The Nervous System

Guitar playing is fundamentally a process governed by the nervous system and subconscious mind.

You hardly need any muscle development to play the guitar. As lightly as you can, fret a note, and as lightly as you can, pick the string. While there are situations requiring serious hand and grip strength, we players can often get by using less force, fewer muscles. Instead of muscles, what we need are precise firings of nerves, telling muscles to contract and then relax at exactly the right time and in the right proportion.

If playing is about the central nervous system functioning at a high level, then practicing is about encouraging and guiding the organization and ongoing refinement of the central nervous system. This happens outside of the conscious mind – you can’t control the myriad of adjustments your body is making for even the simplest movements.

Practicing … is mainly practicing of the central nervous system, whether we are aware of it or not. Misconceptions of the past have led to inefficient practicing, unproductive expenditure of time, and often deplorable results. Kochevitsky, “The Art of Piano Playing: A Scientific Approach”

For improvement to happen, your practice sessions need to send a clear message to your nervous system about what you’re trying to accomplish. You can clearly say, “I want to do this,” and can also try to mimic the motions used by other players, but then your subconscious and reflexes take over. You must sit back and carefully observe what’s happening, listening to the quality of the tone you’re getting, and observing any accumulated physical tension or stiffness which might indicate a problem, consciously making mindful adjustments if necessary. The conscious mind can also help push you along – “faster, faster, easier, easier.”

Excitation and inhibition

When you play guitar, your brain sends nerve impulses to muscles to contract at precise times. Just as important as this contraction is the cessation of contraction when the required movement is complete, so the muscle is ready for the next impulse. If a muscle doesn’t completely relax, residual tension can accumulate.

In addition to the excitation of the muscles, there is a process called inhibition, which suppresses superfluous (or even harmful) excitation. Inhibition is just as important as excitation, as both of these basic processes of nervous activity must be precisely balanced for fast and smooth technique. It’s also harder to train. Some of the exercises given in Part III - Practice Techniques specifically target inhibitory processes, and might be interesting for you to try, if you’re a more advanced guitarist.

Make it fun

Boring practice material is boring. Sometimes the physical thrill of picking atonal chromatic exercises is fun for a while, but depending on your taste, it can get old fast.

“The process of coupling two nervous points, of laying a new neural path, cannot take place if we are in a state of fatigue or drowsiness or if our mind is not free from irrelevant activity.”

That’s a fancy way of saying “don’t bore yourself.” If you have to use exercises, base them on your repertoire: tunes, licks, and solos. Make them musical, make them something you can use.

(Some tout the idea of practicing while watching TV or similar. I’ve never gotten any real value out of that, maybe you do, give it a shot. Keep in mind that it’s a good idea to periodically observe your playing though. It’s easy to pick up bad technique unnoticed.)

Rest

Once you’ve practiced a section, and a clear message has been given to the subconscious mind and nervous system about what you’re aiming for, effectively your practice of that particular skill or passage is done!

Your nervous system takes time to synthesize all of the information given to it, and to adapt to the new stresses by forming or strengthening nerve pathways and connections in the brain. That synthesis happens during rest, and not during practicing. A good night’s sleep is often the best, but you may even find that you can practice something hard for 5 to 10 minutes, take several hours’ break, and then come back to it.

Sometimes excessive industry and strenuous practicing can result in failure. The more persistently one tries, the worse the results. Fatigue of the central nervous system, which is not noticed by the player, is the reason for this failure. When in despair he abandons his efforts and later resumes his work, he notices that many, if not all, obstacles are miraculously gone. Fatigue is alleviated by rest. With a fresh start, the results of previous practicing show themselves clearly. Kochevitsky, “The Art of Piano Playing: a Scientific Approach

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I’ll close this with another quote about piano practice, which I feel is relevant:

Since every movement is initiated in the central nervous system, practicing is, first and foremost, a psychic process, the working over of accumulated bodily experiences and the adjustment to a definite purpose. … The kind, degree and dimension of this adjustment are always regulated by the central nervous system. … We do not know which group of muscles participates in this or that movement. Even if we did, this knowledge would not help us since we cannot command our muscles consciously and directly. The choice of necessary muscles takes place unconsciously, but nonetheless surely, and accomplishes the exclusion of all unsuitable interfering muscles. Beginning practice starts with too much expenditure of force. The elimination of too much muscle action is the real basis for developing agility. As a result of practicing, we learn to make the fluent, sure and fast movement which uses exactly as much muscle force as is needed for a given purpose. Dr. Friedrich Adolph Steinhausen, “The Physiological Misconceptions and Reorganization of Piano Technique”