Accuracy

Developing accuracy, touch and speed will require you to have a solid handle on your focused awareness skills. A Zen practitioner would refer to what we are doing here as mindfullness. Zen practices such as archery and calligraphy are simply techniques used to focus the mind, let's see if we can play some Zen guitar.

The overriding relationship here is between you and that piece of wood. You need to connect to it in the same way that the archer connects to his her bow. The three most important factors in martial arts are equally applicable to guitar players.

Posture
Technique
Application

Call on everything you've learned from the program up until now to allow yourself to be relaxed and confident as you approach your instrument. Try to forget about your hands or your wrists, you've got that right already. Equally don't focus on your instrument, there's not a lot you can do about it right now either. Focus instead on the space in between, literally the three dimensional space between you and your guitar.

As you take your left hand to fret a note that space will close until you make physical contact and the string is pushing back up at you.
Now with your note fretted bring your right hand to the guitar and play a note. Feel the string push back at you as you strike it.
What does your left finger feel as the string vibrates?

Play a different note with the same level of intention. This won't pose any technical difficulties, it may however challenge your patience, it may seem at first like you're achieving nothing, do it anyway, you have nothing to lose. The benefits from these exercise creep up on you. While you may feel that you're achieving nothing, you're developing your relationship with your instrument, it's a difficult thing to measure but it will show itself in your playing. Carry on.

Now play two notes, repeat them over and over at a constant tempo. Fast, slow wherever. Use a metronome if you feel you need to but try without one, trust your innate sense of time. It may not be perfect but this will certainly improve it. Vary your right hand hand attack. Play softly, then loudly, then vary it. It is important to be able to play hard and loud with your right hand while keeping your left hand soft.

Scales

Scales are often practiced to a metronome to get both left and right hands in perfect sync. Try playing your scales using the approach described earlier without a metronome. Instead of relying on the click listen to your body, when everything is working together your two hands will sync.

Timing is an important part of developing accuracy. Whether your playing 16th notes at 160bpm or keeping time as an accompanist you still need to rely on your inner sense of time and it's something that all musicians need to develop. Plying scales with this level of intention and without a metronome will help you develop yours.

Speed

The martial arts teach us to achieve power and speed with technique rather than strength. The essence of which is the ability to redirect opposing forces back to where they came from, so that the harder your opponent pushes you the more force you have to send back to them.

To play fast we need a strong right hand and a quick, accurate, responsive left hand. Try this exercise

• Return to your chong stance. Check that your feet are parallel, knees slightly bent, your legs are stable, pelvis and upper body relaxed.
• With your arms in this position focus on your hands, in qigong practice we are able to move the qi in a circuit from one hand to the other.
• This is not as difficult as it may seem at first. Without actually moving, be aware of your right hand pushing and your left hand receiving. As the left hand yields notice any changes in posture or overall awareness.

Once you think you've got the hang of that take your guitar.

Play a note with a strong right hand attack, as you do push that note up the string to your left hand.
• Allow your left hand to be soft so that the energy from the right hand attack moves it onto the next note.

This may take some time to perfect but if you've worked hard on the tai chi and focused awareness exercises you'll be getting some benefit from this exercise, even if you don't notice it at first. Here are a few more tips with this more advanced exercise.

• Keep you right hand relaxed so that as you strike the string the movement is simply pouring out of your hand, don't push against the string.
• Your left hand should be open and your arm soft allowing the impulse you created in the right hand to be taken up by the left.
• Start with two note phrases, then three, 4, 5 etc up to 2 octaves