Lectures
(Extracts)
The
Integrative Guitar Technique
I would like to present you today the “integrative Guitar Technique“, which I have developed over decades to enable the Guitarist to play the Guitar in the easiest and most natural way. The technical possibilities achieved with this approach can enable us to interpret music in an optimal way without restraints. I have cooperated with many Doctors and Physiotherapists to verify my work. The Integrative Technique defines movement, countermovement, the bodies posture holding the Guitar and deals with recognising and avoiding compensations.
In such a lecture we will only be able to talk about certain aspects of such a comprehensive topic, and that’s why this lecture cannot be fully comprehensive. This will not be a Seminar on technical exercises, I will, though, talk a lot about the development of movements.
To get things off to a cheerful start, I would like to put forward 4 provocative statements:
· It is a mistake to attempt to play relaxed.
· We must learn to play the guitar with large movements and not by exercising isolated movements
· Practising means, first and foremost, understanding. Understanding movements is only possible through the cognitive separation of movement from strength.
· It is contradictory to attempt to bring together strength and speed.
I will come back to each of these guidelines in the course of the lecture.
The technique required for playing an instrument means “how do we do it”? How do we sit, what’s the position of the instrument, how do our hands work, how can we achieve a better or a louder tone, how can we play faster? Only after answering these questions can we talk about interpretation: interpretation and technique are connected to each other inextricably.
So the question is: are we artisans or artists? Does “practising technical exercises” lead to sterile playing? No, and on the contrary: we are artists, and that means that we are fully responsible for our playing, and technique is about the “How”: how can I make the guitar or any particular piece sound well?
A limited technique always limits our possibilities to express ourselves; interpretation depends entirely on our technical possibilities. A “good technique” represents a large repertoire of possibilities to express ourselves. However, a highly evolved technique must not lead to sterile playing.
To start I would like to clarify certain expressions that will accompany us during my discourse.
We differ bending Muscles from stretching muscles, that means Flexors and Extensors.
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