Group 4

Erik Svenson  It's a pleasure to be sharing with you as you start your musical journey. Welcome!

It's good to have you join us, Stephen Darrell Oliver ! I hope the exercises might help on your journey with the guitar. Devoting only 15~30 mins a day to the exercises should hopefully still leave you plenty of time to enjoy some music-making each day:)

Welcome, David . Looking forward to these two weeks with you all!

Erik Svenson Glad the video was helpful! I'd say the main thing is to ensure that your L.H. fingers are always aiming to be as close to the frets (the actual metal bars) as possible, without actually being over them. This decreases the necessary pressure to minimise buzzing and should consequently improve your tone. For this reason, starting in higher positions is indeed ideal! I would encourage you to start where it is easiest and work your way down progressively... you might notice progress over the course of a few days, an entire week, and beyond.

Erik Svenson Here is an example with an image I found online... we are only focusing on the placement on the frets here: notice that fingers 3 and 4 are too far back on the fret – this requires far greater pressure to avoid buzzing. Finger 1 is almost *on* the fret, which can dampen the sound. Finger 2 is ideally placed!

When practising your L.H. exercises ('quasi' slurs, extensions, or almost anything really), you can always aim for that ideal spot on the fret (like finger 2 in the image).

peter hancock Very glad to hear that, Peter – thank you. Best wishes with your practice!

David wow

David great addition to the video, thanks David

David Wow – thank you so much for this, David! This synthesises so much of what is presented extremely well. I am sure everyone here will find it incredibly useful!

David Great questions!

1) Your intuition to break the difference is well-guided. However, I would tend to look for the ideal position for a tirando stroke which *just about* misses the lower string. Then, from this position, explore how to allow your fingers to play rest stroke as smoothly as possible (for me, this is achieved by slightly softening the tip joint). This took time for me and often required a lot of patience (that is - I would occasionally get a little frustrated by the lack of fine control over my finger movements)... But hang in there – it DOES pay off.

Now, these are exercises meant to address weaknesses head-on and encourage good habits without the added challenge of making beautiful music. However, in 'real life' we can allow ourselves a little leeway in repositioning the R.H for all-tirando or all-apoyando passages. A very slight adjustment can often increase our security and we do not want to be struggling while making music.

(Can't speak to playing without nails with much experience, but happy to have a look at how you manage during the Zoom call and see if I can find anything particular to comment on. Feel free to ask during the session.)

2) When going from, let's say, string 3 to string 2, this transition is easier and more natural to be performed with i-m, rather than m-i. The reason is mainly because of the diagonal presentation of our R.H. in regard to the strings which makes the index sit quite naturally above the 3rd string and the middle above the 2nd string.  To a lesser degree, the difference in length of the fingers is also a contributing factor (i, being shorter, would need to stretch over to play the second string). For this reason, all other things being equal (which they rarely are...) it is advantageous to avoid as many string crossings as possible when planning out our fingerings for a piece. (However, exercise 4 does get you to tackle string crossings in the ascending segments of the chromatic scale – this can be good to practise for those occasions when we might need to do string crossings in a piece).

3) When executed on a single string, ascending and descending 'quasi' slur patterns end up indeed being physically the same – upwards and downwards at a 90-degree angle from the fingerboard (this would not be the case if we did 'real' descending slurs which release sideways). However, even if the movement is the same in an ascending or descending pattern, I find that there is *still* a psychological difference when pairing the movement as, let's say, 1-2 vs 2-1 (a common pitfall is that we tend to shorten the first of two slurred notes, something for which we can keep an ear out in each combination). Then, an actual physical difference arises when moving across strings – here, the finger stretching over across the fingerboard will be different in the ascending or descending patterns.

5) The thumb doesn't need to anticipate the shift, which would result in a more complex hand movement with little or no benefit. I would encourage you to keep the thumb's movements simple and direct – on and off the neck and usually somewhere around the height of the second finger (some say between 2-3). There are some exceptions to this. For example, if you have a passage with many consecutive small shifts, you may group them under a single 'thumb position'... this results in the thumb being still while the fingers move around a bit. A classic example is playing parallel intervals (3rds, 6ths) up and down the fingerboard.

6) Spot on – 2-3 is the less flexible combination. I think you've found it yourself – playing this particular combination in higher positions is perfectly reasonable. Flexibility does come with time, not by sheer repetition, but by becoming increasingly aware of what to hold steady and what to relax in a stretch (what I mention in the video as being aware of the 'stable' or 'core' part of the hand in any given stretch)... once you have that, then yes – practising the exercise regularly should definitely help.

If anything was unclear or I misunderstood any of your questions, do feel free to raise them again in the session:) Happy practising!