Twister

Twister for Christ's sake. I never played it. Or maybe I did (and now I'm thinking about it, I have a vague very unpleasant recollection of an incident aged about 8 at a birthday party, but I'm going to suppress that quickly). It was one slip away from all sorts of unholy trouble. And even when it was played by the rules, who wants to bump & grind with your drunk Auntie at Christmas. You put your leg just here and I'll put my arm round there... And so on. It's just not right. Put th telly for sake and let Bond show us how it's done. So Twister: I never wanted to be there. And I don't want to go back.

Which is why last night's lesson took a very peculiar turn late on.

It has seemed to be going pretty well. Arpeggios: very good. Bulerias, mostly good, few fumbles on the newer falsettos but that's forgivable. Strong compas. That's the main thing. (Of course, when I say strong compas I don't mean the greatest dancers of the form where tapping their feet: I just mean, for a learner, it was solid, consistent, and got to 12. )

As ever, we go back over a fre bits. Play a slur there. Make sure the pull off is clean. You don't have to tap the space but if it helps you, keep it for now

Then we move onto the new falsetto. In terms of right hand technique, it very familiar; in fact, it's the same as in falsetto 3: thumb played through the 5th, rest on the 4th for a beat then play a strum across all strings before strumming back up with the back of the thumb nail. To begin with it takes some getting used to, especially maintaining control in the upstroke but any guitar player will get it pretty quickly. Even I did.

But the left hand...what the bejeesus was that?! He plays again. No. I can't make it out. Now, there is a theory in psychology called cognitive dissonance. It's got nothing to do with musical dissonance and everything to do with the way or human brain reacts to incredible circumstances: if it doesn’t fit with our understanding of how the world works, even when we .have seen it with our own two eyes, we try to discount it.

I was going through my guitar cognitive dissonance. I had seen a man put his finger from his left hand on a fretboard in a way that did not compute. It broke all rules of physics, bio-mechanics and, like Twister, decency. I’m going to try to draw it.

E--0

B--3

G--3

D--0

A--4

E—0

You are probably looking at that and thinking: so what?

But bear in mind that it’s part of a complicated falsetto. And it’s being played very fast. And most importantly of all: you need to have made a pact with the devil so you can play it with your forth finger on D (or B3 if you can only follow tab); 3^rd finger on Bb (G3) and 2^nd finger on Db (A4). Yes, you heard me right: 2^nd finger on Db. That means putting your 2^nd finger ahead of your 3^rd & 4^th. Which really means putting it where your non-existent 5^th finger would go. WTF!!! It’s so unnatural that in the dark ages, people would have screamed witch and bonfires would have been lit/ropes tie in that circular shape..

I’ve tried to play it tonight. It can’t be done. I’ll spend the next two weeks trying to prove to teacher that it can be done. I’ll fail. And I’ll make no in-roads into the rest of my playing.

A toast: to futility.