“Music is a product of the behavior of human groups, whether formal or informal: it is humanly organized sound.”
-John Blacking, in How Musical Is Man?

Composer/guitarist James Lentini writes music for orchestra, wind symphony, various chamber ensembles, and guitar. This piece is one of a set he wrote for the pedagogue Charles Postlewate’s anthology of pieces for all five right hand fingers. A Song for Spring is an attractive, little piece. If you like what you hear, James has an album of guitar music for sale

Connect with James: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube

Did you enjoy this post? Check out Composer Profile: Ralf Bauer .

Real discipline is knowing when to stop. It’s knowing when working on a bigger chunk of music is not helpful–real discipline is having the mental fortitude and focus to break a hard passage down into even smaller sections. Real discipline is only working on one of those sections until it’s perfect, resisting the urge go on and keep up the rhythmic flow. It’s listening to your body and knowing when your hands and head need a break.

Real discipline is also knowing what level of repertoire is appropriate for you and, for the most part, sticking to it. Sure, play some challenging pieces, but try to balance those with pieces well within your skill level.

Real discipline is hard.

Did you enjoy this post? Check out About the Left Hand .

Part One

• How Michael got started on the guitar
• When he started playing classical guitar and how fingerstyle came into the picture
• How some of the fingerstyle stuff Michael has done carried over into his original compositions

Part Two

• Michael explains how fingerstyle influenced his classical guitar playing
• What Michael does in a typical concert program
• About his recordings

Part Three

• How classical guitar has changed since Michael’s days as a student
• About the infamous Segovia master class

Part Four

• Tips and thoughts for guitarists

Did you enjoy this post? Check out An Interview with Scott Kritzer- part 1 .

“Intelligent intuition is the result of deliberate practice.”
-Jonah Lehrer, in How We Decide

I was looking through some videos of concerts at Classical Guitar Retreat, and stumbled upon this video with Amanda Cook. It features two pieces composed by William Lovelady.

Did you enjoy this post? Check out Monday Motivation: New Year Edition .

Methods

Most of you work with methods to start with. I personally use the Mel Bay Classical Guitar Method by Stanley Yates. Why? He was my teacher, and after a lot of discussion in pedagogy class it became very clear to me he knows what’s going on. I’ve also had more success using his method than using others (Parkening, Noad, etc.). My only critique of this method is that it’s not strong on notation reading development and may required some supplementary material.

If you’re looking for sight reading material or something to help you learn to read music, just about any method will work.

Other Methods

• The Carcassi Method is very good. It takes the approach of many other instrumental methods and progresses by key. All the music relatively good, and great for beginners. There has been some modern translations of the Carcassi method, but if you’re just in it for the music (and not the text), use the free stuff online.
• Giuliani’s Opus 1 contains many exercises. This is the same work from which the 120 right hand studies are extracted.
• Aguado’s new method is also a great source of later 19C music. I like Aguado’s music because it’s chromatically surprising and interesting. Even the easy studies. There’s a lot of text, but more music towards the end.
• The Julio Sagreras Guitar Lessons books are also very popular. I don’t have a ton of personal experience with these, but I do know quite a few teachers who use them.

Repertoire

• Graded Repertoire for Guitar (books 1 and 2) by Stanley Yates are unique in the modern guitar rep book world: Dr. Yates worked with other publishing companies to include modern music. That’s a great selling point. If you play gigs, these books are sight readable and have attractive music, well worth the cost (even for advanced players).
• Estudios Sencilos by Leo Brouwer. A great collection of studies that are definitely Brouwer-esque. The linked books contains all 20 (and a bunch more Brouwer guitar works).
• 25 Etudes Esquisses by Gerald Garcia. A lot like Brouwer, but a bit more out there. Still fun to play and attractive.
• Carcassi: Etudes, Op. 60. The standard collection of 19C etudes. Please use a facsimile edition, as many modern editions omit or change Carcassi’s expressive markings which are incredibly important
• Sor: Etudes, Op. 60. Great set of easier etudes.

Those are just a few suggestions. Do you have more? Post them in the comments!

**Will add stuff as I think of it or as it gets suggested.

Did you enjoy this post? Check out Choosing Repertoire .

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I’m going to explain a few things I use to relate movements to students later, but first, let’s talk about why we should teach (and learn) this way.

It’s All About a Relationships

Choice Research has a lot of applicability to practicing. What you’ve read here before was about analogues: relating relatively similar things to each other.

We can think smaller than than practice events for our analogues.

When we relate movements used in guitar to movements we use every day they’re much easier to understand and master. It makes sense to take this “shortcut”, spend more time practicing, and less time worrying about whether or not we’re moving correctly.

So, with that in mind, here are some analogous movements I relate to my students.

Open the Door

Sometimes we need to use different left hand positions to accommodate passages. We change left hand positions primarily with a little wrist rotation.

