September 10th, 2007 Karl
The magical sound of the classical guitar is unlike anything else in the world of music, and I believe it is the instrument’s greatest strength. The classical guitar is not a loud instrument, the repertoire is of questionable compositional quality when compared to works written for other instruments or ensembles, it is difficult to play fast, and does not have a terribly strong public profile. Yet, people are drawn to the instrument in an almost religious way (a friend of mine once said “there are very few casual classical guitarists”). I think that it’s because of that incredible sound.
Because of this, the development of tone should be the highest priority of every guitar student. It is often approached separately, or put aside for more mundane considerations of fingering, technique, etc. If your tone is unattractive, your playing will probably not be enjoyable no matter how well-executed it is.
Of course, decent right hand mechanics, good nail shape and surface, and a quality instrument are all important factors in producing a good sound. However, there are two important considerations which might be even more important.
First of all, students must listen to other guitarists who play with good sound so that they can identify how the instrument should sound. What constitutes a good tone can be very subjective, and everyone should follow what they find pleasing. What is important is that you are feeding your ear-mind good “nutrition.”
In addition, in the practice room we need to be intolerant of anything but our best sound. If we only accept good tone in our practice, we condition our hands to produce only that which our ear-mind finds pleasing. Don’t practice on worn-out strings, with the guitar out of tune, or with bad-sounding fingernails. Don’t feed your ear-mind junk food.
Play confidently with big sound and good projection. Guitar students often make the mistaken assumption that if they can hear what they are playing, then the sound is projecting. The guitar is not a loud instrument, but as Segovia said “it is far.” If you cannot hear the sound coming back to you as an echo or reverberation, chances are that you are not getting enough energy into the string to project properly. You should also be able to feel the instrument vibrating in your left hand and at any place where it touches your body. Playing in a very resonant space from time to time can inspire you to find a similar sound when you are in a drier room. The guitar has a beautiful voice – let it sing!
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September 9th, 2007 Karl
Music is built of three primary elements. We have melody: the horizontal or linear aspect; the part we whistle, sing, or hum; the tune. It is presented one pitch at a time. We have harmony: the vertical or simultaneous aspect; notes in combination; the accompaniment. It is presented by placing pitches together, whether in chords or in counterpoint. Finally, there is rhythm: how musical events happen in time. Rhythm concerns itself with pulses and durations – when things happen, and how long they last. When learning a new piece of music, we spend much of our time concerning ourselves with the two elements based on pitch, trying to always play the correct notes, stopping when we miss one, playing it again to “fix” it. Very often, we put rhythmic accuracy last, and concern ourselves with that only after we’re sure we’ve learned all the correct notes, almost as if it were optional.
This is a backwards way to work. Out of the three primary elements of music, rhythm is the most important. Tap the rhythm of a familiar tune (Jingle Bells, Happy Birthday, Mary Had a Little Lamb, etc.) out on your desk. Then hum the same tune with distorted rhythms. Which is more recognizable to you? Keep in mind there is plenty of music with neither melody nor harmony, but there is no such thing as music without rhythm. Pitch is concerned with how the music sounds, and how it may be organized in ways that are intellectually satisfying, but rhythm has to do with how the music feels. The development of strong rhythmic skills should be at the forefront of every guitarist’s work.
Rhythm consists broadly of two components. There is pulse, which is organized into meter, and then there are rhythms expressed around that regularly-occurring pulse. The sensation of pulse is an interesting phenomenon that happens somewhere deep inside the physical body. We like the sensation of a regular beat. From a performer’s point of view, pulse may be seen as the framework or underlying structure over which the music is draped. Rhythmic devices that generate interest (silence, syncopation, fast divisions) are only meaningful when compared to a solid, unwavering pulse.
