WEEK 1: Exploring Carcassi's Etudes
Welcome to the Main Thread for the first week of the composition challenge! This is the place to post updates for the first week.
- Make sure you've read the guidelines before replying (<- click)
- Watch the kickoff livestream for help with the first section!
- Get the Scores here! (<- click)
If you want to describe your process (optional), feel free to use the following template.
- Things you found easy:
- Things you found difficult:
- (Optional): a video of you performing it!
- (Optional:) questions
↓ Reply below with your updates and questions! ↓
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Hello everyone,
I am wasan, it is very nice to see you all this challenge, I have been practicing No.3 and the things I found is easy is right hand arpeggio is simple and not complicated mostly is triplet, the things I found is hard could be play with legato and more dynamic,I play with metronome tempo 54 and I use my cellphone to take the video sound quality might not good anyway I will practicing for no. 2,7 and 21 to challenge myself in the future or if I have more time, Thanks!
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wasan Really wonderful tone!
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Martin that's really smooth fingering well, I try it first It's a bit awkward but will help for shift that like you mentioned so I really appreciated your advise, thanks
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Daniel Beltrán Thank you!
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I've recently looked at 3 and 7 (which I've played many years ago) and also no 1 so I'm looking at some new ones this week and have a go at 3,7 and 1 next week. Will choose some more to concentrate on in the last week. So this week's are 8, 10 and 16. (I think they are as I'm using the Schott GA 2 version which has 7 as 9).
Things I found easy: Nothing too technically difficult, all are fairly easy to read.
Things I found hard: 7; keeping the slur consistent, and in bar 10 I was originally moving down to 1st position and changing strins which I found hard but realised I could stay on the same strings by moving up then moving up again in the following bar and eventually using the open strings in bar 12 to move to 1st position.
10; again keeping the slurs consistent. 16; I originally played the melody line with 'a' an used m and i for the accompaniment but then struggled with maintaining this when the lower part got on to the lower strings so now using mainly m for the melody and p and i for the accompaniment.
Hope to post videos by the weekend.
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Derek Sounds good. Looking forward to hearing you play, Derek!
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Derek I wait with pleasure
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Derek wonderful! That‘s interesting, I will take a look at your fingering in Etude no.7, maybe you want to present that in the upcoming interactive class?
I will definitely take a look at 16 as well, it is so gorgeous! I think it‘s not too important to keep a consistent fingering as long as the effect you want to achieve is consistent. I also think about doing the first accompaniment with m-i as those fingers just sound better on the higher strings than the thumb! Once the lower strings come, I would change to the thumb as it reduces drastically the amount of scratchy noises and prevents a fully exposed open position!
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Read through 14 yesterday and practising again today - cycling round to bar 20 and back for now.
Fairly straightforward but finding it a bit of a tongue-twister …it’s easy to fall off! Slow practice for now to get it into my muscle memory!
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Mark Yes, it’s like a train that keeps chugging along.
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Mark Oh yeah, that one is a tough one to read and especially to memorize, but for this particular Etude Eric Phillips is indeed the specialist!
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Martin I am certainly no specialist! Martin could probably play it better than me with his eyes closed, hands tied behind his back, and playing a cheap toy guitar!
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Number 9 update.
I've been practicing this for a couple days now and I made a recording of where it's at.
What was easy: It is really fun to play, and I found it very easy to memorize for some reason.
What was difficult: The transition from measure 22 to 23 is still causing me difficulty. I would also like to develop a plan for adding more musicality to it.
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Eric Phillips really good fluency, nice slurs Eric. This piece has a fun and joyful melody and harmonic! :)
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Khiem Nguyen Thanks, Khiem. The A section and first half of the B section seem playful and almost humorous to me. The second half of the B section gets more serious, however, before the A section returns. I’m trying to think of the best way to bring all this out in the way I play it.
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Eric Phillips Very good, as always
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Giuseppe Gasparini Thank you, Giuseppe!
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Eric Phillips wow, beautiful as always, Eric. I think you could take more freedom as this is such a lyrical piece, it can have some more rubato. You have already such great control over the technical challenges that you could afford to give it a go….
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joosje I agree. I wanted to get it under my fingers first.
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Giuseppe Gasparini Guiseppe! When will we see and hear you?
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Eric Phillips super cool, Eric! It‘s a very humoristico piece, I think once you apply a little more staccato approach it‘ll clear things up more in terms of dynamic developement! Sometimes those effect can carry you a long way, especially in miniatures like that! Btw., it looks like you‘re additionally making this an Etude for a-i scales and a-repetitions?
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Martin I’ll be honest, I am barely giving any thought at all to my right hand. I know I repeat the a finger a lot, like a bad habit. As for the a-i scales, that often just feels more natural to me, especially for those little ascending scales at the cadences for some reason.
I will try adding some staccato, but this is something I have never really done in a thought-out way, so I’ll see what happens.
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Eric Phillips There is a perfectly fine reason for the preferring a-i over i-m: Most people's index and ring finger are much closer together in length than index and middle finger. That makes it easier to have a balanced right hand position because the same angular rotation of the knuckles will touch the same point on the plane of strings (whof, that sounded weird). a-i will generally reach its limit when you want to speed up because of the way the tendon for a-finger is connected.
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Martin I think your new nickname should be the Hand Doctor! Did you go to medical school? Seriously, thank you for your insights.
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Eric Phillips Actually, I once was invited by an ENT specialist to teach some med students some basic guitar techniques because those need a lot of sensitivity in their fingers and for that I needed to freshen up my anatomy knowledge of the hand, because they'd probably know better than me, haha!
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Martin That’s it, you are now officially the Hand Doctor to me!
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