If you haven’t ever tried to get a young student to rotate their wrist by saying, “rotate your wrist,” you should try it out. It’s very amusing. Most students will swing their elbow around like crazy.

Instead, relate it opening a door handle (or, for others, using a screwdriver). It accomplishes the wrist rotation without the arm movement.

Pick Something Up

Common wisdom on right hand technique is to, “move all the knuckles on the right hand in the same direction.” There’s the even better, more verbose methods of explaining it as well that involve tons of anatomy terms.

How about this: imagine you’re picking something up or wrapping your fingers around something or closing your hand into a fist. In all of these instances the knuckles of the hand move in the same direction and we avoid the dense wordage.

As an aside, I use the “one hand clap” to demonstrate the fingers moving into the palm.

Any other movements relationships you use? Post them in the comments!

Did you enjoy this post? Check out Technical Exercises for the Absolute Beginner .

“If imagination resides in the mind, empathy is the imagination of the heart.”
-Zachary Shore, in Blunder

Today we feature Marco Tamayo playing Fernando Sor’s Grand Solo, Op. 14. I think he does a great job with the piece, but there are times when I want a bit more shape to the phrases. Still though, I think he’s on the right track. Many recordings of this piece lack the refinement Tamayo displays.

This video isn’t from Tamayo’s own Youtube, but if you want to check out more of his videos click here.

Did you enjoy this post? Check out Monday Motivation: Llobet Edition .

Well, Bradford has just prepped and released the second volume if you’re looking for a more advanced book.

Click Here to get Guitar Victoria Vol. 2

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“There are hundreds of scales out there and I have to memorize them all?” is what I thought to myself

Turns out you don’t have memorize them all. My first real jazz guitar teacher taught me that. So here’s what I learned.

Start with Major Scales

Step one is to learn the four main boxes of Major Scales (PDF)

In addition to practicing the scales as the linked PDF indicates, you can also do scales in thirds, triads, and seventh chords. The first scale pattern is shown below in thirds (click for a larger image).

The Modes and their Tonalities

Certain modes work with certain types of chords. Here’s a general list of the standard seven modes of the major scale. The method outlined in this article can also be use with modes of the melodic and harmonic minor or any other collection of modes. If you’re unfamiliar with modes, check out this article.

1. Ionian: use over major triads and seventh chords
2. Dorian: use over minor triads and seventh chords
3. Phrygian: use over minor triads and seventh chords
4. Lydian: use over major triads and seventh chords
5. Mixolydian: use over dominant seventh chords
6. Aeolian: use over minor triads and seventh chords
7. Locrian: use over diminished triads and half diminished seventh chords

Covering the Changes

So say we have a major chord. C major 7, for instance.

A few modes work over major7 chords: Ionian (the standard major scale) and lydian.

If we want to play ionian mode over this Cmaj7 chord, we just play a C major scale. End of story.

If we want to play the lydian mode, we don’t need to learn a new scale pattern. We relate it to another major scale. In other words, we treat C as the fourth scale degree of another key. In this case, we can play a G major scale over the Cmaj7 chord to get that lydian sound (from the F# in G major) while still keeping all the chord tones from the C major (C E G B).

Instead of learning a new scale, we related the root of the chord to a new major scale. We treated C as the fourth scale degree of another key rather than the root of its own.

Take a Look at a Minor Chord

Say we have a C minor 7 chord. We could play an aeolian mode (natural minor) over it by treating C as the sixth scale degree of another key. Meaning we play a Eb major scale to get an aeolian sound over the C minor chord:

Eb F G Ab Bb C D Eb

We could also treat C as the second scale degree of Bb major. If we play a Bb major, we’ll get a dorian mode sounding over the C minor chord.

Bb C D Eb F G A

Or you could even do Ab major scale to capture a phrygian sound.

Ab Bb C Db Eb F G

In all these case all we’re doing is relating the root of the chord to another major scale. We’re using the major scale, which we know really well, to solo in various modes. The thing to notice in each of these scales is that the chord tones for Cmin7 (C Eb G Bb) are still there.

How to Practice

Obviously if you’re just starting this stuff it’s not goign to be easy. Grab a Real Book and pick a standard like Autumn Leaves. Write in the major scale you plan to use over each chord. And don’t feel like you have to change scales on each chord! Find or record a backing track and play the scales in eighth notes over the changes.

After you feel more secure with just the scales in eighth notes, you can try improvising over the backing track. If you’ve practicing the scales in thirds, triads, and seventh chords as I mentioned above, you should find that some of those finger patterns come out in your improvising. This makes less of a “up and down the scale” improviser.

Why Use this Method for Modal Soloing?

• Because it requires less memorizing, giving you more time to really work on improvising
• Because it makes you less root oriented when soloing
• Because it’s easy to understand and easy to put into place

Did you enjoy this post? Check out Tonic and Dominant .