Group 2

Vincent Tam hi Vincent, great question. Your suspicion is correct- both full preparation and sequential preparation have their place in the repertoire. Sometimes with extremely fast arpeggios, full preparation is great to practice. When the tempo is slower however, sequential preparation is preferable as it doesn’t mute the notes if they are ringing (and they often times are!). Both are great to practice, but since sequential preparation is fairly new to you, this would be a great thing to focus on for now. I hope that helps!

Evan Taucher Thank you.

Barney Barney, thank you for the video! I think it's rather beautiful how the camera's focus shifts from the mic to your fingers a few seconds through. I think I could watch for hours...haha!

I have to say that your preparation is looking great!! One thing I'd mention for you to try is- while i and m are doing their thing, try slowly bringing back your thumb to the 4th string. This is an advanced concept but a necessary one since the thumb is the only digit that has to fight gravity on the guitar. I was actually taught the exact way that you are playing now, but over the years I realized that I didn't like my thumb having to "shoot" or "leap" back to the 4th string. Later on after speaking with some peers of mine, I noticed that they slowly bring back their thumb, so that when it's time to prepare, it's close by just like the other fingers. Again, to be clear - your thumb still shouldn't touch the 4th string until your a finger has played, but it will be closer and close as you play i and m. 

Let me know if that makes sense.

The other thing I wanted to mention about your video is to make sure your being perfectly rhythmically precise. Setting your metronome on subdivisions may help you stay more perfectly locked in. Believe it or not, building rhythmic precisions here may be of even more use than everything I explained above. Because coordination on the guitar is paramount, if the rhythm isn't super precise in the RH, it's hard to put everything together. 

Hope this helps Barney, and great work!

Evan Taucher Glad you enjoyed the silly stuff the "auto" focus on my camera was doing, haha. 

I appreciate your advice on the Thumb and Rhythm issues.  I will concentrate more on these going forward.  Thanks very much for your guidance!!

Barney I'm glad you asked, because the week 2 video is coming soon on precisely that! In that video I talked about the following patterns:

Pimiaimi

pmimamim

pamaiama

the 120 Giuliani RH studies really are the most common arpeggios. I'd recommend isolating just a few numbers at a time (like the first page for instance) and working at building those everyday rather than thinking of it as "lets work through this whole book". Same with Carlevaro. We must spend time practicing all the most common patterns, but the "uncommon" ones in those books are the ones we learn the most from because it challenges our minds and our fingers. That's my theory anyways!

Cheers,

Evan

Evan Taucher Great, thanks Evan!  In the first week video, your focus was mainly on sequential planting ascending.  Will you cover how to do sequential planting in descending arpeggios?

Barney  I'd say that most certainly is a mistake that crept into the score unless VL was feeling cute and stuck an oddball in the middle of those 5 1/2 measures of that one shape. I checked and it is fixed in the Zigante edition.

Steve Price 

Steve Price Thanks Steve!!

joosje Thanks Joosje!  Yes, I meant the 3rd beat. 

Vincent Tam Vincent, I'm so glad that you are finding the exercises thought provoking! I have to say that you're playing them really quite well. Great work and please keep it up!

A couple of things:

The first exercise in the first video is fantastic, your hand looks really good! Keep it up, and slowly bump up the tempo!

With the second half of the 1st video (where you begin accenting), sometimes you lose track of the beat. Make sure you're staying right on it. Putting the metronome on subdivisions should help. Also, make sure you're still preparing the finger that you're accenting. This helps with the tone and the accent as well!

Great work and keep it up!

Steve Price Steve, I'm so glad you found the videos and exercises to be useful, and I have to say that you're doing them and apply them very well!! Great precision and control - I love to see this! One thing I'd recommend (and I acknowledge that folks teach the relaxation of fingers in different ways) is to try relaxing each of your fingers after the pluck. I'm speaking specifically about the 1st video with your i and m fingers. Their jobs are already done, so in my mind, they should relax! This is a method I learned later in my studies that I'm thankful for. Let me know how that works for you. It may require going a lot slower to feel for the first time.

Thanks again and keep up the great work (and the alternate suggested patterns in the brouwer!)