Classical Guitarists: Conversations by Jim Tosone

I recently ran across the book "Classical Guitarists: Conversations" by Jim Tosone and was surprised I hadn't heard about it before. It features interviews with many prominent classical guitarists and composers, and they all go into greater depth than one typically finds in an artist interview.

The highlights or me are the interviews with John Williams, David Starobin, Sharon Isbin, and George Crumb, but the entire book is well worth a read.

Here are a few things I picked up from the book that I found interesting:

• George Crumb has written more for the guitar than I realized. When I was in high school, my friend Len introduced me to Crumb's music, and it opened my eyes to a whole world of music I didn't know existed. I think this is a large part of why I am a classical musician today. I am now determined to perform Crumb's "Mundus Canis" someday.
• Many of the artists featured in the book play Thomas Humphrey Millenium guitars (or did at the time of the interview).
• Having ridiculously long fingers, according to Eliot Fisk, is not always an asset when playing guitar. He talks about having to finger some typical open position chords differently because his fingers just get in the way. My thought on this is that we get good by figuring out what works for us, not forcing ourselves into preconceived notions. 

New book by Jean-Francois Desrosby

I just read "Guitarists: Unlock your potential" by Jean-Francois Desrosby. I'm still digesting the information, but it's a very succinct book which looks at guitar technique from a physiological perspective. It did give me some new ideas to think about, but most of what I have gotten from it so far are explanations as to why some things which seem most logical don't work (usually because that logic is based on incomplete or mistaken information).

The main principal of his book is to use each muscle in the manner for which it was designed. A good example is giving the task of shifting positions to the large shoulder and arm muscles, rather than driving it from the hand, so the hand can stay relaxed. You may say, "how can the hand move without the help of the arm and shoulder, anyway?" I suppose it can't, but on the flip side, many guitarists create tension in their hand while shifting when in fact the hand should be able to stay relaxed. The key is to figure out what is actually going on whenever you do something, and remove all the elements that are unnecessary.

Here's a video of Mr. Desrosby:

Martha Masters: Reaching the Next Level

Before beginning my video project in April, I went to Rosewood Guitar in Seattle and told their employee Robert that I was looking for some music I could easily work up and record in a day. It had to be fairly straightforward and, almost more importantly, it needed to not require page turns.

Robert recommended Martha Masters' book "Reaching the Next Level," because it contained many pieces that met that criteria and also offered thoughtful suggestions before each piece.

I bought the book, but I didn't end up using it for my recordings, although I was reminded of the Reginald Smith Brindle pieces by it, for which I already had the sheet music. The music is well-selected, mostly offering pieces which are not likely to be found in other similar books.

Masters offers anecdotes throughout the various topics which I found to be refreshingly candid and honest. They help reinforce the idea that as we study and perform music, we should consider all the available input into consideration and make our decisions thoughtfully.

I found her recommendations for each piece, as well as her suggestions in general to be great advice. Overall, there is more focus on musical issues than technical, although both are covered. I really respect the author's efforts here as often times these things are not covered, or are if they are covered than the surface is barely scratched.

The book is geared towards intermediate players looking to, well, reach the next level although its principals are pretty solid and valuable for players at any level. Realistically, much of it would probably go over the heads of readers who don't have a certain amount of experience under their belts. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, though, because anyone who's open to learning could very well find something useful in it. What it comes down to is that this book fills in some of the gaps left by most other instructional materials available.

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PS: I'm more or less settled in in Tulsa now. I've rebuilt my website and created a new one called Classical Guitar Tulsa which is primarily to advertise my lessons, but I am considering adding a blog to it where I can post info about local classical guitar related events. It's just not yet clear to me how often there are any local classical guitar related events to post about...

The Norton Manual of Music Notation

The ability to read and sight-read music effectively depends on a lot of factors. The symbols on the page are extremely important, of course, but there are a lot of subtle elements that can help clue us in on what's going on when we don't have time to process each symbol individually. Spacing is a big one. A lot of computer-generated scores that I've seen online have poor spacing and it makes them more difficult to read than they should be.

The Norton Manual of Music Notation is a great book on how to write music properly and quickly.  Although its focus is on hand-written music, its principals apply to any western music notation. I recommend all musicians learn to recognize and apply these ideas, through this book or other similar ones, in order to make sure we have quality written input for our music making.

