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Do you dig in hard or play lightly? I'm working on playing lighter, but it seems to be a tough habit to break. I'm talking about playing with a pick, but I had a classical teacher who said something like if you can play loud with good tone you can play quiet but not necessarily vice versa. So i've been digging in pretty hard for a long time, but I'm choking notes at this point.
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12-17-2024 02:22 PM
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I've been trying to play less "hard" for decades. I still tend to but one thing that helped me was playing bossa nova tunes. These types of songs just sound better when played gently with a light touch.
Originally Posted by joe2758
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Been trying to ease up and play smoother with better time. Bashing away is just bashing away.
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I learned the practice of knowing the least amount of fretting finger pressure that is necessary with Mike Walker, many years ago.
Also, I learned the practice of knowing the least amount of picking pressure that is necessary with Mike Walker, many years ago.
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Try practicing so softly that you don't completely press the notes down and they sound half muted by just the fretting hand, it's a great exercise to work on soft playing.
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As hard or soft as necessary. Dynamics are important to me.
One thing I've consciously worked on is to play "hard" without increasing tension. It's difficult!
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If you are used to picking with one that does not flex, for training purposes*, try something sub 1mm that does. Your hand will naturally back off at first but not be very effective. Give it about a week, play a variety of things, and watch for when your hand learns how to transfer power to the strings at that level of flexy - you'll feel it as diminishing sense of flexiness with a return of predictable confidence in articulation. Once the hand knows how to feel that, return to your usual pick, but deliberately include soft picking in your playing to keep it up.
* or possible conversion; I played for a long time with 2mm picks, then I played for a while with 1mm picks. I found an ancient Dunlop Nylon .73mm one day an tried it out. At first I could do little with it, but was captivated by the tone quality. After about four days later I was all in, really liking what was happening all around. It's all I use now.
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I thought my heavy hand was fine until I started learning Parker heads and realized how much my "whatever comes natural" technique was hindering me.
You know, for years I thought that exact line was B.S. when other people said it. Then I hit the brick wall myself and I'm working on right hand technique.
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This one is an absolute winner. My classical teacher had me do this when I was having carpal tunnel issues before my senior recital. You end up accidentally fretting notes and you're like ... oh, I don't need to fight this instrument. It's not for the right hand, I guess, but it's awesome for the left. And the hands tend to kind of follow one another in ways that don't really make technical sense, so loosening up in the left hand can help the right loosen up, even if there's no real reason why it should be that way. Originally Posted by Alter
Another one that's good: play a scale or repeated note or something and decrescendo. when you get to the minimum workable volume, sit for a minute and notice how your hands feel. Then try to crescendo back to where you started without changing the tension in your hand or gripping the pick harder. When you feel yourself gripping the pick harder, stop and start again. Slowly the ceiling for your volume will get higher and higher.
I'm also with Mr. B where dynamics are super important to me, but the impact of your dynamics is never in the absolute dynamic. It's always in the contrast. So your able to get more impact from your fortes and your accents when you keep your pianos piano. Also just in general, no one's perfect and you're going to dig in when you get into it or when you want that big accent, so keeping everything else as light as possible will keep you from doing damage when you dig in.
(also I'd be super surprised if that classical teacher meant "hard" when they said "loud" ... classical teachers are all about minimizing tension and a big part of that technique is getting a huge sound without digging in hard.)
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yerp. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
show me someone who says "I'm just not a fast player" and I'll show you someone who hasn't sat and stared at their right hand while they played a single measure of a bebop head for long enough.
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eek guilty as charged Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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How long do you have to stare at it to increase your speed? This isn't a Uri Geller technique, is it? Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Also the positioning of the pick is important. If you position it a little lower towards the ground when you hit the strings, there is more power with less effort, the extreme of it being playing with rest strokes when doing down strokes. Gypsy players play like that, and it's also an important part of the Benson picking style.
When playing with say a medium pick, you can use the pick flex to your advantage. I don't think i'll ever be able to decide between a thick and a medium pick, they each have their own thing and sound ..(although i 've playing with a D'Andrea Pro Plek 1.5 for some time now)
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I think about how fluid these two are all the time. They play so smooth and clear. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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What's the difference between picking and fingerpicking here - the force with which you grab the pick?
I come from a violin school that approaches sound like something you sculpt out of a block of hard marble, but where the brunt of the force used comes the weight of your arm. That's more than enough to crush all the sound and only get a loud crunching sound, but then you work on removing just as much weight as necessary to get the volume you need to be heard across that big church, down to the whisper quiet sounds almost no one can hear.
