Francisco Tarrega's Estudio Brillante Practice

I have been practicing and trying to polish for performance Francisco Tarrega's guitar composition Estudio Brillante, sometimes known as Study in A. It is a

challenging piece of music. Memorizing it was fairly easy. BUT, the rest of it has been tough. I never dreamed it would be as difficult as it is. It is physically demanding. There are hammer ons & pull offs that require solid technique. Slowly the piece improves. The photos here show how I go about keeping a sort of "Practice Diary" I usually practice a chord change or scale passage or what ever in groups of five or ten. Then I write down that number in hash marks somewhere in the margins or cover of the music along with the date. I usually will do the particular task at hand for 100 repetitions. It is like a body builder who does a series of reps. For instance, I do a chord change 5 or 10 times and stop. Rest a few seconds and do 5 or ten more. Eventually I reach my goal of reps for that part of my practice session. Estudio Brillante has been unbelievable. My notes and record of reps has filled up the back cover and a good deal of the inside cover. Much of my notes would not mean anything to others unless I explained them. The bottom line is that the guitar, at least in my hands, requires constant repetition for me to finally master a phrase, lick, scale passage, chord change or what have you. Estudio Brillante is a long term project. For sure the most difficult piece I have attempted. Why do I do it? Because I love it. The first time I heard it I was smitten by it. I have had the music for over 20 years and only began learning it about 4 years ago. I have had it memorized for a long time, it's just getting it to performance level that has taken so long. For a long, long time my left hand & arm would become fatigued trying to play through it just one. Now I am more relaxed and can get through it 5, 6, maybe 7 times or more before I become that fatigued. Those of you out there who have worked on this compostion know what I mean. Christopher Parkening says the piece is "extremely difficult." I know now that he wasn't kidding.

Today's Practice:

The highlighted section in the above photos shows a segment that I practiced this morning for a total of 100 reps. It isn't difficult, but I am trying to reach a point where I make the chord change / position shift flawlessly and evenly every time, with no clicks, rattles, buzzes or string squeaks. This was "focused practice." You should zero in on something specific such as this when you practice. Slowly but surely it get better, your playing becomes stronger. The following photo is of the back cover that is filled up with my "Practice Diary" notations.

The following photo is a detail of the practice notes I have made in my copy of Tarrega's Estudio Brillante.

The music notation I have written is an exercise I created for the left han. The dates tells me how many times I executed that exercise on that given date. You can see that I worked at it on January 4, 2009,l January 5, 2009, February 2nd 2009. Oh, I also see January n16, 2009. The section of the song that I created ti=his exercise for is still giving me troube, and NO WONDER: I have not been practicing the exercise or the musical passage enough! So you can also see that these notes reminde me of that so I practiced it again on August 19, 2012. And so it goes.

Two More Pix of my Estudio Brillante Music "Diary"