Slide Rules

on a blogging roll today, but i’ve felt inspired on the psg recently.
not good at it, but inspired!

another thing I’ve found really helpful to my practising is playing really really slowly.

just taking a phrase and really slowing it down, paying attention to every detail I can think of. not just playing the right note but being able to craft and nurture every little moment of its existence.

these were things I concentrated on:

vibrato - slowing it down, varying the frequency and depth
the transition of the pedal changes in relation to the bar changes
the volume pedal - where in the phrase to i want to back off or swell

One of the things that Winnie Winston suggests is trying to play with your eyes shut.
I’ve started doing that and it’s brilliant.

Very frustrating to begin with, not least for my neighbours, but pays dividends.

In my opinion it cuts out the middle man:

why, when you want to make a note change by an audible amount, translate that into a distance, as visible on a fretboard, and then try and then try to effect the change using your eyes?

Surely it makes more sense just to do this by ear.
Just by practising this you get a better feel for how far your hand need to travel to change pitch.
you also get in the habit of moving to slightlty flat of your destination note and then gradually rising to it by ear.

Another thing that BJ Cole pointed out in my playing was that my vibrato stopped and started whenever my concentration was taken up by something else: pushing pedals, lever, picking. even just moving the bar.
He encouraged me to try and maintain vibrato at all times and just vary the frequency and depth.
Kind of reminded me of what it looks like to play a theremin but i’ve never played one.

Difficult thing to do, keep the vibrato going with all the other stuff to do, but practice does pay off.

I think the most obvious place where I noticed this was sliding between notes but keeping the vibrato going. Just makes everything a bit more cohesive.