5 practice principles self-taught guitarists can learn from a famous violin teacher
A summary of Ivan Galamian's book on violin playing and teaching
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It’s lucky one of the great music teachers of recent times wrote a book about his methods and philosophies: Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching by Ivan Galamian.
This book is insight-dense. As a respected teacher, he trained lots of celebrated violinists and we get a peek into his decades of high level practice. It's funny, though, we learn about his ideas through a book - Galamian believed no printed material could replace the relationship between a teacher and a student in a room together. But despite this, he communicated his life’s work to benefit all musicians. And since these ideas were communicated outside the teaching studio, they especially benefit self-taught guitarists.
He leaves us a guiding philosophy and practical tips to become better musicians.
What does this book have to do with teaching yourself guitar?
Although the Classical violin world and modern guitar world are different, this book is useful for self-taught guitarists.
Coming from the Classical world, Galamian was used to structure. His students showed up having gone through a whole program of familiar repertoire, technical training, and strict pedagogy. There were defined skill levels students were expected to reach by certain points. They played increasingly difficult repertoire guided by a qualified teacher.
It's different now. If you’re a guitar player focusing on popular genres and learning online, you don’t have all this structure to fall back on.
There is no standard curriculum to follow.
There are no levels by which you should know this technique or that skill.
Teachers are rarely certified from an outside source or “qualified” to teach in general.
But many things that concern a classical violin player concern a guitar player. As well, many things that concern a classical violin teacher should concern someone teaching themselves.
The point of all music lessons is the same no matter the genre.
To frame the 5 principles that follow, here are some guiding ideas Galamian lays out that are universal to all instruments and genres.
The first three words of chapter one are tone, pitch, and rhythm. We always seek beautiful tone, accuracy of pitch, and rhythmic precision.
You need a level of technique that allows you to produce these three musical aspects expressively and make your musical ideas a reality. You can only do this if your technique is second nature.
By having your technique feel second nature, you will have an accomplished “interpretive technique.” You should want to play any kind of music you can imagine in your mind. This is the fundamental goal.
A high level of interpretive technique combined with technical proficiency allows you to play music in a way that is convincing to everyone - not just other musicians. A good guitarist should be able to tell a musical story that is understandable by everyone.
You should always be guided by your ear. It is the final judge and leads you toward what is good and away from what is not.
Five learning principles for self-taught guitarists.
1. There are no rules in music lessons. Only principles.
Since all guitarists are individuals and learn differently, there are no absolute rules.
Instead of trying to jam yourself into a framework of rules that can’t work for everyone, it’s better to learn with a set of principles that are always true and can be mapped over any particular case. Galamian gives us three principles of instruction: building time, interpreting time, and performing time.
With an understanding of these three principles, you will have a better idea of the next steps you should take.
Building time
During building time, you master technical aspects of your instrument.
Galamian recommends not letting a mistake go by without correcting it. Building time is reserved for making sure the mind and muscles align on a given passage or chord progression and that you can play the music technically. For example, you can play a scale with different fingerings and rhythms. If you can play the scale beautifully and expressively with multiple different fingerings and in different rhythms without making any mistakes, the mind and muscles have correlated to the point where the technical aspect is complete.
Note how this concept is guided by principles.
There are no rules on how to play that scale. In this example, the fingerings and rhythms change. It could have turned out totally different (and no less successful) with a different person applying different fingerings and rhythms.
Interpreting time
During interpreting time, you choose which techniques, expressions, fingerings, and all other technical aspects of music making to use in a musical piece.
What’s important during interpreting time is musical expressiveness. By this point, you’ve moved beyond the technicalities and are making decisions about how the music should be performed to evoke certain moods or emotions.
A musical work can go in many different directions. You need practice making conscious decisions about which way you want it to go. It’s helpful to think phrase by phrase, section by section, then about the whole thing. Breaking down a complete musical piece into smaller units and making each one good helps build momentum and ensures you’re always practicing complete musical ideas instead of abstract sounds in space.
Performing time
Finally, performing time is when you practice a piece of music as if in front of an audience.
As opposed to building time, the goal here is to not stop the piece of music under any circumstance. You need practice making mistakes, finding where you left off, and getting back on track as smoothly as possible. It’s best to rehearse a piece for performance many times during lessons. It’s tempting to go through your performance piece successfully once and say it’s good to go, but the more successful completions the better.
Performing on stage is much different than performing in practice. You need all the preparation you can get.
2. No two guitarists are the same. All guitar learners will apply these principles differently.
It makes sense that certain steps should be followed in a certain order.
Skills need to build upon one another in a logical way to go from beginner to novice, then novice to advanced. This is true to a point. It would be foolish to learn with no through-line from where your ability currently is to where you want it to be. It also makes sense that this through-line would be more or less the same for all students.
But every guitarist is different. They all present a unique and challenging problem.
If you want to learn [X] song, how many musical concepts can you find there? Tons.
If you’re learning guitar online without a teacher, the ability to discriminate between these concepts and decide which should be focused on at any given point is an important skill.
What are the particular concepts that allow you to play your music in a satisfying way?
What makes you feel like you’re making real music?
Can you take these concepts and apply them within the principles above?
