Meeting with guitars

26 December 2008
Tychy, Poland

GUITAR MEETING NOTES:

Present: Marcin & Jacek

We meet in Marcin's room. Begin few minutes after 15 o'clock with the Practice of Doing Nothing.

Tuning.

PRIMARIES:

The metronome is set at 75 BPM. Right hand work:

Whole notes.

Half notes, also played with the 'up-stroke'.

Quarter notes. We play 4 'downstroke' notes on the downbeat followed by 4 'upstroke' notes on the upbeat. There are 8 notes, and 4th and 8th are eighth notes which gives 7 bars in total. We work on discharging this while counting 4 bars of 7. Then we count in 3. A challenging exercise in the Division of Attention indeed.

Half note triplets, 8th notes, 8th notes triplets & 16th notes.

We alternate playing 4 bars of this and 4 bars when leaving out the fourth note in the bar. Count of 4.

Then we leave out every 6th note, which with counting with metronome (4 bars of 3) results in another DoA exercise - 3 against 2. Some notes are added, and the challenge increases, but it also develops into something more musical.

After this we work on the preparatory Third Relation exercise for the right hand. At one point we aim to play it more gently, doing only what is necessary, and the tone/sound noticeably improves. It would be good to have the guitar instructor here to check our hands out! (i.e.release...) While this is unavailable we just have to keep going and observing. 8th notes are gradually extended to 16th notes. We add the chord and practice them together, also with the mirrors.

This is gradully approaching the introduction of the TR, but at one point there's some misunderstanding, and thinking 'kicks in'. Too much talking, something is gone, let go of it.

20 minutes break.

REPERTOIRE:

ASTURIAS

Work on the main arpeggio. Half speed, normal speed.

THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE

After playing the piece through we focus on the last 3 bars of 5 and approach it as a Quality Exercise.

28 BARS (aka TREMOLO)

We review the form, practice the piece twice with the metronome. Then we play it.

At the end there's a spontaneous call to pause & send the best wishes to those who most need it.

Completion at 18.35. A good session. We worked hard, but also had some laugh.