Another right-hand question... overcoming the yips

[terzinator]

This sounds like a total beginner question, but it's something I've wrestled with for the five years I've been playing mandolin.

It's the constant battle to keep my picking-hand wrist motion as smooth as possible.

If I just pick the string open, or without trying to really fret anything and make music, my right-wrist is nice and smooth. I can play fast or slow without jerky motion. Elbow is quiet, arm is comfortable, relaxed, all happy happy.

But when I try to fret, and play a melody or scale or whatever, my right wrist gets jerky, and my elbow flies all over town.

I'll stand in front of a mirror and watch my arm to see if it's just a feeling. But it's visibly obvious as well. Smooth as silk until I try to play something.

So I wind up compensating by planting; or playing more from the elbow, keeping the wrist somewhat rigid. I get by, but it's so frustrating.

Now, some pro players do this anyway, play more from the elbow, or plant, or whatever. But I look at Mike Marshall or Tim O'Brien (Tim's an extreme example), who keep that arm quiet, and just play from what looks like the wrist. This seems way more natural to me, but getting there has been a challenge.

It's like my picking hand can't trust my fretting hand to find the notes in sync, so the know-it-all right hand thinks it has to be in control and slow down or speed up to help the stupid fretting hand find its way.

It's kind of like the yips in golf. Practice putts, no problem. But when you're trying to get the ball in the hole, your brain realizes "holy crap, this really matters now!" and your hand/wrist/arm gets a tremor and you wind up trying to control things, and it all goes to hell.

So, who struggles with this, too? And what, if anything, have you found (exercise, drill, meditative state, class 3 narcotic) that helps you get over this maddening disease?

I'll hang up and listen.

[AlanN]

The ol' right hand...sometimes, you just want to cut it off and start over again.

Butch Baldassari had a good exercise. Hold the mandolin neck with left hand as you would, but don't fret anything. Nice and relaxed. Play alternating down up on the G string, not too fast, but steady. Then, add the D string to the up and down, so both G and D are sounding. Then add the A, then the E. Now, all four are sounding (what a racket). Then, back off the E, then the A, then the D, you are now left with the G alone. Repeat as long as you (and loved ones) can stand it.

Works wonders for the wrist, picking motion. And adding fretted notes should not be a problem.

[Beanzy]

I wonder if the act of fretting fixes the mandolin position too firmly and your normal open string tremolo relies on movement to ride the strings. Could it be locking down the mandolin so you're snagging or hooking up on the more fixed string position with the left hand securing the neck?

An exercise I sometimes use to get myself to relax into tremolo is to point the mandolin neck well out in front of me, almost like you're spraying the room with a machine gun. Then strumming and tremoloing across the strings in this slightly weird position seems to really loosen up my playing. It might be because the hand movement is almost straight out in front with a more open elbow joint that it's harder to tighten up than when the mandolin is more across the body.

May be worth a go anyway.

[terzinator]

The ol' right hand...sometimes, you just want to cut it off and start over again.

Butch Baldassari had a good exercise. Hold the mandolin neck with left hand as you would, but don't fret anything. Nice and relaxed. Play alternating down up on the G string, not too fast, but steady. Then, add the D string to the up and down, so both G and D are sounding. Then add the A, then the E. Now, all four are sounding (what a racket). Then, back off the E, then the A, then the D, you are now left with the G alone. Repeat as long as you (and loved ones) can stand it.

Works wonders for the wrist, picking motion. And adding fretted notes should not be a problem.

Believe me, I've done that. Various and assorted picking patterns, as well. I can even add fretted notes while I tremolo/pick. I can even do a scale, if I don't care when the notes change (like, for example, many pick strokes between each fretted note).

However, if I try to have those notes actually be musical or melodic or, say, one note per pick stroke, then those fretted notes ARE a problem!

I can play, I swear, but it would be a lot more fun if I could get over this mental/physical hurdle!

[terzinator]

I wonder if the act of fretting fixes the mandolin position too firmly and your normal open string tremolo relies on movement to ride the strings. Could it be locking down the mandolin so you're snagging or hooking up on the more fixed string position with the left hand securing the neck?

An exercise I sometimes use to get myself to relax into tremolo is to point the mandolin neck well out in front of me, almost like you're spraying the room with a machine gun. Then strumming and tremoloing across the strings in this slightly weird position seems to really loosen up my playing. It might be because the hand movement is almost straight out in front with a more open elbow joint that it's harder to tighten up than when the mandolin is more across the body.

