Chords for Classical and Flamenco Guitar - Scales Lesson Part 1

_ _ [Em] _ [E] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ Scales.
Everybody wants to play fast scales.
You know, it's fun, it's flashy, and it seems
to be a goal, the primary goal, I guess, unfortunately, of a lot of people.
I don't know if I should
say unfortunately, because it's something I've always wanted to do too.
But over the
years I've found that control and accuracy are much, much more important.
That we should
always strive for control and accuracy, always above speed.
Speed will come.
[N] And I should
also say that we all do, yes, have limits.
We all do have limits.
We're not all going
to be able to play as fast as Pocket Ulucia, but that's alright, because he's Pocket Ulucia,
and we're us, and you're you.
So over the course of practicing all this and working
with your technique, you'll find what your basic limits are.
Hopefully we'll burst through
a few limits doing these exercises.
But the point is that eventually you're going to have
to realize that within your limits, control and accuracy are much more important.
And
in fact, they will give you the maximum speed that you need.
_ Now, let's talk about speed.
Before we can play any scales fast, [G] we have to be able to play a succession of notes fast
with the right hand.
You can only play a scale as fast as your right hand will take you.
If your right hand only goes that fast, well, _ [G]
that's as fast as the scale is going to [N] go.
So you see what I mean.
We have to work with the right hand first. _
So let's do that.
The
best way to do this is with speed bursts.
Now in the book, I have some laid out, and
you'll see them on your screen.
Now you notice in looking at the music here that we're just
going to play on the G string.
Each note has a staccato mark underneath it, which means
I want you to play each [G] note very short. _ _
_ And by playing [Bb] short, you're going to get the
next finger to the string as quickly as possible, and you're going to [G] plant like crazy. _ _ _
See
what I'm doing?
[Ab] Now I'm trying to make each note sound very equal, and again, I'm getting
good tone, [N] always getting good tone, listening to the quality of my sound.
Now what I want
to do here is as you watch me and follow along if you will, I'm going to go through
this whole page.
Each line is repeated, and I'm going to repeat each line once, and you
just follow me.
Let's try it.
I'll count us off.
Here we go.
Three [G] and four and. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Two. _ _
_ Line three. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ Four. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Next line. _ _ _ _ _
These bursts are getting longer now, you notice. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ Keep your hands steady.
_ _ Here we go, the last line.
_ _ Hold bar.
_ Repeat.
A little faster.
_ Repeat it again. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ One more time. _
_ _ [B] _ _ So you see here,
by increasing the speed burst, the length of the speed burst, we increase our ability
to play a longer and longer scale.
Now granted, we're just on one string right now, we're
going to stay there for a while.
Later on in the video, there's a good exercise I have
for string crossing.
_ Now there's one more point I need to make here, and it's about
what I call a guide finger.
_ Look at it this way.
When you're playing fast like we just
did, a fast burst like that, your fingers are going too fast to think about alternation,
or to feel alternation.
This is the way I work on it, and this really does help me.
Let's say we're playing I [G] am, just like we were, but we're playing slowly. _
_ _ No problem,
I can think I am fine.
I am, I am.
Feels great?
No problem.
I can listen to the tone, everything
is under control.
Now we speed up. _ _ _ _
Things change a little bit.
Suddenly, I reach a point
_ _ where I can't rationalize I am, I am exchange anymore.
So what I do is I just think I, I,
I, I, I, I, I. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _