When practicing a particular form, especially when I am not at home, I use a pair of noise-canceling headphones. Any pair that has a transparency mode will do. I listen to the piece I need to learn on the headphones and play along. With the transparency mode I can hear the guitar I am playing alongside the music from my phone. Right now I am learning the arrangements for the concert with the NM Philharmonic orchestra, next Saturday.
Binding is a term neuroscience uses for the brain’s ability to construct a reality out of separate occurrences. As we all know, light travels really fast, sound travels merely fast, and arms move downright slowly. So, when one plays baseball, for example, the brain will bind events together so that it appears as if what the eyes see, what the ears hear, and what the hands do, happen at the same time. The brain does this by delaying events, and thereby gaining the time needed to create the illusion that all of the things that come together when hitting a baseball – seeing, hearing, and touching – happen at the same time.
There is a fun experiment that was devised to study this. Participants sat in front of a button, that was connected to a light bulb. The wiring from the button went through a timing apparatus that controlled the exact time when the bulb lit up, in the millisecond range. Push the button… light goes on. Next, a time delay was introduced. The participant pushed the button, but there was a 20 millisecond delay until then the blulb lit up. Apparently the brain will continue to assume that the bulb simply has to light up when the button is pushed and will bind those events together. This can be pushed until the delay is about 200 milliseconds, which is a fifth of a second. Here is where the fun started: once the participant had been “trained” to experience the bulb lighting up when the button was pushed EVEN THOUGH a fifth of a second elapsed between the events, the delay was removed and the bulb lit up without delay. Now the participants experienced something interesting: they reported that they saw the bulb lighting up BEFORE they pushed the button!
I have been thinking about this all day, wondering how it relates to playing guitar. When I sit on a stage and play a note, the sound travels from the guitar to the microphone and then, in form of an electrical impulse, through 100-200 feet (and sometimes a lot more than that) of wiring to the front-of-house mixing position, then, after processing, another 100-200 feet in the opposite direction to amps that increase the signal and send an impulse to the loudspeakers, which then have to move the air, which has to travel to your ears… It is clear that a concert is basically a group hallucination. LOL
This performance of La Luna was recorded at the Boulder Theater in 2004. In addition to Jon Gagan and me Robby Rothschild is playing cajon, djembe and congas and Ron Wagner plays tablas, dumbek and various other things.
Yesterday afternoon I had to fix my nails. I was playing guitar and noticed that the acrylic shields were coming loose from two nails. I can usually feel it happen and it can also sound a little different. Of course, I don’t want the acrylic to come off while I am performing although that has happened. Sometimes the nail-shield is loose but nevertheless holding on too tight and I can’t pull it off without damaging the nail underneath. Playing at the Vogue in Vancouver, years ago, I asked the band to improvise while I dealt with a nail and went backstage. Since there was no time for a new shield to dry, I re-glued the shield that had come off. Another time I was playing at Greg Gorman’s birthday party and he told me he actually saw a nail come off and sail through the air as I was playing. For a moment he thought it was an actual nail. Oh, the horror.
I decided to combine a couple of older fingernail posts into one big nail post and added an update at the bottom:
I remember reading a blogpost many years ago where someone had asked Paco de Lucia about playing guitar. The post was taken down later, perhaps because it wasn’t an authorized interview, perhaps because of the language Paco used, not knowing it would be published. I will always remember it though because it was so true. Here is part of it – and here is the link to the full quote:
I could not live without the guitar, but at the same time this is no way of life, because it is such a difficult instrument, so ungrateful; you dedicate your whole life to it, hours and days, and suddenly you come up on stage, and that day you feel in perfect shape for playing, and still you don’t hit one single string right, and you cannot figure out why… it depends on so many things, on how long your fingernails are… I am talking about tenths of millimeters, and you ask yourself. What is going on? Where am I failing? And it could be a badly polished nail…
As a teenager I read an interview with a classical guitarist. She said that one has to file one’s nails a little bit every day. At the time I figured that the statement was hyperbole, but eventually I figured out that she was right. Nail care is the most underrated aspect of being a nylon string guitar player, whether we play classical or flamenco guitar.
In places where the humidity is high nails grow a little faster, as does hair. When playing on the East Coast I may have to file my nails every single day, but in a dry climate like New Mexico or Arizona that’s not necessary.
It amazes me how differently guitar players file their nails. There are many different ways people do the filing itself, and also many different shapes that they give their nails. Some guitarists file only in one direction, others file back and forth, some go for flat nails and others for slightly pointy ones. Mine are rounded, neither flat nor pointy. But no matter what, it’s something a guitarist has to deal with all of the time.
It is not good when one walks onto a stage, excited to perform, and then discovers that the nails grew a little too much… and suddenly one gets stuck on strings. A fraction of a millimeter is all it takes to throw the guitarist off and too long is as bad as too short…
I sometimes wonder whether one can observe how people open doors and cupboards and know immediately whether they are guitar players. As a teenager I trained myself to open everything with my left hand, so I would not chance breaking a nail. I can imagine an episode of Sherlock, the one with Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes, where he says it was the guitar player because, although he is right handed, he trained himself to do things with his left hand. Therefore he could have committed the murder instead of a left-handed person.
There are two reasons to fortify one’s nails: to prevent ripping part of the nail off accidentally during the hours of the day that one doesn’t play guitar, and to enable the player to create a stronger tone. The latter is especially important when one performs with a drummer. Being able to play a little louder makes the sound engineer’s job a lot easier.
Recently I did some research into different ways to protect my nails. In the late Eighties I used a few layers of superglue. In the Nineties I added baking soda. This created a much stronger nail, but was frayed with danger. Adding too much baking soda to the superglue creates so much chemical heat that one can develop a blister underneath the nail, a terrible experience. In the late Nineties I switched to acrylic powder with superglue.