Maybe you don’t give a shit about the scale you’re playing or the theory behind the chord progression. But it’s probably more accurate to say you don’t give a shit about it yet. In a new context in the future you might start to care about those things deeply.
3. Good technique flows from the mind to the muscles.
Technique is the brick wall of learning music. You can chip away for a long time before it finally breaks open.
For beginning guitarists, the focus should be on building technique. You can have musical ideas in your head, but you can’t make musical decisions if you can’t physically perform the actions. What differentiates Galamian’s idea of technique from broader, more common ideas is the use of the mind. He believed you should conceptualize the technique in your mind before you make it happen with the muscles.
Guitarists commonly ask, “If I’m just training my muscles, can I watch T.V. while I do it? My hands will learn the muscle memory regardless.”
The implication is that practicing technique and ultimately getting better is boring. It’s hard to sit down and focus, so these guitarists seek a distraction to pass the time while they pretend to practice. To improve your technical ability, remember the importance of mental control over your physical action. The mind should anticipate the physical action.
The term Galamian coined for building technique through mental control over the muscles is correlation.
Galamian’s insight about correlation is corroborated in the science of learning. According to Dr. Andrew Huberman, neuroscientist at Stanford, once we recognize and are aware of a change we want to make, our brain signals the rest of our nervous system that whatever we are about to see, learn or do is worth paying attention to.
New guitar techniques will only become comfortable and second nature if we recognize the change we want to make and focus deeply on that change while we learn it.
4. Fingers are the crux of the whole operation.
Everything else - the thumb, hands, arms and general body position - will find its natural place once the fingers find theirs.
Each guitarist will have a different anatomical make-up that will determine how they play and ultimately sound. There’s no need for exact prescriptions on how to sit or stand, for example. If you are at ease, you’re in the best physical position for yourself and your technique can build upon that position safely. Galamian stresses the importance of naturalness for each individual.
Fingering specifically breaks down into two categories: the musical and the technical.
Musical considerations include choosing a fingering that produces the best sound and expression. A passage can be played several ways on different sets of strings. Each fingering and position will create different timbres which should be considered.
Technical considerations include how to most comfortably play a passage. Some fingerings and positions will be physically easier to play than others.
If you have a choice between the musical way and the easy way, Galamian makes it clear that the musical way should always come first.
5. Practice right or don’t bother.
Good practicing is the essence of learning guitar. No matter how much time you spend with a teacher, your progress is dependent on your own quality of practice.
Unfortunately, practicing is a pain in the ass. Students arrive at a guitar lesson hoping for that one tip or trick that will improve their skills drastically. They are excited to show up, work hard during the lesson and go home motivated. The next lesson comes around and inevitably they break the news that they were busy this week and didn’t get a chance to sit down with their guitar that much.
Even if a student does muster the willpower to pick up their guitar throughout the week, they’re not guaranteed any improvement.
Galamian proposes two types of practice: good and bad. This black and white dichotomy makes it easy. Either you practice well or you don’t.
It’s important to work efficiently.
If you’re going to bother practicing, you should close the door and turn off distractions.
Learning guitar is in direct competition with all sorts of other activities that are way more satisfying for the brain and body. Why struggle practicing the hardest section of a song when you can watch Netflix?
Or read a book?
Or eat a bag of chips?
Sometimes I even pretend to be productive by doing the dishes or other chores instead of just sitting down and doing my work.
Seek the most benefit you can get out of the least amount of time.
If you prescribe yourself an hour of practice a day, that is probably oppressive.
Some people will eat up an hour of good practice with fervour. But in my experience, most will just feel bad because they failed to complete the difficult task of carving out an hour a day for themselves to have the good type of practice.
Everyone is different.
It’s impossible to prescribe a standard amount of practice for everyone. Some people can stay focused longer than others. Try to find your optimal amount of daily practice time. If you can only practice for 10 minutes a day before you get distracted and lose focus, so be it. As long as you stick to the schedule of ten minutes a day, you will improve.
Once you start to improve, you will likely enjoy playing the guitar a little more, which will naturally extend the amount of time you play each day. Regular daily practice is much more effective than doing big spurts here and there. Ten minutes a day is better than 60 minutes the day before a lesson.
Once you decide to practice and pick up their guitar, what should you do?
Although the idea of practice is simple, the application can be really hard.
In the most basic terms, start from the simplest problem in what you’ve set out to play, present it in your mind, apply a practice procedure (exercises or repetition, for example), and finally transfer the procedure to your muscles. Repeat this process many times while adding a layer of complexity at each step.
The problems you encounter that require practice can be handled smartly.
If there’s a specific chord progression or phrase you’re working on, it can be done with different rhythms or tempos. You can add accents in different places. You can try the same fingering in different areas of the neck. Think critically about what you need to do to secure the music on different levels. This is what separates successful self-taught guitarists from the unsuccessful ones.
Don't worry about a set order of operations for practicing. No one says a routine should involve scales first, then arpeggios, then repertoire. As long as the elements are all there, the order doesn’t matter.
Galamian’s implication is that there should be some serendipity during practice. Practicing is still a creative act that involves following your nose and making decisions based on how you feel.