Chris Rushton .com

Inspired by the latest blog on climate change by Steve Pavlina I have decided to take a 30 day trial at going vegetarian.

I thought I would try and blog the experience as a way to focus my own thoughts on what I was doing as well as keeping me honest about the whole thing.  If you enjoy reading about my experience then that’s cool too!

Motivation

Aside from the climate change issues mentioned above, this is something I have been considering for a while but the article was the proverbial straw that broke my meat eating back.  My previous motivation was that meat was just too expensive.  For me to eat big portions of quality beef, lamb and chicken on a daily basis just isn’t financially viable for me at the moment, still being a poor student (although not as poor the average undergrad).  Cruelty to animals is really a secondary concern for me.  It’s probably nicer for them if they don’t die but it isn’t something that has ever bothered me.  The major motivator for me is the environmental factor.  I always considered that I didn’t have a massive impact.  I walk or use public transport and don’t own a car, I have a high metabolic rate and have always found a sweater more than enough warmth for all but the coldest nights and I make every effort to buy energy efficient appliances in my house.  I am happy to try and step it up to the next level.

Why Not Vegan?

Steve says that being a vegan is the best solution.  I think I agree with him to be honest, but there are a number of technicalities which prevent me from trying this:

• I love cheese and butter way too much to give them up right now
• I can’t carry masses of vegetables at the moment as I have a broken leg

If I like where this is going after 30 days and I am physically able to, I may well take a 30 day vegan challenge.  I hear olive oil is really nice on bread.  I’ve actually tried this once before and found it palatable but have never made a habit out of this and don’t know a whole lot about it.  I’m also quite keen on maintaining a high level of protein in my diet since I lift a lot of weights and play American Football (when I am fit).  I would have to find an alternative to my trusted Whey Protein shakes for  post workout nutrition.

Current Diet

As an example of what I usually eat, yesterday I had the following:

Breakfast: Slice of left over pepperoni pizza and Nutrigrain breakfast bar – unusual for me but Sunday used to be my junk food day

Snack 1: Fruit flapjack

Lunch: Ham sandwich

Snack 2: Raspberry flapjack

Dinner: Mushroom and onion madras curry and basmati rice

Snack 3: Rice with left over curry sauce

This is pretty usual for me but often I will have meat with the curry type meal.  The only meat I have in my fridge is some salami and I didn’t think the two would mix.  The small details change on a daily basis and I don’t usually have pizza for breakfast but the big picture is pretty accurate.  I have a dieting philosophy of if you want to burn a fire for a whole night you don’t put all your fuel on at 7pm if you wonder why I allow myself to snack so often and don’t ever seem to eat a whole lot at once.

Final Thoughts:

I’m confident I can manage this.  It’s only 30 days after all.  If I don’t like it I can always go back to meat.  I’m quite excited about what I will discover about living a slightly different lifestyle to the one I do now.  I hope the university still make salad sandwiches.  They used to have a great tomato and mozzarella ciabatta option but I didn’t see it today.   I’m now going to finish off the salami in the fridge.  I would like to try a raw diet at some point in the future.  Right now it is logistically impossible for me to do this since I eat too many sandwiches and have to buy stuff at my university as I can’t carry much around with me.

Wish me luck!

There are very few techniques that I can think of for right hand guitar playing across all genres of music.  Since this post is specifically to do with Classical, or more generally nylon strung, guitar technique I will focus on the two that are most commonly used and should become second nature to any serious guitarist.  I will talk about the rest and free strokes.  They have Italian names too, but I don’t want to confuse the matter (and I can’t remember what free stroke is in Italian either!).

Firstly the physics of how a guitar makes noise.  The string vibrates up and down, or perpendicular the plane of the soundboard.  This came as a surprise to me when I first heard it, I assumed they vibrated parallel to the plane, but it is an important fact to remember when practicing the techniques I am about to describe.  This vibration goes through the bridge and is amplified by the top surface of the guitar and the air inside.  The guitar body acts in a similar way to a speaker and pushes air backwards and forwards creating sound.

The Rest Stroke

The rest stroke is probably the singular most used technique a guitarist will use so it is very important to get it right.  The hand position should be right over the sound hole.  There are 4 phases of the rest stroke:

• Guitarist pushes down on the string
• String slips over nail pushing it down and is released
• Finger follows through onto next string and rests on it momentarily (where the name rest stroke comes from)
• Guitarist repositions finger ready for next stroke

This is the technique used by bass players who play with their fingers for the most part.  It is a very direct and punchy style of play, allowing each individual note to be heard.  It should be used whenever only a single note is being played at a time, in melodic passages.

The first stage is probably the most important.  Remember at the start of the post I said that the string needs to be vibrating up and down?  If you push the string at an angle towards the string above it, the string will vibrate at an angle.  It will settle down to the perpendicular path it naturally wants to follow but it won’t be immediate.  Only the component of the movement which is perpendicular to the soundboard will be amplified and by the time the string has found it’s natural path, the stroke’s initial amplitude will have decayed away.

