Green Belt: Level 4 Guitar Lessons

The Essence and Importance of Flow

How Listening is Different than Playing

A basic understanding of the mental and emotional processes involved in both listening and playing can help us better understand how they are different, and how we can take better control over these processes in developing our own skills of timing and flow.

Whether listening or playing, we will make an important assumption that the language being played is comprehended by both the listener and the performer. There is at least substantial commonality in the vocabulary and structure shared by each.

Listening Flow

When listening to music, the phrases played a few seconds before linger or "ring" in our short term memory, suspended there until we can complete the phrase, or thought. At that time a meaning is associated with the completed thought as we interpreted it and an emotion of some kind is evoked.

So in listening, the basic linear flow is:

1. Understand the context or topic of what is being played
2. Combine notes from the phrase as they happen until a phrase is signaled to have ended
3. Interpret the phrase to give it meaning within the context
4. Apply a meaning and emotional response to the interpreted phrase

Familiarity with a topic, song or style, or familiarity with the performer can allow us to anticipate accurately in many cases what might be played next. However, when listening to unfamiliar material or to a new performer, this is the basic process, and there is a small but notable time lag between each of these steps.

Playing Flow

Playing is much more difficult than listening, most obviously because there are more processes involved, and the process is circular, rather than linear. So, there is potentially more that can go wrong within the overall process, and more areas over which to gain control or mastery.

Playing from Memory

Playing a rehearsed song from memory where you've had a chance to work out the bugs is a matter of hearing the end of the song from the beginning, and within the song, hearing the next phrase while the current phrase is being expressed from your instrument. Mental focus should always be on the next measure or phrase, while the execution of the current measure or phrase is handled at an autonomous or physical level. Here is the process:

1. In a state of comfort and confidence, having rehearsed thoroughly you can hear the entire song in your head, and see and feel your hands playing all the notes even before you begin to play the first note
2. You buffer the first several measures or the first phrase in your mind, hearing it before you play it
3. While your hands are playing the notes in your mind's ear, your long-term memory is buffering the next phrase into your mind's ear, continually staying ahead of what is being played physically
4. Hear yourself playing, not with a mind to change what you play, but how it is being expressed (tempo, volume, tone, etc.)
5. Evaluate the audience's response, and make expressive adjustments accordingly
6. Return to the third step

Improvising

Improvising is even more complex, but by controlling some of the macro variables, like playing within a familiar context will help the performer stay in control of the other more fluid variables. Here is the basic process:

1. In a state of comfort and confidence, having learned the boundaries of the context in which you will play, you come prepared with rough ideas of what will be spoken within that context, or how far outside of the context you will stray
2. Begin with an idea or an emotion, within the context or topic
3. Evaluate options for how to express that idea or emotion (prior experience helps shorten this phase)
4. Choose from among the options (usually leaning towards what has worked in the past)
5. Execute the chosen option on your instrument, using certain expressive options or punctuation available to you
6. Hear yourself speaking or playing your instrument
7. Evaluate yourself speaking or playing
8. Evaluate your audience's response
9. Return to the first step

Boiling It All Down

So whenever you play, whether from memory or improvising, you only really have to be in control of three things:

• The current chord and its scale or mode (handled autonomously)
• The next chord with its scale or mode (handled conciously by the mind's ear)
• The transition between the current and the next chord with its scale or mode (handled autonomously)

We can further boil it down to the notion of "hearing ahead". Always keep your mind's ear primed with what is going to be played next. If while practicing you find yourself stopped because you don't know what's next, don't blame your hands. Start by fixing the process of flowing sound into your mind's ear.

If you're learning to read music, then you have to learn read ahead with your eyes a measure or two before the sound is expressed from your instrument. If your eyes stall on the current measure, your playing flow will be interrupted.

Other Practical Examples

In all martial arts styles, we study the flow and transfer of energy while both meditating and while performing forms and while sparring. The mind's eye in every case is seeing the next move, while contemplating how to transfer energy from one position to the next. If there is an interruption in the flow or a loss of balance or power, the striking hands or feet are usually not the root of the problem, it is an interruption in the flow of energy from the previous position or stance.

In juggling three balls, one becomes unaware of the individual balls, but gains a sense of the space occupied by the balls as a set, and the transfer of energy and between the balls in the set. For each ball, the throwing hand autonomously tosses the ball into the air in a trajectory learned through experience to come down near the other hand. The mental focus is always on the catching hand, and getting it into a position to catch the falling ball. Meanwhile, there is a rhythmic droning of 1 - 2 - 3 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 1 - 2 - 3... felt throughout the entire body.

Though these examples are not musical, they reinforce the concepts discussed here, and provide useful contrasts.

How to Develop Flow in Playing

Flow is developed through proper practice of the pieces you want to play. Start by framing the idea, and then adding detail later. Know the changing chord centers as they progress the song. Add detail as you go, such as melody and fingering. Practice sticky spots more than the smooth spots, then play the whole piece.

In spots where you cannot hear or picture what is coming next, rehearse this in your mind before your fingers hit the strings. Once you have mental and aural clarity, then address the strings with your fingers.

For long, difficult passages, start with single measures, then build up to 2, then 4, then 8, then 16. I would also suggest learning these measures from the back of the piece to the front, as suggested by David Russell. This way your mind has exponential exposure to and clarity of later measures in the piece, which breeds comfort and confidence.