The second component has to do with how musical events are placed in relation to pulse. These are the specific rhythms, which are written down using a proportional system of meters and durations. We tend to think of a quarter note as a duration that receives one beat. This depends on the meter, or time signature. In actuality, meter and rhythms have to do with organizing beats into groups of two’s and three’s and dividing them into two’s and three’s. That’s all there is. A group of four sixteenth notes is really just two groups of two. Odd-numbered or asymmetrical meters and rhythms are the same. 5/8 is a group of two and a group of three eighth notes (or a group of three and a group of two), and a septuplet may be thought of as a group of three and two groups of two.
Try some of these exercises for strengthening your rhythmic skills. These can be done with a metronome, or while listening to music that feels good to you. (You might not want your neighbors to watch some of these.)
1) Shake an empty can filled with pebbles (or anything else that will make a shaker-type sound) in time with the pulse. Experiment with how you can play “around” the pulse by using a slower or sharper motion. If you get off of the pulse, can you tell whether your tendency is to drag or rush?
2) Step in time with a pulse and clap rhythms against it. Use rhythms in a piece you are working on (or the piece you are listening to), or try clapping divisions of a pulse. Can you go smoothly from 2’s to 3’s or 3’s to 4’s?
3) Use the large muscles in your legs, arms and back to understand pulse with a deep physical knowing. Stretch your arms towards the ceiling on one beat, then on the next beat swing them behind you, bending over at the waist and bending your knees, then swing back up again. If the pulse is too fast, swing on every two beats.
4) Upbeats and cross-rhythms are very good for developing a fine sense of pulse awareness. Set the metronome to 60 and try clapping exactly halfway between each pulse. Increase the metronome speed until you can’t do this accurately anymore. For cross rhythms, set the metronome to 120 and try clapping on every other click. Switch to every third click, and try to go back and forth between the two. (“I want to Live in um-Eh-Ri-Ca” from West Side Story)
As you work on a new piece of music, strive to understand rhythm first, then play the pitches in the rhythms you have learned accurately.
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September 8th, 2007 Karl
When I was a freshman in college, I went with a group of fellow guitar students to see Fred Hand perform a concert. He held the instrument on his right leg, his left hand had so much extraneous movement that it looked like an anxious spider, and he played most of his scales with his right hand index finger. He moved around wildly, made strange faces, and talked alot. At that time, I was obsessed with building the perfect technique: sitting in an absolutely perfect manner, holding my hands in the most efficient position possible, moving precisely from the correct joints and in the correct direction, and eradicating every tiny bit of tension from my body. As I was listening to the concert, I felt guilty for enjoying his playing so much because I could not condone the way he played. His technique looked horrible to me; it was contrary to everything I had been taught. I thought he was doing it all wrong. It was as if I wasn’t even listening to or feeling what was he was doing. I might as well have been deaf.
When we’re building our technique, we often use the words “right” or “correct” to describe a certain way of sitting, positioning, or moving. I’m not sure that there is a wrong way to play guitar, and I’m absolutely certain that there is more than one right way. My favorite players all look as if they are using vastly different technique. I’m assuming that they might even have different (maybe even contradictory) ideas about how to use the mechanism of the body to play guitar. They are all incredible virtuosos and have great tone. Who is right?
The other point that comes to mind when I think about these things is that I’ve played with many non-classical musicians, and I’ve never heard any of them talk about their technique, much less a right or wrong way to play. Folk musicians in particular seem to really be immune to this way of thinking. They don’t really talk much about how to play; they just play. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.
When thinking about or working on your technique, don’t lose sight of the object of your work: to play music. Find a way to achieve what you are trying to hear and feel that works for you. Your teacher’s (or anyone else’s) ideas can be helpful to you, if you understand them and they work for you. If an idea doesn’t make sense, or if it cannot be satisfactorily explained, or if it just doesn’t work for you, then find one that does.
I once heard a great musician say, “technique is whatever it takes to get the job done.” Keep your focus on the job of playing music that is beautiful, exciting, expressive, and fun.
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September 7th, 2007 Karl
Improvising musicians often talk about playing what they hear, or about trying to play what they would sing. When a musician does this, he steps away from the sometimes restrictive world of the intellect, the world of words, the world of analysis. He involves his innate sense of musicianship in the process.