Casals and the Art of Interpretation

I read "Casals and the Art of Interpretation by David Blum around the time I started this blog and have been meaning to write about it ever since. It's a treasure-trove of wisdom about music, and also paints a lively picture of Pablo Casals, sprinkled with quotes and anecdotes that bring to life the character from which the wisdom springs. 

Although a lot of musicianship can be broken down into guidelines to follow, it's the individual that makes them into music.

It's worth noting that Casals' views represent a particular school of thought that I think is not considered universal today. A lot of his recommendations go against what's said Anthony Glise's "Classical Guitar Pedagogy" book, to give an example of a book guitarists will run into which deals with interpretation. I'm not saying either is "the right way" of doing things.

Phrasing

One thing that is highlighted in the book is the importance of the phrasing of musical lines. This comes more naturally to singers and people who play monophonic instruments, but most guitar music involves multiple simultaneous lines and we need to shape those independently.

The typical (and rightly so) advice is to consider these lines individually and sing them out loud. Casals suggests that within each line, the sound should get louder as the notes ascend, and quieter as they descend. This probably doesn't mean that phrases should usually have a wide range of dynamics, but that they sing out in a natural way. 

The downside with guitar music as it is printed is that more often than not, we are not given phrasing slurs and in the clutter of fitting multiple voices on one staff, the phrasing can often appear ambiguous. I used to naively assume that they would follow the bar lines and consequently ended up with music that sounded very flat and dull. Then I learned that phrases often begin before the bar line, and are often longer than a bar.

The best ways to deal with this is to work on your music with an experienced teacher and to listen to a variety of high-level performers playing music and follow along in the score. It doesn't have to be (and shouldn't always be) guitar music. If you're interested in Casals, for example, you could listen to him on archive.org and you can probably find the scores on imslp.org.

Book Review: Effortless Mastery

"The effort it takes for you to perform music equals the distance between you and mastery"
- Kenny Werner, Effortless Mastery.

In Effortless Mastery, Kenny Werner tells the story of his falling in love with music, being overwhelmed and hitting to rock bottom in music school, and how he picked up the pieces and put them together to become the master musician he is today.

He also gives you a clear, but thoroughly humbling, path to developing your own mastery of music.

It also comes with a CD with the author guiding you through four meditations with a veil of reverb and over a backdrop of tinkling piano. This can be really off-putting for some people (certainly for me, at first) but it's an essential part of his method and a very effective one at that.

Think of it as an attitude adjustment which most of us genuinely need. For me, it really helped break the cycle of frustration, to relax and enjoy the process.

Don't base your self-esteem of your music

It's really easy for a lot of us to get frustrated with ourselves when we fail. A lot of us try to play music that's too hard for us, or we want to play faster before our muscles develop the necessary coordination. Sometimes we prepare difficult music inadequately for performances and when the performance don't live up to our expectations, the aftermath can feel really awful.

Werner wants us to free ourselves from our judgment (there's a time and place for judgment, and it's not in the middle of a performance!), expectations, and desires  - especially desire to be great, to improve, to not suck for just a few minutes... and open our ears and accept the sounds we are actually making. From this mental space of humility, honesty, and acceptance (yes, even of mistakes), we can begin to make progress.

Steps to Mastery

He presents a method for focused practicing that I won't describe, because you should really read the book and hear about it first hand. It is a humbling process, but from it, real progress can be made... and it can be applied to anything you work on.

You may be surprised at how fast or slow this progress comes, but you can be sure that it is genuine, and that's the best part. In time, you will be able to rely on yourself to perform your music perfectly, effortlessly, and without thought.

It works

This seems like quite an idealistic path but it is actually pretty realistic. We really can't force yourself to improve any faster than we're ready to, but there are a million obstacles we can set up for ourselves that will slow it down. Effortless Mastery is a simple plan for freeing ourselves of those obstacles.

The ideas in this book are not totally new or unique, but I like the way they are distilled to a simple and clear path. I think that most books in this genre say essentially the same things, but they say them in different ways, and some may resonate better with some readers than others. I will review others that I have read when I get a chance.