When
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov wrote his virtuosic, dizzying chromatic
violin piece as an interlude to close the third act of his opera The
Tale Of The Tsar Saltan in 1900, it's unlikely he anticpated the
shred guitar movement or how iconic his piece would become as a
benchmark of guitar technique.
The
piece itself is a frenzied, frantic non-stop cascade of sixteenth
notes (semiquavers), mostly only a semitone apart, and on the guitar
at least the actual fingerings are not too tricky – the challenge
lies in the stamina, the reflexes and the relentless, dizzying speed.
Now, I've never considered myself to be a particularly fast
guitarist, so working through this piece was a chance to try and
polish a weaker side of my playing and it taught me a great deal
about how we actually learn.
There's
a long-held myth that humans only use 10% of the brain power, and
that were we to be able to access the other 90% we'd develop psychic
powers, telekinesis blah blah blah. Rubbish. We may only use 10%
consciously – the “front line services”, if you want to use
current buzzwords – but that “unused” 90%? That's taking care
of all the incredible variety of processes that we simply take
for granted. Imagine all the things that have to happen for you to
blink:
Take
the decision to blink
Consciously
move your eyelids together by the correct amount to close them –
not too little, not too much.
Take
the decision to re-open your eyes.
Deliberately
move your eyelids upwards, gauging how far to move them.
Now
think about how many times a minute you blink. If you had to think,
consciously, about each time you had to perform a simple “maintenance
function” like a blink, you would simply have no capacity for
coherent, rational thought. The fact that your body takes care of
blinking, breathing, balancing (an act which uses 300 muscles alone)
etc without you consciously being aware of any of it – that's the
90% at work.
Psychologists
and neurologists divide our behaviours into two modes – the
rational mode (that's our 10%) which weighs the various factors that
might affect the outcome of a particular decision. This is the part
you use when buying a car or (hopefully) voting. It's much more
thorough, analytical approach – probably one we evolved in
prehistoric times out on the savannah, trying to work out which way
the antelope might run or whether that particular rock might have a
sabre-tooth tiger behind it- but it takes a great deal longer. When
you're learning to drive, this is the “thinking time” your
instructor tells you about.
The second mode is the “intuitive” or instinctive mode – this
is where all the learnt processes get stored, all the things that you
“just do”. This is the snap decision – fight-or-flight, instant
decision making when there simply isn't time to absorb all the facts
and reflect on them. When the sabre-tooth tiger lunges, you “just
run” or you just stab it with your spear, you don't debate.
So,
what does all this evolutionary psychology have to do with guitar
playing? Well, as I mentioned before, “Flight Of The Bumblebee”
is all about speed. Sheer, relentless, blistering speed. So what we
have to do is harness the intuitive aspect of the brain, because with
this piece if you're thinking about what you're playing, you're not
playing fast enough.
So
– how to approach learning a dense, complex piece like this.
Playing it top to tail whilst glued to the tablature is NOT going to
work – that's involving the rational bit of the mind way too much.
The best way I've found is to break it down into small chunks,
roughly 4-8 bars long depending on the complexity of the pattern, and
literally play this into your fingers until it's memorised. You need
to be VERY careful here not to train mistakes into your fingers, as
once the chunk is grouped, decoded and stored in the intuitive
portion of your mind you're going to have a hell of a job digging it
out and correcting it.
Once
you've got your first chunk down and can play it successfully from
memory (not necessarily fast – that will come), then try the next.
Then add the two together, reinforcing what you've already know as
you go. As the mental agility improves through not having to
consciously think through what you're playing, the physical dexterity
will follow, especially with metronome use to gradually speed your
playing up (see my post Feel The Burn – A Need For Speed for more
on this).
I
first played this up to speed about a week ago, and it was an almost
alarming experience in a way, because as I got to the end of it I
suddenly realised I had absolutely no recollection of playing most of
it. I'd been acting purely on instinct and intuition, performing the
musical (and far less dangerous) equivalent of running full tilt
along a tightrope. It's almost a form of hypnosis, putting you
completely in the intuitive zone.
Learning
this piece then, not only improved my speed and accuracy (and gave me
a pretty cool party piece) – but it also taught me a great deal
about how we learn and how we think, and how a musician can train him
or herself to use the different “settings” of the brain to
overcome seemingly insurmountable barriers. If you're struggling with
a piece of music that seems utterly impossible, then try this
approach. Remember, if it has been played, YOU can play it too –
just given time and preparation.
Oh, and just so you know I'm not bluffing - check out the accompanying video:
