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Elasticity is the next level of time and work
I've started learning to play lead guitar and the breakthrough for me - this week, after decades of chord grips - is to recognize that I am bouncing the strings on and off the frets, and on and off the tips of my fingers
I've started learning to play lead guitar and the breakthrough for me - this week, after decades of chord grips - is to recognize that I am bouncing the strings on and off the frets, and on and off the tips of my fingers
I've always considered the point of fretting as altering the functional length of the string, and the action of the guitar (the distance your fingers have to move the string in order to contact the fret) is essentially waste
But now I understand that the action is how the guitar feeds your fretting energy back to you. It's a trampoline's vertical travel. If you put a trampoline mat flat on the floor, even if it is tightly stretched, you won't fly when you jump on it.
You need time and space to take up the elasticity of the mat and springs, or the elasticity of the neck and strings, and let it release. At the bottom of the string's travel is the fret, which on contact emits a sound from the string. At the top is the launch
Removing your finger from the string then produces what's called a pull-off, when the string rings at its full length, called an open string. But there's pull-offs and there's pull-offs. Pull-offs that I used to practice, without an awareness of elasticity, are all over the place
You can add energy to the string at pull-off by moving your finger slightly sideways and scraping the string, which is what I've always done. Or I've discovered you can let the string launch your finger off and if you have allowed it to do so in its own time and wavelength...
...the pull-off note that sounds as a result of the string's own elastic action is more pure, more liquid, more legato, and more musical than the one you place there with muscle.
Then the dance of the fingers and the strings and the frets becomes a beautiful process of catching the string as it rings, bouncing it again off a fret, releasing it to ring and cycling the launch energy back into your hands so your playing continues in a seamless motion
AND of course IT'S THE SAME WITH WORK. The elasticity of the team is a function of the fit between the internal motivations of its members, the emergent motivation of the group, and the evident motivation of the forces guiding it
Guidance with a light touch and with respect for the musical tenor of the team results in an elastic, powerful, liquid production from the team and a sense of launch from the team outwards
