tonebase guitar · live
How to finalize a piece
The goal is what changes
same tools
Slow tempo · full control · many angles
Find the hand shapes
and the fingerings
Slow tempo · full control · many angles
Prepare the hand for
whatever happens on stage
what "whatever happens" means
Tengyue Zhang
Stage nerves don't make
you worse.
They make you
more aware.
The last mile is making sure that heightened
awareness finds nothing missing.
The tempo where you can't coast
two kinds of autopilot
Most players have these the wrong way round.
one concrete method
Five reps per bar · extra beats bought at every shift · Kuropaczewski
…and all 550 beautiful.
"Every time we practice something detached and uninvolved,
that's what we are learning." — Pepe Romero
And always forward
why it's needed
"We always learn a piece sequentially from the beginning to the end. So one section always requires the section that we played before."
Dale Kavanagh
A piece memorized from bar 1 breaks down when you have to start at bar 17.
when it slips
Miss section 3? Jump to 4. Lost entirely? Jump to any of them and go on your way.
An anchor isn't
where you restart.
It's where you rejoin.
Going backwards asks the same memory that just failed
to try again with a running start.
the final exam
Blindfold, or a room with no windows in pitch black. Then play it.
Also: towel over the strings · under-press the left hand · mirror · capo at II · a different room
Not just where you are
nobody citing anybody
Build it once for interpretation, and it's free as memory infrastructure.
Torroba · Arada
You cannot be lost if you know which character is speaking.
"You remember there's a seven after this, a diminished chord… a dotted rhythm. You remember you were putting your four here.
Thomas Viloteau
There are so many backup plans that you can't really completely stop playing."
The piece without the guitar
Neuhaus · The Art of Piano Playing
Rung 3 is the one everyone skips. Read the score away from the guitar before you try it from nothing at all.
why it's so hard
"More than 20 minutes for me, it's not possible.
After — I'm taken out."
"…you can compare it with hours and hours
of playing with instrument."
1–2 hours a week · 15-minute blocks · one piece at a time
the premise, not the caveat
"You will have memory slips.
It's inevitable."
You're not making the piece unbreakable.
You're making sure that when it breaks,
you have somewhere to go — forwards.