About the Real Dichotomy of the Right Hand (not “tirando” or “apoyando”)
Hi, everybody. We are all working together on Brouwer’s Estudios Sencillos and the n°2 came up and raised the question of the necessity of free swinging stroke of the right hand to achieve as much legato as possible in the chords, against the usual planting that we-at-Tonebase see proposed as a general rule for RH in many videos. And I do think it’s a very interesting subject to discuss, if you indulge me. I, myself, have my own ideas regarding the matter but fully welcome the opportunity to learn more from other’s experiences.
So, I’ll try to write down the main differences and pros and cons of each as I see them, and you tell me what you think.
Why do I see them as a dichotomy? Because of the time the finger plucks the string. When we perform “planting” the moment of the impulse is exactly the moment of the plucking. When we perform “free swinging” the impulse is prior to the plucking and when we strike the string the finger is already relaxed.
Let me use a metaphor to clarify: When we “plant” it is like we are pushing something and it moves because we are pushing. When we “free swing” it is like we are hitting a tennis ball with a racket and the actual hit comes from the inertia of an impulse previously generated.
So the difference would be that in the “planting” the plucking is done in the moment of most tension of the finger, when the impulse is generated and directly as a result of the impulse while in “free swinging” the plucking is done inertially with the finger already relaxed, as a by-product of the initial impulse given previously.
The result is very different in sound! As if we played with plectrums of different thickness, the string reacts differently to a finger tensed than to a finger relaxed. This doesn’t mean that the “planting” must be over-tense. It may be very relaxed, but it’s always the moment the impulse is generated and thus it’s (even if a little) tensER. So, different sounds for sure. And that is great! Because we should aim to have as many different sounding ways in the right hand as possible to be expressive.
If we go on with pros and cons this may get a little more subtler and even subjective. For “planting” there are certain pros: stability of the hand, certainty of playing the right string, closeness and preparedness, possibility to articulate, speed and a very concise attack. For the “free swing” I'd argue: readiness to change approach, broader relaxed movements, possibility to produce legato, a more relaxed-light attack that also invites speed.
Regarding the cons, the “free swing” has mainly the difficulty to find certainty before plucking. Even admitting that this is a great one, I don't see others. And I know there are ways to bypass this major complexity. We can discuss this if you’d like. For the “planting”, the cons I see is that, if not very well taught and moderated, it promotes steadiness in the right hand. Not steadiness in the useful way, but in the “everything sounds very much alike” way. Also, it can promote unnoticed tension by leaning with attachment to the strings. What do you think? Do you use both indistinctly? Were you taught both ways? Did you start with one and later the other? Which do you think should come first and why?
4 replies
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My previous teacher advocate this free swinging and my current teacher is not a fan of it. So i kinda had to learn both.
My previous teacher would ask me to practice swing strokes for the rest stroke. It takes a while to get used to. Even harder when you have to go up and down the strings on your right hand. As it is easy to miss or hit another strings. To be fair, my previous is able to do it and he sounded beautiful. I personally don't like it too much as it is difficult to get it accurate. Good tool to have but I feel with a little bit of practice the planted stroke can sound legato too. Not sure about the swing stroke being more relax as the fingers naturally wants to go back not kept in an alternate position (i on next string and m out).
I personally prefer the planted stroke (be it free or rest) because you can control how much nail contact, how deep you want to dig in the strings and how loud you want it to sound.
Another advantage I discover when watching this tonebase lesson by Łukasz Kuropaczewski on practice, he will start preparation on the right hand on the strings, then the left hand pressing down the strings then plucking the strings. With the right hand preparing the string before the left hand, it actually makes the left hand easier. Of cos over time, you should be able to do that in milli seconds so not to cut away the note too early.
you cannot do that sort of preparation with a swing stroke. Just my two cents.
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I am an intermediate player. This comes to me at the right time. Having just had left hand surgery I have been practicing with Rt hand only. I hvae been going though all those arpegguos patends found in "The Bible for Classical Guitar" using both techniques on multiple and singles strings. your insites have are excellant. They have giving me more understanding to what I am doing.
Peter Hancock
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Hi and ! Thanks to both of you for sharing your views!
I'm glad that you found it interesting, Peter. As I said in the work group, I hope you recover fast and well!! Be careful when you bring your LH back to work on the guitar. A lot of patience will come very handy!
Don, I understand perfectly where you are coming from. Yes, "planting" gives you a lot of reassurances. And you are right that Lucasz's class is a really interesting one with a lot of very useful knowhow shared.
I have my doubts about legato and planting, because planting is, by definition, stoping the string before you play the next note and legato is, by definition, two (or more) notes ringing with no break of resonance in between. Also, many times planting stops sympathetic resonances on other strings which also are useful to build legato. Legato with planting might still be achivable by playing crossstrings (different strings) like in an arpeggio but it wouldn't work for a phrase on the same string or a scale, IMO.
I'm not completely sure that I understood what you ment here, Don_
"Not sure about the swing stroke being more relax as the fingers naturally wants to go back not kept in an alternate position (i on next string and m out)." If you care to clarify, maybe even with a video, I offer to respond in kind. Thanks!
You are right that you can not do that sort of preparation with swinging. But you can prepare in other ways, for example: If you know the distance from your knukcles to the string you can know exactly how your fingers are going to impact the string. Let's think about this. Each finger is like an arm: the knukcles are the shoulder joint, the first falange is the elbow and and the falangette (second falange closer to the tip) is the wrist. The tip is the hand. So, let's think of the ideal arm movement as one where it is fairly extended but with the elbow a little loosely relaxed and a bit curved. If you swing you arm back and forwards (and as long as you don't change the position of your shoulder or bent deliverately your elbow or retract your wrist) your hand will go over and over on the same arch, with no exception. And this is useful as proprioception. We build this and use it all the time. Then if we need to touch or hit something else, we move ourselves and do the same arm-swing but somewhere else. The finger works exactly in the same way. When you learn to understand the relation between the knuckles's position and the arch in relation to the position of the strings, the results are much more certain than you would expect them to be. What do you say?
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said:
If you swing you arm back and forwards (and as long as you don't change the position of your shoulder or bent deliverately your elbow or retract your wrist) your hand will go over and over on the same arch, with no exception.And this is, incidentally, the reason the title of the post is "The Real Dichotomy (not tirando or apoyando)" because free and rest strokes are at their core exactly the same movement of the fingers and hand, not at all two different things. The only difference between them is that the finger finds the string to strike in a different section of the same arch (rest stroke sooner than free stroke) due to a shift in the position of the knukcles.
have you ever thought of free and rest stroke like this? What's your take on all this? Please, let me know!