I remember once, when I was much younger, sitting in my music studio where I was giving a lesson to a beginning guitarist. There was a sound which we heard from an adjoining studio that we both concluded must have been someone using an electric drill. After listening for a minute or two, we realized that we were hearing a guitarist practicing his scales. That person has since become quite renowned in "guitar circles", but, not surprisingly to me, has never been recognized in the much wider realm of "classical musicians." Why? Because although he had learned to play scales faster and more evenly than I had ever heard anyone else play, he did so at the expense of making music. I will never understand how anyone can sit for hours listening to a mindless stream of notes. It's like listening to a computer recite Shakespeare. I can't listen to a minute of it before I find myself screaming in panic and running to a Segovia CD to clear my mind.
Back to reality
Ok, enough with the esoteric
sojourns, let's talk about the how-to's of scales. As always, the
fingers have to move properly in order to have the guitar respond to your
ideas. There are three distinct physical motions that must be addressed
in order to handle the general case of playing a scale. The simplest
case is where all the notes of the scale are on one string and can all
be reached without moving the left hand up or down the neck. Unfortunately,
this is by far the least common case - however - it is a very important
case to use when learning more subtle motions of the fingers which allow
you to paint your music with more than a few basic colors. The second case
is where your left hand fingers remain on one string but you must move
the left arm during the scale so that you can reach all of the notes. Finally,
the last case is where you must switch strings as you play the scale but
you don't move the left arm up or down the neck of the guitar. We
will approach each case separately so that all of the required motions
can be understood before trying to combine the cases to face the most common
situation where all three cases must be seamlessly interwoven.
Case 1 - one string, no left arm motion
- First the left hand...
In previous lessons, we've
talked about minimizing extraneous motion. Let's go right to the guitar
to demonstrate how this can be applied to a scale. Get into "playing
position" and move your left hand up the neck of the guitar until the frets
are close enough together so that each of the four fingers of your left
hand are just above four sequential frets. The place on the neck
will vary according to how big your hand happens to be. Segovia could have
done this at the first fret - I'm not so lucky :-(
Lower all four fingers using just enough weight in your left arm to cause the string to make firm contact with the frets. Using rest strokes with the right hand which alternate between the i and m fingers, play the note slowly as you adjust the weight of your left hand until the string just begins to "buzz", and then add slightly more weight. Keep your right hand touch as even as possible and ONLY use the rest stroke. All four fingers of the left hand should be touching the same string, the note being sounded is the note defined by where your 4th finger is pressed.
We are now going to play permutations of the left hand fingers to get you used to moving all four fingers independently AND...to let you start to understand how you can create a much more connected sound between notes by preparing the next lower finger while a prior note is still being sounded by a higher numbered finger of the left hand.
To begin, let's play just two different notes and repeat those notes several times. First, lift all four fingers off of the neck. Next, play the note below the fourth finger, followed by the note below the first finger, then the fourth, then the first, then the fourth, etc.. The first time you do this exercise, lift each finger after you play each note and only touch the string with the left hand finger that is actually creating the tone. The second time you do the exercise, leave the first finger down the entire time - only lift the fourth finger up to play the first finger note, and lower the fourth finger to play the fourth finger note while you keep the first finger firmly planted on the string. Notice that when you lift each finger and then place the next finger there is a noticeable discontinuity in the sound. The string itself must move a longer distance vertically between each note if the first finger is not planted before the fourth finger is lowered. Repeat both exercises for every combination of two left hand fingers, first by lifting both fingers, then by keeping the lowest finger planted.
Continue this exercise until you can hear the difference in sound. Once you can hear the difference in sound, play with the sound. Intentionally lift both fingers to make the sound stop between notes and then carefully work to make the transition between notes as smooth as possible by preparing the lower finger. Practice this until it becomes easy to lift the finger or keep it down - continue practicing this until the motion becomes automatic in response to your intention to create the sound you want. Once you feel you understand this, try combinations of three and then four fingers, lowering ALL of the fingers which lie below the note being played to give you the smoothest transition between notes. Vary this technique by using only the very lowest finger to act as a pivot point for the benefit of all of the notes above that finger - that is actually the most common usage of this technique in "real life" playing. This technique will also be very important later on when we talk about slurs and ornaments such as trills, the rapid lifting and lowering of a finger to sound the string without even playing the note with the right hand. The important thing to know is that the technique is not limited to just ornaments and slurs. It is an integral part of playing "legato", or "connected" sound between notes of a scale.
- now the right hand...
This simple case of scales
is also an excellent place to start to open up to the possibilities of
color within the right hand. We did the previous exercises with a
rest stroke because I didn't want to inject any variation of sound into
the mix that may be caused by the right hand. That's why I stressed
ONLY using the rest stoke. Now that you can hear how variation in
left hand touch can alter the sound between each note, lets explore how
variations in the right hand can alter the sound of each note you play.
Many people get totally hung up on shaping or sizing the fingernail of the right hand in order to control the sound produced on the guitar. While I don't want to understate the importance of having properly shaped fingernails, that is a means to an end, not the end itself. If your fingernail gets stuck on the string as it crosses the string then you probably need to change the shape of the edge. Don't expect the fingers to "feel" the same as they go over the string. Focus on the sound. The goal is to control the sound, however, you have to be aware of the possibilities of the sound before you can control it. Let's experiment with the sound.