How To Play A Stringed Instrument

by Spencer Livingston

How to Play A Stringed Instrument

Acquire an instrument.

Learn how to place the fingers of your left hand to produce specific notes when your right hand is added.

Learn how to place them quickly.

Learn how to string a series of such placements together into a pleasing pattern.

Learn how to connect two or three such patterns into a “song”.

Learn how to add and subtract fingers from the basic string arrangements that you created in order to make “variations”.

Learn how to use your hand in a different way than the guidebook diagrams.

Learn how to fret with your thumb from the wrong side of the fingerboard.

Learn how to move your fingers vertically, and not just horizontally, to create different sounds; don’t just move up and down the fingerboard along the fingerboard. Move up and down away from the fingerboard.

Learn how to play right hand against left, and not just how to coordinate them. Let the left try for a clear tone, and the right palm damp it. Use the dialectic.

Learn where all the harmonies are. Learn how to play them. After you learn how to play the, learn how to use them.

Upon hearing another player, do not dismiss them if you think that they cannot play. It may be that you cannot hear. Or that they may be playing exactly what you wish that you could play.

Picks are acceptable, but at least spend some time with your fingertips on the strings. It toughens them and brings you closer to the instrument.

Do not play a left-handed version of your instrument if you are left handed. You will be using both hands. Learn to play on what will be commonly available.

Learn how to tune.

Most importantly, learn how to leave out seriously needed notes when your playing up to that point in the piece has made it clear what that note would be, because even though you could play it, it could never sound as beautiful as it will sound in the mind of a listener waiting for it, if you just drop it out and let it resonate as they imagine.

Do not change your strings as often as recommended. Do not fall for the sales pitch for strings, which is not a musical pitch. Dead strings are better controlled and have a stronger memory of your fingers. They are more closely bonded to the instrument. It is best to use them until they break, they will reach their richest point, and when they do break, they make a wonderful sound.

Practice with your ears sealed, so that you cannot hear the sounds. Learn to know what the sounds are by how your hands feel on the strings.

Try to avoid temperamental girlfriends who might throw your instrument out the window for reasons unrelated to music.

Play the wood as well as the strings.

Use all of the positions: all of the hand positions on the fingerboard, and all of the body positions. Play standing, play seated on a high stool, play sitting in a low chair, play prone on the floor.

Let your instrument lie on the floor while you lie at a right angle to it, and play it.

De-tune and play anyway.

Spend thirty days looking at your instrument without touching it, hearing new things in your head that you’ve never played before.

Play them.

Give an instrument to another person who has never played.

Try to find recordings of Lao Tze playing pizzicato viola, and if you do find them, study them closely.

Take care of the wood, so that it ages well.

Dismiss no one and nothing until you have listened and reflected.

Remember to remember that memory, and memories, mean more than blinding speed. Blindness is not good. Play memories. Play nothing that can’t be heard again in the mind, the next day.

Never look at your instrument when you play. Look inside, or look at other people.

Play a short pattern thousands of times, over and over, until you can hear and identify the differences among all of the repetitions.

Play a song for someone, and then explain to them everything that you tried to do as you played.

Imagine that you have only one hand, and spend a month learning to play again with only one. Left or right.

Play scales when you practice, but never when you play music.

Learn to use the spaces between notes where you are not making sounds. Compose around them. Make them rhythmic, and make them loud.

Imagine the left hand of Django Reinhart and the right hand of Son House playing the same instrument together and play what it would sound like.

Do anything the wrong way if it sounds good.

Use picks, bows, hammers, coins, vibrators, carrots, and other tools, but let your fingers always be the primary mediation between you and the instrument.

Always cradle your instrument as you would your first-born child, and always play it as if you might die tomorrow.

When you learn how to play, always play.

Accept fat strings and thin strings as having equal value.

Do not believe any stories you may have heard about Legba, or the Devil. He really cannot help you with this.

Do everything listed above again.