Back to Basics With David Russell

as told to Mark Small

David Russell is highly regarded in the guitar world for his pristine technique and musical sensitivity. In a recent conversation, he stated emphatically that he was no child prodigy and that his technique made a quantum leap between the ages of 20 and 24. He worked meticulously on the basics then to enhance muscle memory. This is the type of work that he says must be done by anyone hoping to be a professional guitarist. “Players with the best technique have fabulous muscle memory,” Russell says. “That means they play something once and can remember how to do it again the next time. Those with less technique have less perfect muscle memory. When they repeat a hand movement, it doesn’t come out the same way. Some people who don’t play very well may do a trill beautifully once, but they may need 50 tries to get it that once. That means they forgot how to do it 49 times and remembered once.”

The top players practice very well and less proficient players often practice badly Russell explained. He feels that every time you execute a passage poorly, you are sending erroneous information to your brain. If you find that you are consistently playing something badly, he recommends that you stop immediately, analyze the problem, and learn how to play it correctly. Ultimately this will send the proper the message from the brain to the fingers. The great guitarists practice almost perfectly he maintains, letting nothing that is unclear or technically dirty go by.

Russell described how slow practicing is only one component in solving technique problems. Ultimately you have to get the passage up to speed. “Playing slow, you use slow muscles which is not going to help you to go fast,” he says. “You can go slow and pluck with only your index finger, but that is not going to do you any good for the final result. You have to learn how to go fast without doing it wrong. You can be fast and perfect in small bits. If you have a big long scale run, tension can build up. If you make the passage but your neck muscles are bursting, you have done it wrong.”

Russell recommends combining fast and slow practice methods. “You have to learn something slowly at first and then bring it up to speed three, four, or five notes at a time,” he says. “Make sure that each change or shift can be done at full speed. If not, you have to go back and do pure technique practice to learn what is preventing this. Almost always there are between 10 and 20 very basic movements [in a piece]. Complications are usually combinations of the basic movements. If you don’t get the stepping stones right, you are never going to play the passage correctly. A ballet dancer doesn’t suddenly go out on stage and do the complete Swan Lake. He or she works on all of the basic movements until they become pure habit so that when the body is asked to do a pirouette, it is there.

“When I am practicing, I spend about half an hour doing warm up studies. Half of it is reconfirming things that I already know how to do. I need to go over them so that I don’t get into bad habits. I would recommend spending some time with the right hand doing the simplest plucking action with each finger. Make sure your nails are shaped right and you are producing a beautiful tone. Then start alternating i m, i m, then m i, m i. It is just like learning to walk. Then m i m, and so on through all of the combinations. Begin with the index and middle fingers and go through four-note and five-note groups. This helps you to know exactly what message to send to your hand.

“If you can play im, but mi is slightly more difficult, when you go to play a long scale, it is always going to limp. Work these combinations on one string. If you can’t do them on one, there is no point in trying to do them on two strings or with a string crossing. Get the first step right before you go on to the next one.

“The Prelude to Bach’s fourth lute suite is really difficult, but 90 percent of the movements are actually very simple finger motions. However, there is no rest, so you have no time to think. All of your habits have to be perfect because once you are off the rails it will be hard for the next finger to go down right. You have to work steadily to teach those habits to your hands.

“If you want to play [he sings:] bbbe, but you can’t play bbbb, [see examples 1a and 1b] there is no point in putting the complication of a string crossing at the end. Make sure you get at least 90 percent of the first action before going to the next one.

If you attempt to play bb ee bb gg bb ee bb g, [example 2a] but you can’t play bbbb bbbb bb b [example 2b], then it is going to be chaos.

If you can’t play ebgb eb ebgb [example 3], then you shouldn’t be playing the B minor study by Sor. That study has that in the right hand and many other complications.

“You have to do the same work with the left hand. Don’t start with big long slurs or trills, just move the fingers up and down so that when you have your first finger down on a string and you ask your third to go down, it goes to the right place because you have done it a thousand times every morning. Then when you are playing a Bach fugue, the fingers will go down in the right places because the technique habits are ingrained. You have taught yourself many good habits by doing this daily.”

Russell feels that studying well known etudes entices you to learn a lot of notes and extra things that may only serve to distract you from addressing your basic problem. He feels that every player who reaches a high level would be able to write his or her own group of studies. Your problem may be one or a few very basic motions, and you don’t need a whole Sor study to work on them.

“I began to make a huge jump forward when I began to think like this,” he says. “Instead of playing a big study with lots of mistakes, I recommend taking care of the basics. Once there is a nice tune, your mind goes there and you start ‘end gaining.’ You start trying to make the music sound good regardless of how you are doing it. In your concert the whole thing is to do what you can to make the music to work, even if you tension creeps in. But don’t do that in your practice or you will never have the chance to play it right in your concert.”