Group 1
Improve your Left-Hand-Fitness with Slurs!
The Fitness of the left hand is responsible for how comfortable you feel on the guitar. Regular slur practice will improve your stability and agility and opens your hand for more fingering possibilities! Two Weeks, Fingers 1234, a gazillion different possibilites! Let me show you my workout tips for the left hand and let us improve together!
Fellow Participants in Group 1:
joosje
Alex Polonski
Robert
Vilio Celli
Eric Phillips
Bill Young
Kirkestopinal
Carlos Augusto Costa Silva
Marilyn Blodget
Barney
Valdir Ferreira
GALAIS
Jason Park
Helen Walker
Some tonebase productions to get you started
Martin Zimny - Left Hand Workout with Villa-Lobos Etude #3
Martin Zimny - Getting Slurs Right from the beginning
Artyom Dervoed - Slurs from Nothing
Bill Kanengiser - Padre e Hija by Garcia de Leon
How to get the most out of this course
- Start by watching the introduction video and practice the exercises given in the video.
- Write a post with your experiences with Slurs.
- At the same time, start practicing the first bars of Etude #3 by Villa-Lobos. If you are new to the piece, start with my livestream on this piece!
- Share two videos per week and help your course partners through feedback on their submissions!
Zoom Check-In: Friday, June 24th at 6 pm CET (9 am PT)
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Hey everybody, I've recorded this video with 5 of the main issues I have identified! Enjoy and let my know what you think! See you tonight at the 60min Zoom Check-In!
Slurs Group 1
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Barney Thanks for that submission. Well done, looks and sounds good for me. For me, this assignment no. 3 with the mixture of hammer-on and pull-off seems to be very effective so far.
btw: it sounds like you are playing in a church... Is there any special sound editing on that?
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Robert Thanks Robert. The room I practice in is very dry, so Martin guided me during the recording course with Nimbus Reverb. Is the effect too strong?
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Barney Hey Barney, that looks fantastic! That's exactly my go-to exercise for everyday slur practice! For you, I would recommend to go a bit slower and try to even it out, you stay a bit too long on the hammered note!
I'm very confident that this exercise will also help your pinky finger, it is quite tensed when you are not using it! I'd recommend to give your a better angle, it seems you are a bit flat with the pinky at 3-4 and 2-4, right? Try to hit the string exactly from above, shot right into the fretboard, that way you have the most efficient translation of energy!
Etude #3 sounds amazing! One small thing: After the hinge bar I don't lay down the finger down as a bar, I play the lower c without a bar as a single note, this is even more efficient!
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Martin Thanks Martin! I see what you mean about the flat pinky. I have small hands, so is the best solution to aim exactly from above by bending my wrist outward to get the angle. I generally try to keep the wrist as straight as I can so it's better ergonomically and less chance of strain and injury. However, is the pinky an exception?
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I worked a bit on the slurs during last days, still a bit handicapped with respect to duration of practicing (need breaks due to shoulder/arm issues....). So I had some recording sessions during the day... Here are the first three assessments. Now, I will be more focused on working on fixed finger assessment (no. 4), also no. 3 of course, and then I will try to play at least the first bars of HVL Etude No. 3 for applying that stuff to a piece, not only for meditation purpose. :)
Keep on practicing, have fun...-
Robert Hey Robert, wonderful meditation, I am sure these exercises really cleared your head
Assignment 1-2: I recommend to practice them more even. Slurs have always the tendency to come a bit too early, if we embed this bad habit even into our very isolated medition, it will translate into the repertoire!
Assignment 3: I haven't really talked about this, but I am play these legate, meaning that I keep the first finger (for example) when I hammer with the second onto the next string and then bring the first finger onto the string where I just played the hammer-one!
So: Even out your slurs! Breath in, breath out!
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Martin Thanks for hints!
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How is everybody doing? Have you already noticed any change in your left hand? Could you apply your slurs already to some pieces? Slurs Group 1
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I am still practicing assessment exercises and have not applied slurs in some pieces so far. Reasons are foremost restricted time at the moment and the pieces I am mainly currently working on are pieces without slurs (Matthew Dunne's Miniatures 1-3). So I let the slurs developing through your exercises - and hopefully the beauty of my improved slurs will show up later in this or that piece then, like a butterfly...
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So here are the results of 11 days of trainings with the pauses because I overtrained the hand somewhere in-between.
Pull-offs. Still struggling with 3-4. 2-4 work much better already. I understood/adopted the logic of fretting, because at the very beginning the brain told "you'll get the sound on the picked fret" :)
The hand still lacks relaxation though.
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Hammer ons. The sound became more clear.
The mental trick I used is aiming to hit the string somewhere below the fretboard. Just because at the very beginning the body tended to slow the finger down as soon as it felt the string.
It's still too hard for the pinky finger.
And I still miss the string a lot.But now I'm afraid my laptop keyboard won't last long, since the amount of energy applied to the keys when printing increased too much :)
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Alex Polonski Thanks Alex for sharing this. The progress is obvious.
One comment: For me, it is too quick (not the hammer-on itself, but the sequence of hammer-ons) and I guess that you have more control in practicing by slowing down and try to have full control on your movement and the sound. But: I am not a teacher (but we as a group are asked for commenting on submissions...)
I am sure that Martin will comment on that in detail. I just want to share my experience with tempo while practicing (exercises or even difficult stuff in pieces): "slow motion" first, for example for transitions, and then incrementally speeding up later).
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Robert Thank you. You are right for the speed. I'm trying to speed up now in order to practice the transition between the strings and still sound in tempo.
By the way, I've found this webinar also helpful, as it adds a new layer to the hammer-on technique explanation https://app.tonebase.co/guitar/live/player/practicing-slurs-like-a-boss
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Mix of the hammer-ons and pull-offs. The biggest challenge is to hit the open string on the higher frets (position 7 and higher). Especially for the pinky finger.
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The 1st bar of Villa lobos. Started practicing it several days ago.
The biggest challenge is relaxing the hand during the string change, and during the slide. To make it easier I'm trying to prepare the next finger a bit in advance. Anyhow, struggling with the proper timing.
But 1 week ago even this mission was totally impossible for me :)
End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