May be worth a go anyway.

There might be some method in this.

I know that when I'm working on a golf shot or a putt or whatever, I'll sometimes contort my stance into a completely unnatural position. Like, put my back to the target, and try to make the shot. It so completely baffles the brain that it doesn't know what to do. It abandons its desire to control the body, and just says "This is totally on you, mate, sink or swim. Good luck."

It'll make my jam partners think I'm even more crazy than I am, but I like keeping them on edge, too.

Good stuff. Keep it coming!

[Bertram Henze]

I used to get a terrible right hand tremor sometimes when in a performance situation, especially when doing fingerstyle (playing OM). It is kind of funny when your fingers start hitting strings at random because your hand is shaking. Pinky planting didn't help at all. In the end, I was able to limit the effect by altering my right arm attitude, rather coming from the tailpiece than from an angle above and, most important, firmly leaning on the OM body. I think that I thereby relieved the wrist from having to carry the weight of the arm (sounds silly, I know, the wrist may have just imagined it).

Since this happens to you when you start to fret - what is your left hand doing when you play open? Is it holding the neck in a constant position? And might the right hand be afraid that the left might move the neck out of position when fretting? You should be able to confirm that or rule it out by fixing the neck while playing, e.g. pressing the headstock into a cushion.

[Ky Slim]

Just be the ball, be the ball, be the ball. You're not being the ball Danny. -Ty Webb

Here is an idea. Maybe try playing something with your left hand only. I'm not joking and I'm not implying a bunch of hammers and pulls to create sound. Play a few melodies without picking them at all. Then mix it up. Pick every other phrase or every other note.

[SincereCorgi]

Does this still happen if you try to play something really, really easy? There's a part in Creative Practicing for Jazz Musicians where the author describes an 'Effortless Mastery' kind of exercise where his teacher made him play progressively easier stuff until he could finally play something without any tension or effort (I think it ends up being a simply five-note scale of something). That could be a way to approach this, just pick dead easy stuff and try to carry the relaxed mindset forward.

I think it might also be an issue of the strings feeling different when they're fretted than they do when they're open. Maybe practice your open string exercises over a chord shape or something?

[Ivan Kelsall]

I've often though that that kind of thing happens when we 'over concentrate'. We're into 'thinking' about what we're doing more than doing it & it's a vicious circle.We know we make errors,so we think about not making errors,so we make even more errors. It's akin to the 'self defeating proposition' - "don't think of the White horse". That very though entails thinking of the White horse'.
Back when i began playing banjo that used to happen to me all the time,especially when playing in front of an audience. What helped me most of all was learning to relax mentally & not caring too much if i made a mistake. It turned out that relaxing helped me make fewer mistakes, simply because i was playing rather than 'thinking about my playing' . Learning to relax is something that only doing it can bring about,but once you've cracked it,the world's your Lobster,
Ivan

[Mike Bunting]

Further, there is an old saying I've heard from veteran pros, "If you think, you stink."

[Bertram Henze]

Indeed, thinking is the path to the dark side of any performance. Trust in the force of what you've practised.

But yips is a deeper effect - somehow your body has learned that "whenever I do this, there is tension and menace around me, therefore I take evasive action". Golf players have been known to overcome this only by learning a completely different technique for doing that putting or whatever goes wrong - it's rebooting the brain.

[DavidKOS]

It's like my picking hand can't trust my fretting hand to find the notes in sync, so the know-it-all right hand thinks it has to be in control and slow down or speed up to help the stupid fretting hand find its way.

The thing is, the "know-it-all" right hand is the one that needs to know it all, as the left hand is the mechanic which makes the notes possible, but the right hand is the artist that makes the music itself, as it controls phrasing, articulation and dynamics.

So the right hand does need to be in control of the fretting hand, and perhaps one way around this is to let he right hand lead, let the left hand fingers catch up, so to speak.

So maybe paying less attention to the right hand and wrist and elbow and working on co-ordinating the left hand fingerings with the right hand's picking patterns may offer some success.

Cheers.

[terzinator]

Great responses, many thanks.

One thing I've been trying is to keep the right hand chugging along at a consistent pace. This means playing DOWN strokes on the eighth notes, with UP strokes on the sixteenth notes.

Not saying I'm trying to be rigid about this, but in practice, it's helping a TON with keeping that right hand loose.

Came across this Tim O'Brien vid on practicing scales and arpeggios. He's exclusively playing DOWN strokes here. Not a single UP stroke in the whole video.