Planting Technique

[cdikland]

Aside from your practice routine, how many of you use the Full Plant technique (as described in Pumping Nylon) for decending arpeggios while actually playing a composition? In otherwords, do you use this technique beyond a RH exercise?

While recovering from a left arm injury, I spent a lot of time practicing RH techniques and in particular the Full Plant. Now that I am back to playing normally again I am finding that (relatively fast) pieces I played with arppegios I can now only play (without planting) at 3/4 the tempo I used to play at. :shock: Without the plant, my RH fingers seem to get "confused" and all tangled up. The problem is that when using the Full plant, I have to cut the tempo to 1/2. So... Do I work on increasing my speed on the full plant or do I try to regain the speed without this technique?

On a side note. About 6 months ago I tried to follow Scott Tenant's nail length recommendations and found them to be ridiculously short. Since practicing nothing but RH exercises over the past several weeks, long nails started to bug the heck out of me. It seemed that every other day I kept filing them back. Now my nails are only slightly longer than Scott's recommended length and I find they are still a bit too long. Guess he must know what he is talking about. :D

[M. Stephenson]

If you like the tone and/or musicality you get with planting, then stick with it.

I am also in the process of modifing my right hand technique. I am using learning thumb reststrokes and I am starting to use free strokes with the fingers when playing runs of notes. The next step is to revise the freestroke motion to be a reststroke - which is a very different reststroke than the "classical" one I learned many years ago. (My instructor plays scales and freely goes from rest to free stroke - the change is physically very subtle, but very audible) These changes are to help me become better at Flamenco - to become more "Nunez".

I have to do both much slower than my old way (1/2 speed or slower), but I like the tone and feel better. I can tell in my spirit that these new ways are better for me.

I estimate that it will take another 6 months to a year to get to the speed and instinct that I had with the old styles - but I think that the effort will be well worth the reward.