I still use those same mental images to work on tone production on guitar (I kinda miss the long drawn-out notes with a beautiful dynamics belly).
No technical reasons but there are surely (neuro)physiological reasons. And this may actually why I find it such a useful exercise to practice complicated LH things also with a pick. I knew it completely redefines the relationship between the hands but not how/why beyond the obvious reduction of the number of sound producers. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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I can't afford to play too hard because it buzzes. But I know how to be louder without the buzz. At least, most of the time.
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I often compare picking with a bow touch.
It may seem strange but this is an idea I have in my mind.
Whether I play acoustic or electric, steel string or nylon, lute or guitar... and I think it affects my technique the most.
Of curse plucked instruments have their own physical limitations and advantages: violine does not have that much resonance or harmonic options, and guitar cannot produce sustainable sound.
I think playing deep and loud does not mean playing hard, it is more about precision and focus of an attack.
So basically I would say that I pluck only when I want a 'plucked effect' to be there, in all the other cases it is more like touching a string with a bow.
For me it is like the sound is already somewhere and with a touch I just let it out.
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I learned to flatpick playing bluegrass guitar with a banjo player and a mandolin player, often without any amplification at all (even when amplified, it was the 3 of us through one mic – we also had 3-part harmony).
That means I had a pretty heavy picking technique, like most of the bluegrass guitarists of the day. Tony Rice was unorthodox, as he apparently had a softer touch – people who played his guitar said they couldn't get an acceptable tone out of it, the action was so low. Bluegrass guitarists are every bit as obsessive about flatpicking techniques as are jazz guitarists (or for that matter, gypsy jazz guitarists).
Not just heavy picking, but strong gripping with the left hand as well, pretty necessary for the relatively high action of a dreadnought guitar. My Martin D-21 eventually need a neck reset; I hadn't even noticed the action increasing over the years. I eventually graduated to better Martin dreads with better action, but still had a pretty heavy hand. I could be heard on that dreadnought acoustically in a pretty packed crowd, even a crowd packed with other guitarists.
When I started playing archtops several years ago, one thing that helped me with the picking approach was headphones. Listening to my own amplified playing through headphones helped me to lessen the power needed to make the notes. That, and the lower action necessitated picking those strings with less power. Headphones pretty quickly help one to recognize problem areas.
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One of the technique I used to practice with picking is bouncing on the string.
You put a pick on the string and you king of push it a bit down and towards the top of the guitar and bounce on it and then you do not really pick it but rather let it go.
you can do it applying different angles.
this exercise really improves the feeling of control over sound production.
Ideally it satay even at a very fast tempo it is just that this moment of touch is extremely short but stil lyou do not just pluck or strum but rather 'release' the tone and the string.
(same thing works for fingertip picking)
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After 65 i went one gauge lighter on strings for arthritis and it changed my whole approach. Lightening up my touch made everthing a lot smoother and less painfull .
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The saxophonist Steve Lacy used really light reeds, and he could be as loud and full-sounding as anyone. Originally Posted by Greywolf
I use 11s on my acoustic archtops and they're plenty loud. If I needed to be heard over top the Count Basie Orchestra I might have to go higher, but they haven't asked me.
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My past classical guitar teacher would agree with yours. I personally need to play with some kind of drive down the strings (for the most part) otherwise it can sound weak and anemic in general. I find it harder to sound convincing with a lighter right hand touch on classical though its still possible (there are players that showed me otherwise) Originally Posted by joe2758
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Well, we have one brain which tends to operate symmetrically (even though the left hemisphere controls the right hand and the right hemisphere controls the left hand). Squeezing a tennis ball softly in one hand and hard in the other needs deliberate attention. When playing music, our attention is on the music and less on our hands, so we automatically revert to symmetrical effort. Fretting harder and picking lighter is neurologically challenging, and picking hard while fretting lightly likewise. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
That is very nicely phrased! It is exactly the contrast, not the absolute volume of the notes. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I found that I started to play much lighter when I got enamored with Ed Bickert's playing and began using pick and fingers to pluck rather than strum chords. Balancing the pick volume with the finger volume took some practice. Now I have switched to a thumbpick and fingers (no fingerpicks) and that has pushed that even more. But with the thumbpick I can dig in if I want, do alternate picking, etc., to get some dynamics.
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