The Ida Presti right hand technique for guitar - Alice Artzt - 3/4

In this video from January 2001, internationally acclaimed classic guitartist, Alice Artzt explains and demonstrates the legendary Ida Presti's right hand technique for playing the guitar. Part 3 of 4. Copyright © 2009 - Alice Artzt. For more information or to contact Alice Artzt, she can be reached at: guitartzt@aol.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Alice
• Artzt
• Ida
• Presti
• classical
• guitar
• right
• hand
• technique
• Princeton
• NJ
• New
• Jersey
• instruction
• teaching
• music
• lesson

[Guitartzt]

Do you get tension if you sit in a chair with arms and just have your arm resting on the chair's arm and your hand dangling down totally relaxed? That is the position for playing the guitar as Presti did, and as I do. Far less tension that trying to hold your arm in place in the air. If you feel tension doing what I am advocating, then you are not doing it right. Don't try to twist your wrist - just relax and curve your fingers in a natural curve. Try to watch the video again. Best of luck.

[jovdbo]

intresting way of teaching Alice, I studied with Albert Sundermann in Brussels and I am a self made composer and improviser : jovdbo.spaces.live.com

I learned some intresting techniques with Michel Sadanovsky and Jad Askoul too...

kindest regards, Johan Van Den Bossche

[Guitartzt]

@jovdbo I'm listening to your Grounding Piece now - and like your moment of silence idea. We must do all we can, these days, to try to save the earth. Best etc, Alice

[jovdbo]

why do the best guitarists in the world not use this old Tarrega technique ?

[Guitartzt]

@jovdbo I don't know. I think mostly that teachers don't know it, and don't understand it at all or see the advantages since they weren't taught it. Presti didn't live long enough to get enough of her students using it so that enough of them would become well enough known to get more of their students using it. I am very glad I found out about it and used it - I credit my career to this, in fact. A lot of this is just habit. A pity.

[Guitartzt]

Glad you liked it.

[Cretin321]

surely angling your wrist around so that the opposite side of the a finger nail is in contact with the string creates tension? I've tried what you are doing and I can feel the tension in my arm immediately...

[jovdbo]

Indeed Alice, I have the same feeling !

[hillaroo666]

Great videos, thanks for posting!

[Guitartzt]

I have taught a few such students. Thumbs are very variable, and you just have to experiment, with wrist position/height mostly, to see what works. A few people try bending the thumb's tip joint at each pluck, though I find that problematical. Presti's thumb was quite double jointed and she managed just fine.