Thank you so much! Wow, this was so helpful… This thing about eliminating tension; is it enough just to always make sure being relaxed while practicing? Or is it necessary to take it even further? (And in that case, how?)
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I think the big first step and the main one overall is just to start being really aware of how much tension there is etc. A lot of times when u start to play “fast” you start to feel tension and then fatigue in the hands. IF you are aware of this when u practice then u can start to learn to avoid it etc
of course it doesnt mean we need to be like a jellyfish lol. naturally there is a small amount of working tension required for playing etc…but if u do a few licks and your hand is tired already, then u r gripping and squeezing way too hard
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Yes, if you want to break the principle down to its core, staying relaxed is what it is all about.
However, for me it took a little bit more detail until i got the idea. Whenever i read that you’re supposed to be realxed while playing, i totally skipped that part mentally, because i just thought “yeah, of course i am relaxed”. You dont realise the unnecessary tension in your playing because you experience it as the “normal” way to play. Just like you dont ask yourself if you apply too much tension while holding your coffee-mug, its just how you do it.
Difference is, if we use maybe 20% more muscle tension than necessary to keep the cup from falling out of our hands, nothing bad happens. However, while trying shred, those 20% absolutely get in the way since you have to overcome that tension everytime you want to move your fingers.
So in a way we are dealing with an invisible form of tension because you dont really experience it as such but you have to push through it all the time.
Tension is not the only obstacle for fast playing, mental factors like chunking and mechanical ones like pickslants are relevant, too. However, i think the reason why the ctc material basically presupposes stuff like clean runs on one string (and assumes everyone who applies chunking can manage those) is, that great players like troy just experience very low tension as the only intuitive way of doing this. No mechanical obstacles can come in the way there, just memorization and tension.
Problem: For me tension is intuitive when trying something “hard”. Everytime i really want to nail a lick, i tense up a bit. Thats apparently how i tick. So i really have to remind myself during practice that the only way to play that stuff well is to play it as relaxed as possible. I have in fact written that down on a paper with “advices” to myself which i always read through before i start. Because whenever i find a sweetspot and can play through a run with ease, that is always very relaxed. Paradoxically, a week later that level of relaxation seems contraintuitive to me and i have to force myself to apply much less power than i “want”. I guess my next breakthrough will happen when that feels natural all the time.
First and foremost, i needed such info to change my attitude about praciticing. The book i mentioned (Natural guitar principles is the correct title actually https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Classical-Guitar-Principles-Effortless/dp/1871082307) made me see that i do not have to “work out” to make something hard possible, but find an easy way and momorize that approach. If i didnt collect the right info i could have kept doing what i did for decades without seeing any progress, i am 100% sure of that. So thats why i recommend to set aside some time for research 
You are already playing at pretty shreddy speeds, so i guess you are intuitively more sensitive to such issues! ( i was cramping so much i couldnt play scales faster than 120 bpm). Great breakthroughs ahead
Ok, thats all, sorry for the wall of text i have a tendency to drown people in wordsalad!
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In my classical studies, my teacher would walk around me while a played and wiggle my joints to see whether they were loose enough. He taught me how to actively rest my muscles. The goals was to completely rest any muscle that’s not required at the moment, so that it is not fatigued when you need to use it, but the overall effect was to reduce excessive tension even in the muscles that are being used.
When you notice unwanted tension:
- Stop playing.
- Identify the muscle that is too tense. You don’t have to know its name or anything, you just need to be able to consciously control it.
- Consciously tense the offending muscle.
- Consciously release tension from the muscle. To me this feels like reverse-flexing. You are teaching yourself how to isolate this muscle and turn it off, or at least down. Sometimes I engage an oppositional muscle to stretch the first muscle, so I can feel and memorize the sensation of it relaxing as I stretch it.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you have comfortable control.
- Continue playing. When you feel tension, engage #4 without stopping playing.
This only takes a few seconds, and I would generally only do this once for a given muscle. After that, I don’t stop playing when I notice tension in that muscle. I just engage #4 to actively relax it. If I later have trouble isolating the muscle, I’ll do the whole process again, but that’s fairly rare.
