Hi Su,
Thanks for your feedback.
Quote:
Moving on, I've tried a few ways to practice the triplets.
1. Fingers moving as slowly as possible.
2. Fingers only move when it's time to strike - resulting in a fast and precise strike.
3. Finger preparation - For the sake of communication, I'll explain anyway: Thumb strikes and immediately i finger rests on the string - ready to strike and so on.
4. Thumb, i, and m are placed on their respective strings - ready to strike. Thumb strikes. i strikes. m strikes. Thumb, i, and m come back to rest on their respective strings - ready to begin the next cycle.
Please let me know if any of these ^^^ are bad for Austurias?
|
When I was being taught classical guitar I learned basically two ways of playing arpeggios. One was called "Full Planting" (that would be your #4, and perhaps #3 as well to some degree), and the other was "Serial or Sequential planting".
Generally speaking, full planting works best in ascending type arpeggios, and serial planting for descending ones. Both can be combined if your fingers are ascending and descending, depending on the arpeggio.
It's not an absolute rule though. The music has a lot to say about what works best for what. That's when your ears come in to make the judgment.
For Asturias though, with its very quick tempo, the best way (imo) to have the most control at the highest speed, is to to use
full planting (#4). Keeping the fingers ready to play will help you go faster, and should make your triplets sound tighter and snappier.
That's definitely what I would recommend for that piece.
Quote:
About my dilemma, I'm going to pick up some easy pieces to keep me company while still hammering at Austurias. Something just dawned on me. I've studied very hard get to this stage of Austurias....and I barely got here. I need to study very hard to get to the next level.
While at Fresno State University, I had the privilege of studying with Juan Serrano for 1 year. I caught him right before he retired. Serrano said something to this effect. When you have achieved advanced playing level, you need 2 hours of practice a day just to maintain your level of playing...and you'll need additional practice time if you want to improve. I'm not at the level Serrano is talking about but I can see how this relates to my triplets. These past weeks, I've been just maintaining. That is not to say your guidelines have not helped me. They have. I'm going to give it a big push these next few weeks to see if I can make a significant improvement.
|
Yes, I think he was correct in his assessment of the commitment it takes to achieve higher levels of proficiency in classical guitar.
In a way, you have to keep that in mind too when working on a piece like this. Keep your expectations in line with what you are able to achieve given your stage of development and overall routine.
Don't let it get to you either. It's easy to burn yourself out on trying to do something you might not be ready for. It often helps a lot just to step away and move on. Refreshes the outlook when you come back to it.
Fortunately for us guitarists, there's not a shortage of enjoyable material to tackle, in any style.
So, to summarize, I would encourage you to go full planting on the Asturias triplets. Start slow, and just go from there. You'll eventually reach your speed limit, but it might be a lot faster than what you can do now.
How's your left/fretting hand btw? Once memorized, the right hand should feel like it's on automatic pilot. The left hand work in that piece is very challenging I think, especially with the very quick chord fingering and strumming changes that have to be spot on the beat.
So, I would think that the "speed bumps" in your progress might come more from the need to synchronize both hands as you negotiate these quick fretting hand changes, as opposed to the right hand triplet work. Do you find that?
This is where practice at a slow tempo, with everything working, i.e. both hands, is what you need to focus on at this stage, to make the most efficient time of your practice. Since by now, the piece must be fully committed to memory and comfortable under your fingers.
One thing too that might be help as well: Find a comfortably slow tempo, and record yourself playing it. That can be very revealing too in terms of what you need to work on.
Good luck going forward. Definitely stick to it! but don't let it overwhelm you and make you not want to play.
That would be bad.