Week 2: Delving into Diverse Styles
Welcome to the "Around the World in 80 Strings Challenge"! This month, we'll embark on a global musical journey, exploring classical guitar compositions from various countries. The only rule: Don’t play a composer from your home country. Let’s make this a truly international experience!
🗓️ CHALLENGE TIMELINE
- Challenge Start: Kick-Off on May 15th
- Duration: May 15th - June 24th
- Watch Party: June 24th
🎼 ACTIVITIES
- Choose Your Piece: Select a new piece of music to work on. Share your choice in the thread below and inspire your fellow musicians!
- Video Submission: Submit a video of your practice this week. Highlight your favorite passage from the piece that showcases the origin of this piece!
🎸 GET INVOLVED
Let’s kick things off with enthusiasm! Share your progress, encourage others, and explore new musical horizons together. Can’t wait to see what everyone chooses!
58 replies
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Includes grossly glaring mistakes, but still has its moments and some potential, I think.
"Lullaby" - Frantz Casseus (Haiti)
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Spare Machine That’s great! It has such a beautiful melody, and I love that it is not just standard repertoire. Making the melody legato seems to be a real challenge.
As for your question at the end, are you saying that you have to use your right hand pinky because it’s a five-note chord? If that’s the case, I would typically play a five-note chord by sweeping the thumb across the two lowest strings. Another possibility is to only play four notes, eliminating a “less necessary” note. It’s a little hard to know without seeing the score, though. I apologize if I am misunderstanding the problem.
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Spare Machine Very nice piece Mark. Well done 👍
I am just a beginner but if you post a picture of the section of the score; I am sure some of our experts like Eric or Blaise can provide you some good advice.
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Eric Phillips a five-note chord, yes. Thank you for the tips and I look forward to working on the legato during our challenge.
I’ll post a picture of the score sometime soon! Thank you!
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Eric Phillips 5-noter, upper right.
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Spare Machine Okay. You could sweep the thumb across the fifth and fourth strings. If I were to leave out a note, I’d leave out the B (second string). Despite being the root of the chord (B7), it’s the least important note harmonically. That also makes it easier on the left hand, since you don’t have to worry about touching the open second string with your second finger.
Those are my best thoughts right now, without a guitar in my hands.
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Eric Phillips So helpful! Thank you! I was thinking about the lagoto bit. I think that some of that, obviously is the literal handling melody note, but some of it is imprecision in the left hand sometimes accidentally muting strings that should be open and ringing, which, while not the actual melody, support the overal lagoto-ness of the vibe. I was thinking that was another area (better with the open ringing stings) I'd like do pay some attention to as well during this challenge. Thank you!
Also, for those of you who've I've done challenges with before, something has clicked with me in using the footstool! Suddenly, it seems to make sense to my body.
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Spare Machine This is really coming along well. Nicely done.
This is why I love these challenges so much. I primarily listen to 20th/21st century music and I've never even heard of Frantz Casseus. I found a whole album of his music recorded by Alberto Mesirca. Really nice stuff so thanks for bringing this to light.
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Steve Price Cooool. I'm going to look that record up!
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Spare Machine This is such a sweet tune, Mark. I think its Caribbean origins comes thru. You have a great start on this piece. Looking forward to your progress.
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Spare Machine very nice. beautiful piece. You are playing it very elegantly. I’d love to hear more of this.
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We just wrapped a fantastic production with Łukasz Kuropaczewski on Llobet's Catalan Folk Songs, so I've decided to jump right into Llobet's "Plany".
I want to improve EVERY chord change, there arestill some ghost notes starting to sound when I lift fingers. One core concept of Lukasz's course is that once does not only shift with the left hand, but also with the right hand!
But overall, I feel, that the melody is not really flowing, so I'll try to improve my phrasing as well. Watch out for Borbala's course coming out TODAY on phrasing and articulation!
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Gol-e-Gandome and Leila-Leila (arr. Afshar)
I am playing Gol-e-Gandome relatively well now, so I have also begun working on a second one of these Persian ballads arranged by Lily Afshar. Apparently this is a song about a lost love named Leila. As far as I know, it has no connection to Layla by Eric Clapton. 😊
I am not playing the whole piece yet. There is a section at the end where the melody is played with harmonics. That still needs a lot of work before I would subject anyone to it.