We’ve all been hearing music since we were children. We have a deeply innate, almost intuitive sense of the language of our musical culture, the same way we have an understanding of the language we speak. However we often step away from this understanding through the processes we undertake to become trained. We learn how to think about music in terms of right and wrong ways to play, we spend alot of time learning how to read printed music, we analyze how we hold the instrument, how we move our hands, what kind of strings to use, how long our nails should be, what kind of instrument is best, etc. A balanced approach takes all of these very important considerations in stride and then puts the conclusions drawn there in an alliance with the deeper concerns of how the language of music is spoken.
When approaching a new piece of music, when working on a trouble spot in a familiar piece, when trying to dust off a piece from the past, or when trying to memorize, the first step should always be in the hearing. Step back from the trying to scratch the music out from what’s on the page.
Here’s a step-by-step:
1) Break the music apart into the largest bit that you can fully comprehend, intellectually, technically, and musically. Sometimes this is a few phrases, sometimes it’s a few measures, sometimes it’s a few notes. Be honest with yourself, be patient, and choose a smaller bit.
2) Describe the music as specifically as you can, as many different ways as you can. For example: “It’s part of the introduction, and there’s this descending bass line and it ends on this chord that is the same fingering as the first chord, but is only the bottom four strings. There’s a decrescendo, and I have to drop my left elbow to reach that c# on the third beat. It sounds dark and brooding, and really sets a mood of an almost uncomfortable kind of anticipation.”
3) Imagine how it would sound if you played the passage perfectly. This is the most important step. Use a recording to help you, if necessary, or have your teacher or another student play the passage for you. Don’t even think about playing until you have a crystal clear, loud mental-sound-image of the passage.
4) Sing it, directing your attention to how the music feels in your body. Don’t worry about how accurately you sing the pitches or how appealing (or not!) your voice sounds. Get the energy right. Sing all of the parts separately, especially if it’s contrapuntal. It takes more energy than you think to make music. If you sing hesitantly with no movement or energy, you will play the same way.
5) After you do steps 1-4 a few more times, and then a few more, play. Don’t let yourself play anything that you can’t hear.
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September 6th, 2007 Karl
All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time…
- Johann Sebastian Bach
A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved.
-Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Sometimes we hear a piece of music played perfectly, no dropped or stuttered notes, all articulation and dynamic markings recreated to the letter, all rhythms dead on – no extraneous or unpleasant sounds. We spend a good amount of practice time trying very hard to achieve this kind of performance, and most of us never do it.
Sometimes we hear a piece of music played with some flubs, maybe even memory slips or what I like to call “creative improvisation,” yet the presentation is given with such life and conviction that the imperfections don’t distract from the effectiveness of the performance.
Playing accurately is important. For a piece of music to be understood by a listener, it must be presented clearly. Rhythmic accuracy, especially, is very important in this matter. However, there is often too heavy a focus on this in our work, with the consequence that we forget that there is this other mysterious element, which is what often attracts us to the art of music in the first place. The goal is to balance the intellectual side of playing with the often-neglected intuitive side.
There is an emotional or internal component to music. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately!), it is impossible to clearly describe, which makes it more difficult to approach than playing the right notes at the right time. Also, the process by which this takes place is too complex and intense to reduce to the belief that a piece of music represents a single type of feeling (happy, sad, etc.), and that this feeling is conveyed exactly from performer to listener, as if the music were some sort of telephone wire. I think that any emotional response evoked within the performer is enough to imbue a performance with a dimension of emotional content, regardless of any display of technical prowess.
As an exercise, take a piece of music that you play and imagine that it is the soundtrack to a movie you are watching in your mind. Who are the characters? What are they doing? What do the settings look like, and what of the atmosphere, lighting, pace, etc? Be as specific as you can and describe as an intense level of detail as you can. Watch the movie over and over in your mind as you play the piece. Keep your focus on how the music feels, and practice this as much as you do getting the right notes at the right time.
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