Week 4: Prepare for Landing! 
Welcome to the Main Thread for the fourth week of the "Guitar Music of the World" practice challenge!
↓ Happy Sharing! ↓
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For my final contribution to this month's challenge, I am posting a beautiful Pequeño Canción by Abel Carlevaro. This little jewel of a piece was originally written around 1935 and revised in 1943.
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Moyses Lopes Thanks. No not born in Uruguay, just a kindred spirit with Uruguay and its incredible culture. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Eric Phillips Thanks.
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Here is my final cut of Squares Suspended by Andrew York for this challenge. I have not figured out the best way to configure the gain on my focus rite. This is almost maxed out on both mics and still not getting very good output in the final mix down. Perhaps its just the crappy mics I'm using.
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Michael Shirk Hi Michael! What Mics are you using again for this? The sound is beautiful, you can probably just normalize the audio and have a beautiful recording!
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martin Hi Martin, for this I used a couple of Shure PGA81, very cheap like 90.00 bucks a piece. I have since bought a Zoom H4N Pro and using the stereo pair on it. One thing I didn't do was "normalize". ugh, completely forgot to do that. Thanks for the tips.
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Michael Shirk This is beautifully played, and I think the sound quality is very good. I like the very patient and expressive way you play.
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Eric Phillips Thanks Eric
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Michael Shirk Cool! I was wondering whether they might be dynamic mics which tend to have a lower sensitivity, but as they are condenser mics (and you have turned on +48V, right), they should render a standard output! But I couldn't hear any significant digital noise, so raising the gain to normalize the final output should do the trick
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Michael Shirk By the way, is that piece published in a book or is it a single publication? I am learning a bunch of York pieces with some of my students, they offer such a great sonority, and yu are doing a fantastic job of interpreting that!
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martin Yes, its part of his "Woven Harmony" book of pieces. But there is possibly an illegitimate version floating around on the internet that a simple search will reveal.
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@Michael Shirk An Addendum, Squares Suspended is one of a six-movement suite called 'Woven Harmony' These pieces make up a six-movement suite that combines the ideas of weaving and guitar. Andrew writes: After observing a loom in action creating textile art, I wrote movements inspired by warp and weft, the threads that make up a weaving. The Warp movements, reflecting the structural nature of these weaving's, are more abstract, while the Weft movements correspond to the beauty we can see in a weaving, and are more accessibly beautiful
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Michael Shirk Gorgeous piece and performance Michael! Nice video effect with the B&W as well.
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Michael Shirk such a beautiful interpretation, Michael, deep, sensitive, and clear. Thank you so much to share with us!
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Michael Shirk beautifully played, Michael. I’m not so familiar with York’s compositions, but every time I hear some of you play one, I’m impressed. very pleasant to listen…. Thanks for sharing.
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Bogdanovic Monk-A-Ning a slightly less rough draft.... I think
So I have managed to squeeze in a somewhat improved version of this Bogdanovic piece from his Book of Unknown Standards V.1. This is composed in the style of Theolonius Monk (quite successfully I think).
I have recently returned from a 2 week road trip with my wife and have managed to get this piece back to this level ,at least. My nails continue to plague me, but I continue to hope. There are still rough spots and my tone drives me nuts but I feel this is reasonably solid as a rough draft.
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Jack Stewart Great playing, Jack! I can only imagine how crazy that score looks, with the chromaticism, crazy rhythms, and upper position playing (lots of ledger lines!). Amazing that you could sort through all of that, not only to play the right notes, but to play them so musically!
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Eric Phillips Thanks Eric. I find this piece to be difficult for all the reasons you mention (and then some). As to the ledge lines, I was frequently reduce to going: e,f,f#,g,g#a,a#,b - there it is. And that was just on the first string.
It is coming together but I still need to figure out my nails (on and on that goes
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Jack Stewart bravo Jack, what a piece! I definitely need to get the score!
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Jack Stewart Love that, Jack. There's so much going on there so it's really impressive what you've done with this in a month especially since you were out of pocket for a couple of weeks. I played drums and was the house drummer for a jazz jam session for a year so this is right up my alley. It sounds a little out of my range for now but I might have to track this down. Really nice work.
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Jack Stewart Bravo Jack! You had me tapping my toes thinking I was in a speakeasy in Louisiana! Good times!
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Blaise Laflamme Thanks Blaise.
This piece is in Bogdanovic's collection of 5 composed pieces based on different jazz standards. In addition to this one, I think he also covers Bill Evans and Stan Getz. I don't know who the other 2 are. He also has a volume 2.
Since he is still living I am reluctant to make a copy available but the collection was only about $17 so not too bad. I suspect you would probably be interested in the other pieces as well, seeing how adept you are.
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Steve Price Thanks Steve. As I mentioned to Blaise, it is in a collection of 5 pieces all based on different composers. He also has a volume 2. I know Bill Kanengiser has recorded v. 1 and maybe v. 2.
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Steve Pederson Thanks, Steve. I was hoping it would be in a night club in Paris.
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Jack Stewart No worries, I also in most case pay the score for a living composer, but sometimes they are no longer available to purchase. This one is available at Oz and also in PDF, the same publisher that published «Ile Madame»!
https://productionsdoz.com/fr/product/2710-book-of-the-unknown-standards -
Jack Stewart Great work, Jack! I took a glance at Oz, I definitely need this score!! The other pieces may sound great, too, there is a little sample on the Oz site. Thank you for sharing this piece! I hope you had a great vacation time!
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End of the Year Challenge: Finish Strong!