Last year I experimented with a bunch of different nail polishes. I figured that since nail polish is a billion dollar industry a lot of research must go into improving it.
I discovered that good nail polish is not actually very hard, and certainly not as hard as superglue with acrylic powder, but it is flexible. That’s how chipping is prevented, and the polish appears to self-repair. And that doesn’t work for guitar playing because it ruins the attack. The nail polish seems to absorb the guitar string rather than to bounce it back.
So now I am back to using acrylic powder and super glue. I did notice that it makes a big difference when I remove the natural oils from my nails by putting a little nail polish remover onto a cotton pad and wiping the nails before brushing on the superglue. And, because it is nice to try something new, I will start using a black acrylic powder I recently found.
Today I still use acrylic powder with Krazy Glue brand super glue. I tried other, more expensive, brands of super glue but since I didn’t notice that they made a difference I went back to Krazy Glue. Another advantage of this brand is that it can be found in any drugstore, should I need more supply while on tour. I also still use nail polish remover before I start with the glue application, because it removes any oil on the nail, evaporates quickly, and makes the glue adhere better.
I bought reusable cotton fabric pads to use with nail polish remover but they didn’t seem to work very well. Besides, the disposable pads are also made from cotton and totally can be reused. Each pad lasts at least six months for me. I put the bottle of nail polish remover and a couple of disposable cotton pads in a baggie. A second baggie contains the glue and a small container of acrylic powder. I have traveled with the same container for years, because I buy larger acrylic powder packages and then pour the powder into this small container.
I buy my files at Sally Beauty at DeVargas Mall, in Santa Fe, and have done that for decades. This is their 4-way file. I never use the coarsest part of the file but the other three are perfect for different situations. I buy at least five of these every time I’m in Santa Fe. I have tried reusable metal files but have never found anything that worked for me. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments. I also use this buffer block, which Stephen Duros turned me on to a long time ago. Perfect for the finest polishing and the final buffering.
I try to fix my nails at least a day before a concert because it takes a while for the super glue and acrylic powder mix to cure. The nail may feel hard right away but it will sound better, much better, after several hours or, ideally, overnight. Let me be more specific: when plucking strings the difference between a recently done nail and a well-cured one will be very small, since we use the underside of the nail, but when strumming or doing rasguados the difference will be much larger and obvious, because we use the top of the nail.
Here is another tip, born out of experience: take the temperature into consideration. Is the stage warmer or colder than the room in which you wait before the performance? When your hands are cold the nails will protrude more and may feel too long. When your hands are warm the flesh covers more of the nail and the nail will feel shorter. If you are in a cold room and decide that your nails are too long and file them shorter, when you go onto a stage that is warm, especially under old-fashioned non-LED lights (which put out a lot of heat!), your nails will soon be too short. We are not even talking about a millimeter… a difference of a small fraction of a millimeter can make a big difference. It forces an adjustment while performing instead of just playing.
While searching for something else I came across this old post from December of 2005, which I wrote while doing the Winter Rose Holiday Tour, with the added string quartet. I think it’s worth repeating.
When we practice we often concentrate on individual aspects or fragments of a performance. Fingering, sound-production, volume/dynamics, melody, rhythm are all aspects of a performance that can be practiced independently. Concentrating on one of these aspects will have wonderful results and is in fact essential for improving, but I think that concentration is not good for performing music.
When we concentrate on the flow of the melody, the rhythm will suffer and we might place notes too far in front of or behind the beat. When we concentrate on the rhythm we might place the notes exactly on the beat, but the melody will lack flow. When we concentrate on producing sound (right hand for most people), we might lose sight of the fingering (left hand). In other words, while fragmentation is a great way to isolate and practice a piece of music – or general aspects of posture, fingering, sound-production, volume/dynamics etc. – for a performance these fragments have to join to form one single element: the music.
In order for music to flow naturally, we have to allow the mind to flow and trust that it will bring attention to any single element that requires it. During a performance mind might flow like this:
the melody is a little behind the beat… nice, but don’t fall behind… the lights are hot in the back of my neck… right hand is a little sweaty… keep it steady – don’t listen to Davo (sounds like he’s doing sevens against the six)… ah, Jon is starting to improvise: don’t go back to the melody now… the second string sounds a little off – is it me or the violin… or both…
You see, concentrating on any one aspect of the performance would inhibit the flow of mind and that might get us stuck and when we get stuck even for a moment we won’t respond to the needs that are arising. Getting stuck is the worst that can happen in a performance. Two places we certainly do not want to get stuck in are: what I just played was so great AND what I just played really sucked! Both thoughts have the same result – the flow of music is impeded and the very next phrase will indeed suck…
By no means is this limited to music. When you cook and concentrate too much on one item, you’ll burn another… and I am sure we will find many more examples…
Today we drove from Annapolis to Sellersville, Pennsylvania. We walked up to a little local cafe where we had, in the past, spent quite a few hours drinking coffee and waiting for load-in. Alas, the cafe wasn’t open and looked like it hadn’t survived. Instead we went to the restaurant next to the theater and had lunch.
The little Sellersville Theater has a very good sound and suits us. Stephen commented that the music sounded great in the house and there was something about the way it sounded in our IEMs, too. The hall has a dry sound and the rhythm becomes very clear. The percussion sections in Snakecharmer and Barcelona Nights were so much fun to play. I felt like I was an indefatigable part of an invincible organism churning, dancing in place, then moving forward. Magical moments. You pay for those because sleep won’t come for a long time afterwards. A small price to pay. :-)
