ve only felt what I’m about to describe twice in my life (both times with the guitar in front of me). I felt as if I were falling between two slabs of ice, into a bottom-less pit. My head spun and my stomach turned and while I stood there in shock the reporters began to pack their cameras up as my fellow students got up to congratulate each other.

Heading over to a local brew hall afterwards I sat amongst my friends yet all alone. Numb, silenced. I would have drunken myself into a stupor if it weren’t for the realization that when I came to I’d still have the memory, along with a hangover.

So here’s the rub – some 30 years later I reunited with my teacher Michael Lorimer in preparation for the recording of my CD Romance for Guitar. As the week wound down Michael was in a rare form, telling Segovia stories. I mentioned the events and we laughed and then he revealed something. Segovia had heard that Castelnuovo-Tedesco was disappointed with Segovia’s recording of his works, in particular, the Tarentella. Segovia confronted the composer and after a series of poison pen letters vowed to never ‘offend’ Tedesco by playing his music, ever again. A few months later I stepped in it with my reminder.

So, I guess I can stop feeling so bad and heck, I’ve had other humiliations along the way….but I’ll save those for another posting.

The name La Folia means “folly” or “madness”. It refers to a dance in 3/4 time that originated in the late 15th century. It was originally a quick paced noisy dance in which the dancers carried men, dressed as women, on their shoulders. There were many different basic themes and there was not one single fundamental melody that dominated the rest for these so called ‘early’ Folia. These Folias became very popular in Spain and Italy.

Composer Jean-Baptiste Lully

Early Folias were typically in G minor, later Folias usually in D minor. From a comparison by Richard Hudson:

• both are in triple meter,
• both have more or less parallel halves with the mid-cadence on V

A few of the differences are:

• the main musical distinction is the rhythmic structure, (the early Folia has its opening accent on the dominant -V chord, the later Folia has it on the tonic -I chord).
• The early folia may use a major or minor tonic chord or mix them within a single statement, the later folia uses a minor tonic chord.
• The accents in rhythm in the early folia (with its fast tempo) are caused by chord changes in the second beat, while in the later folia there are hardly any chord-changes within a bar (except for bar 15), so the accent is caused by dotted 2nd beats of melody, especially in odd-numbered measures.

Figure 1, Example of an Early Folia

The later Folia is a relatively simple melody of 16 bars with a standard chord progression. It has a stately slow rhythm with the 2nd beat of the melody is lengthened (similar to a sarabande). It also has a repeating ground bass, similar to a passacaglia.

Figure 2, Example of a Later Folia

The Later Folia

One can also look at it as a chord progression (repeating harmonic and rhythmic pattern), similar to the 12 bar blues scheme. It is a perfect model to improvise upon and to write variations for. The ‘later’ Folia chord progression is already detectable in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (~1618) as part of an anonymous tune called Pakington’s Pownde.

Figure 3, Lully, “Air des hautbois” (1672)

Lully excerpt

Neuschwanstein Castle

Then it was a beautiful week on the Adriatic in Rimini, Italy. My ‘Guitar Vacazione’ included a week-long masterclass that concluded with a wonderful performance in the picturesque town of San Filippo. Then back to Bavaria for a week’s vacation with my wife Teresa, (and a few more private performances). European Summer 2011 Slideshow

Hope you enjoy! Please leave your comments below!

Scott

The serious classical guitarist who wishes to study, play, and ultimately perform, will find the need for a strong technical foundation. A strong technical foundation can be achieved when our hands are working with optimal strength and coordination, which is best achieved by adhering to bio-mechanical principles.

'I' in the flexed position, 'M' extended position. Illustration by David Kritzer

The benefits of playing with a good technique should be obvious: strong scales and arpeggios provide a basis for establishing strength and coordination, or what we call the primary skills. Another benefit of good technique results in the ability to perform our repertoire with fewer mistakes. Yet another advantage is longevity. While poor technique will cause more errors and require more effort than necessary, equally inhibiting can be the effect of the wear and tear resulting from improper technique, often shortening the careers of even the most talented of players.

Technique Class

This six-week course, available to remote (via SKYPE) and local students, is designed to impart this information in a small classroom setting. In addition to the personal instruction, students will get clear written instruction, technical exercises, and video instruction to take home! And at the end of the class you’ll get your own Practice Along with Scott video.

A Performance Component

The class format will be one hour of instruction followed by some social time and a 30-minute time slot for performing.
Players can get a chance to try out some new works, works-in-progress, or some new ideas on old works in a safe, comfortable environment. Those with more performing experience can also get a chance to play up 10 minutes of music.

Class Outline

• Week 1 – Principles of positioning and movement are explained. Sitting and right hand position are covered, as is the analysis of finger movement. One of the major primary movement forms, alternation, in its simple and complex forms, will be introduced.

Calm and Cool Charlie S.

• Week 2 – The second primary form, sympathetic motion, will be explained. String Crossing, a critical component in playing scales, will be covered.

• Week 3 – We’ll review all previous materials and add some simple scale forms that will allow us to explore left-hand technique, primarily left-hand thumb placement and shifting.

• Week 4 – Compound motion (abundant in the guitar’s repertoire), is the combination of sympathetic motion and alternation. These patterns (and their analyses) will be explained.

• Week 5 – As important as all the previous material is, mastering the guitar will require the tools for technical integration into our repertoire (called Right-Hand Mapping). You’ll be assigned excerpts from repertoire, given the ‘mapping’ for some, and asked to determine your own mapping in others.

• Week 6 – We’ll take this week to review the previous week’s material. We’ll also forecast your technical work for the next 3 months — a practice plan that includes a Practice Along with Scott video.

Class Particulars

The Scott Kritzer Technique Class is open to players of all levels and experience. It takes place on Saturday afternoons from 2:00-4:00 p.m., from Saturday, January 14th to February 18th 2012 at the Kritzer Studio, located at 1235 SE Division, Suite 102, in Portland, Oregon 97202.

Cost for the class is $195.00, and a non-refundable deposit of $75 will hold your spot. Full payment is due by December 17th. Class size is limited, so those who register after the class is full will be put on a waiting list. You can make a payment to my PayPal account or by sending a check to the address below.

Please feel free to leave a reply below or Contact me directly.

Scott Kritzer
1235 SE Division Street, Suite 102
Portland, Oregon 97202-1055

Sometimes I’m frustrated by not getting as much practice time in as I’d like but I keep my goals in mind: to continue to incrementally expand my musical abilities and expression, to explore the repertoire and to increase my comfort in performance. I aspire to be playing my whole life, and accept the fact that in this phase of my life with young children and job to balance my time to practice is limited. I hope to expose my children to the passion of music so that they might choose to develop their musical interests early in life.

I am drawn inexplicably to the sound and the colors possible on the classical guitar. I love my own guitar, a 1977 Traphagen named Daphne. What is most exciting is the me exciting is the transformation of a piece I have struggled with for months from a stilted string of notes to a song. And the learning never stops. The study of guitar is at once a
humbling and a spiritually charged experience for me. Paul Ketcham