At first, #6 felt like I was trying to be conscious of too many things at once, like doing the NYT Crossword in my head. It’s pretty rare that we ask our bodies to be specifically conscious of the muscles we aren’t using. But that’s how unwanted tension happens in the first place. After a bit of practice, it became second nature.
I still go through the routine every once in while, when I notice a shoulder aggressively creeping upward (1. stop playing 2. force shoulder slightly too low 3. release by engaging active rest mode). But for the most part, I just engage #4 whenever I need to.
You could use a very similar approach to trade your embarrassing guitar faces for cool ones.
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haha, that reminds me of how I have snapped toothbrushes in half before while brushing. Not realizing how much tension I was rocking lol.
Im not THAT tense anymore (but I do still make the bristles get splayed all out hehe)
Great advice! A friend of mine who was also taught in classical guitar told me something similar. I find it weird that approaches like these are so commonly known amongst classical musicians while no one of the three electric-guitar teachers i have had ever bothered to incorporate these methods in their own lessons. Not going to put the blame on them, because they were really cool dudes but it was 95% “So, do you like ACDC? Here is a Tab!”
Wow, thats cavetroll level of excessive tension 
I did not want to take the guitar and daily-life analogies too far but i am absolutely convinced that i perform better during my nightly hour of post-practice videogaming when i managed to stay relaxed during practice.
Thank you so much, amazing advices!
The tension I’m struggling most with is in the picking arm, and especially this little bubble muscle 5 cm underneath the shoulder, at high speed (more if I’m only using downstrokes, like metal riffs, but also while alternate picking). The problem is that if I try to relax I can’t go as fast! But sometimes I’ve experienced that after a while that speed I had to tense to be able to play suddenly becomes natural and then I can relax. Is it “dangerous” to practice lets say a metal riff that’s a bit to fast for me with this tension in the arm until the speed get natural? Or do I always have to find away to overcome the tension before speeding up?
I’m sorry if I’m suck at explaining. As I said my Swedish-ness one appears in my English grammar and not in my guitar playing… 
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So true!
Another thing I’ve noticed (Similar to what was written in that article about PPI) is that guitar players don’t seem to value the power but also the needs of the human body. If you are doing any sport activity or something like that there will be a lot of talking about how important it is to rest, sleep and eat healthy and so on. All coaches put a lot of effort to make their students understand that won’t get anywhere if they don’t take care of themselves and give their bodies what they need. I’ve seen and heard several advices about how to become a good guitar player. Everything from “Practice 14 hours a day” to weird ones as “Don’t have friends. And never get a boyfriend!”.
What nobody ever mention are things like exercise (improves both your learning ability and concentration=more effective practice) or even getting enough sleep! Do people don’t realize their brains won’t be able to process what they’ve learnt if they don’t sleep? But on the other hand some people been constantly partying almost their whole life but obviously made it anyway.
But I admire those actually where able to play 14 hours a day, or at least anything relatively close to that. The last weeks I’ve been playing about 4-6+ hours almost everyday, which is more than I’m used to. Due to that there have been no problems, until yesterday when and woke up with a bit of pain on the inside of my wrist, more on the right. So I didn’t play anything during the day. In the evening it felt good and I practiced 3 hours, the pain started to come back at the end of the session. It felt better this morning than yesterday’s, but because I’m a coward I’ve only dared to play 20 minutes today. Is this something to worry about or is it just some kind of muscle fever?
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Sleep. Yeah thats the one im battling with right now. Just seems impossible to get everything done and get in the bed on time.
Pain and soreness can be a funny thing. Sometimes you have to rest and sometimes its best to just warm up and keep working. Usually little aches and pains just come and go. (hehe, just wait until you get older)
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I have read that pain after practice is always a redlight and that u should see a doctor yadayada. But i dont think thats true. Some soreness after exposing your body to unknown stressfactors just normal. I experience sore/stiff/aching fingers from time to time because of my lifting/guitar/climbing scedule and had no traumas yet.
However, i guess really good technique doesnt cause those problems. Its not necessary a sign to stop but maybe one to look for smoother mechanics.
Btw, dont apologize for your english. Its really good and if you go on i ll have to start apologizing for mine
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