hen paging through guitar magazines, publishers' catalogs, or guitar methods, one notices hundreds of exercises promising to increase one's technical proficiency. Upon close examination however, I find that many of them are of little value and that one could better spend one's time practicing other things. For the intermediate and advanced student, usually the best exercises to practice are those deriving from the repertoire he/she is actually working on. To take a single example, let us look at part of Study No. 2 (from the Segovia edition) by Fernando Sor.

If a student had problems playing the melody restroke and the accompaniment free stroke (assuming that was his/her objective in the first place), he/she could work on these exercises:

Example No.2

Or we could use the actual music as an exercise and save a lot of valuable practice time:

Example No.3

Of course if a student lacked the general ability to go directly to example 3, then perhaps he/she would have to work on exercises such as those in example 2.

The important thing is to avoid wasting time on unnecessary exercises if you can use the repertoire itself as an exercise. A vital fact to remember, as pointed out by Newman in The Pianist's Problems (a book considered to be gospel by most piano pedagogues with priceless information applicable to any instrument), is that technique does not usually "generalize." For example, just because you can play all the Segovia scales fast and clearly, does not mean you will be able to play any two or three octave major or minor scales in an actual piece fast and clearly. Or, mastering all the ornament exercises in Shearer's Slur, Ornament, and Reach Development Exercises does not mean you will be able to play any ornament in any piece of music on your first, second, or even tenth try. That does not mean the Segovia scales or Shearer book are useless--far from it. I recommend both very highly. What it does mean is that when you work on most exercises, you end up learning or mastering nothing but the exercise itself. If you want to give a recital of "My Favorite Exercises" at Carnegie Hall that is fine--just don't expect a very large audience. The technique, coordination, and strength you gain from such exercises, while certainly useful, will not necessarily generalize themselves directly to the repertoire, gleening exercises from the problem passages in the music itself.

However, there are certain exercises that develop particular techniques that are so important to good performance but so basic in their makeup, it is best to practice the techniques as ends in themselves, away from a musical context in which your mind might be distracted by other musical factors. For instance, say a student has a difficult problem keeping the fourth finger of the left hand from sticking straight out in the air instead of bent with the tip pointing downward at and close to the string. To use an extreme example, if he is working on Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez he will be so busy thinking about rhythms and notes he will forget all about his fourth finger and never learn to use it correctly. But, if you assign some scales or very easy pieces for him to work on, he can direct all his attention to the fourth finger without having to worry about notes and rhythms, quickly master the positioning of the fourth finger, and resume work of his Concierto. An extreme example, but I hope the point is clear.

Therefore, in the next few issues I would like to present a few basic exercises for the intermediate and advanced player, the mechanics of which are so basic that they will "generalize" to other areas of one's playing.

The best basic exercise for the left hand (aside from scales which I consider to be much more than just an exercise) is the practice of legatos or slurs. There are many slur exercises in print such as those in Pujol's Escuela Razonada de La Guitarra Vol. III and Shearer's Slur, Ornament, and Reach Development Exercises. But none quite as effective as the simple ones I present here. These will tremendously build hand, joint, and finger strength, dexterity, stretching ability, finger independence, scale speed, shifting speed, strength and coordination for playing ornaments and slurs-in short, almost everything. And, a note of caution: the following exercises are very strenuous for the left hand tendons and should only be practiced after you are thoroughly warmed up from playing other exercises and/or pieces. Practicing these exercises in a cold room or without having warmed up ahead of time can result in tendonitis, muscle and ligament strains, and even stress fractures of the bones in the fingers. But don't let me scare you away from them either, they are the best exercises we have for left hand development.

These are to be practiced LEFT HAND ALONE. Each note is played by the left hand by hammering fingers on the string for ascending slurs, and pulling fingers off the strings downward into the fingerboard (actually plucking the string with the left hand fingers) for descending slurs. Continue each pattern up to the twelfth fret and go back down to the first fret. Practice the pattern on the fourth, fifth, and sixth strings. (Not as much value will be realized from practicing them on the treble strings.) Because of the difficulty and strength required to play these exercises, at first many players will be unable to do them for more than five minutes. If this is the case, try to do them for one minute. The next day one minute fifteen seconds, and so on. Once you can play them CLEANLY AND EVENLY for ten minutes at 80 = work on them with a metronome every day starting the metronome at a slow comfortable setting and building speed notch by notch from day to day. I personally work on these every day for about a half hour from 100 to 176 =

Example No.4
Left hand alone. Thoroughluy warm up with other exercises or pieces before practicing these exercises. Eventually play at M.M.=176=

Continue to 12th fret and then back down to the 1st fret. Also practice on fourth and fifth string.

Example No.5

Example No.6

Part II