Techniques to improve this include 4, 3, 2 and 1 notes on each string with varying right hand finger patterns, for example:

6i 6m 6a 6i 5m 5a 5i 5m 4a 4i 4m 4a 3i 3m 3a 3i 2m 2a 2i 2m 1a 1i 1m 1a and back

Where the number is the string and the letter is the finger (i = index, m = middle and a = annular or ring finger).  Finger patterns to use include alternating i-m-a, as seen above, i-m, i-a, and m-a.  When doing these exercises, don’t do anything with your left hand but focus on the smallest movements of your right.  Focus on the following:

• Pushing down as close to perpendicular to the soundboard as possible
• Only moving one finger at a time (also known as individuation)
• Hand position try varying slightly and seeing what the effect in tone is

I like to try and get into a zen state where I concentrate on perfecting each individual movement no matter how small so I can get the maximum potential out of my hand and instrument.  You can spend a long time on this.  Everyone wants to play the cool pieces because they sound good.  If you are thinking like this, I recommend you read my Work Smart, Not Hard article.  This is definitely an example of smart work because without the basic tools you will never be able to play the more difficult and more impressive pieces.

The Free Stroke

The free stroke is different to the rest stroke because you don’t have the rest.  It is used for playing chords, arpeggios and passages where the notes should ring together.  The technique is subtly different but leads to a noticeable change in the way the instrument sounds.  It is probably easier for a beginner as the technique always felt more natural to me but it isn’t as widely used and is only used for certain effects.  The rest stroke should still be your main stroke.  The technique goes something like this:

• Guitarist tries to rest nail underneath the string and pulls upwards
• String slips over nail and is released
• Guitarist positions finger ready for next stroke

Again, the first stage is probably the most important.  It is difficult and impractical to get the finger completely under the string and even if you were to, you would really only have an inverted rest stroke.  You should be pulling the string back softly and letting the string follow it’s natural path in space rather than trying to direct it to only go perpendicular to the sound board.  This results in a softer, more airy tone.

The same exercises can be used to practice this technique as before.  Again, trying to focus on getting the most out of every movement and maximizing the potential of you and your instrument.

I was told to spend 10 – 20 minutes a day practicing these techniques but really you can’t do enough of this.  You should keep doing this, no matter how good you are for at least 10 minutes a session and if this is the first you have seen of them, it might be worth spending a minimum of 20 minutes a session on them with the upper time limit being up to you.  The more the better!  Remember:  Amateurs practice until they get it right, pros practice until they can’t get it wrong.

I started playing classical guitar many years ago.  I foget exactly how old I was but it was definitely before I turned 10.  I really started taking it seriously about the time I turned 15.  At that age, most of my friends had nails chewed down to the flesh on their hand and I had to make a decision.  Whether or not I wanted to keep my nails well maintained or to keep them short.

Nails = Tone

For me, the decision came from the tone I could get.  Individual notes ring out like a bell.  A rich smooth tone is so much easier to get with nails.  Without, the tone is just soft.  It feels almost muted, like it is lacking the higher end frequency.  I was playing a lot of Brazilian and Blues arrangements and these often needed a punchier and more direct sound than classical, baroque or some spanish work.  The greater attack that you can get with nails makes playing with them the only way to get this tone consistently.  The comparison of tone between nails and no nails was night and day.  The nails had to stay.

Another plus for the nails is the control that you have as a player.  The range of tones that you can get by varying the dynamics of your playing is simply not possible without nails.  I found the only way to vary the tone without nails was to shift playing position either closer to or further from the bridge.  Even with this change, the tone was still missing the directness that I could get with my nails.  Playing near the bridge gives a very specific, harsh, tone.  Whilst useful in certain situations (Japanese music for example), it isn’t a good substitute to well groomed nails playing in good position.

What Sort of Nail

For me short nails are the way forward.  No more than 1mm over the edge of the flesh of my finger.  The reason for this is simple physics.  Your nails aren’t rigid and flex when you push down.  The further away from the pivot, in this case where the nail starts to grow out of your finger, the more they flex .  The extra flex results in a loss of control.  Control is everything for me when it comes to playing.  The perfect nail length is the smallest amount of nail you can have and still play the guitar without having the string touch the fleshy pads of your finger tips.

The surface of the nail is as important as the length, probably more so.  It must be as smooth as possible.  The nail is the only part of your finger which touches the vibrating part of the string and is absolutely critical to the tone.  If you have rough edges on your nail, you will have rough edges on the tone.  If you’ve spent a good deal of money on a nice instrument, you don’t want to ruin that sound with scruffy nails.  The nail should slip over the string, no catching.  From a physicist’s point of view this means that the attack profile should be as sharp as possible with a single peak.  Rough nails will mess with this giving you a scratchy tone.  You might as well cut the nails off if you are going to do this, the tone will be better.

The best way I have found to maintain them is to use nail clippers and glass paper.  I am right handed and find it next to impossible to cut my right hand nails with scissors.  Nail clippers are perfect for this.  Don’t worry that they don’t make the smoothest cut, that’s what the glass paper is for.  Ideally you will have 2 or 3 different papers, with different abrasive levels.  Use the most abrasive to shape the nail, getting rid of any of the roughness left by the nail clippers.  Use the 2nd most abrasive to smooth the surface of the nail and finally use the least abrasive to polish the surface.  You should be able to run each nail over your thumb and have it feel like glass.  Once they are this smooth you should begin to notice the difference.

When polishing your nails it is important to only rub in one direction.  The reason for this is that you align the fibers in your nail with each other.  By rubbing back and forth the nails get frayed and less smooth.  Imagine smoothing a carpet with your hand.  If you go one way only it will smooth out nicely but if you rub back and forth, you will never get it smooth.

Remember.  You can’t beat well maintained nails when you play classical guitar.  Whilst every guitarist will have their own preference in terms of length and shape, nails are critical to sounding your best.