Los Romeros workshop (part 2): Etudes and repertoire

I'm not going to be able to offer a whole lot of detail directly from a workshop I took no notes on, but I will offer a few highlights t...

Pittsburgh Classical Guitar Society, and a Los Romeros workshop (part 1)

I'm planning to visit my family in Pittsburgh, PA over Thanksgiving this year. I was wondering if there might be any classical guitar co...

Playing on the beat

I've been working recently on learning to play 'drums' on a midi keyboard, for a recording project. I haven't seriously play...

Making art vs. making pretty pictures

Just a brief post this week. I've been reading "The Rest Is Noise" by Alex Ross for the past few days and would strongly recom...

My new old routine

Since I moved to Tulsa, I'd been busy with job hunting and then job doing, and I haven't had much inspiration for blogging. For a wh...

More thoughts on Effortless Mastery

Life has been busy recently, unfortunately full of real-world work, and not a whole lot of time for music. As I often do in these times, I&#...

A film about Leo Brouwer

Youtube user  elduendecillo07   uploaded this fascinating documentary on Leo Brouwer. I've created a playlist that should play them all ...

William Kanengiser masterclass notes, part 4

The final performer at the William Kanengiser masterclass I've been writing about played the fourth movement of Castelnuovo-Tedesco'...

William Kanengiser masterclass notes, part 3

Continuing on from my notes from a masterclass given by William Kanengiser in San Jose, back in 2007 or 2008. The next student played the Pr...

William Kanengiser masterclass notes, part 2

Continuing on from last week's post... Looking at the notes again, I was impressed by how much time William Kanengiser devoted to music...

William Kanengiser masterclass notes, part 1

I was looking through an old notebook this morning and found notes I took at a masterclass William Kanengiser gave in San Jose, CA two or t...

Unforgiving

After doing some maintenance on my guitar this week, I put on a new set of strings, of a type I hadn't used before. I'm not going to...

Martha Masters: Reaching the Next Level

Before beginning my video project in April, I went to Rosewood Guitar in Seattle and told their employee Robert that I was looking for some...

The Norton Manual of Music Notation

The ability to read and sight-read music effectively depends on a lot of factors. The symbols on the page are extremely important, of course...

Quick tip

Sorry for missing a few weeks of blogging. With a funeral to attend, a 5-day drive from my old home of Mount Vernon, WA to my new home in Tu...

See you next week

I'm traveling on family business right now and am not prepared to write a post... So here's one of my favorite videos on Youtube, of...

Sustained notes within a line

This has come up a few times for me recently, and while it's not an original idea, I thought I'd share it for those who don't kn...

Get off to a good start

I've discovered through my video project that I've been able to play (and record) pieces that I've worked on for only a day as w...

Video project

As I've mentioned before, I am working on a project to make a video every day (when possible) for the rest of April 2011. I'm having...

Whose art is it anyway?

Take a piece like Villa Lobos's Prelude #3, and compare several recordings of it to the score if you have it. There is a sort of "t...

Between the notes

We need to develop technique so we can communicate with our listeners. We often get caught up in what is cool, or difficult, or whatever, bu...

Why you should perform

But actually, doing what other people expect you to is what’s overrated. The external rewards for pursuing a dream may or may not arrive, b...

Making changes

After giving a house concert in Seattle a few weeks ago (big thanks to Rich for hosting!), once of the audience members said to me, "t...

See you next week

I've been sick with flu and now bronchitis for more than a week now, and although I started writing my post for this week, I don't h...

Casals and the Art of Interpretation

I read "Casals and the Art of Interpretation by David Blum around the time I started this blog and have been meaning to write about it ...

Easy and simple aren't the same thing

This past weekend I went to the Sean Nós Northwest festival at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, and played an awful lot of irish...

Trust yourself

Peter Mitchell commented on my "You have to really listen" post : I think this is related to the discussion around "multitask...

What do you focus on?

I managed to smash my left middle finger in the bathroom door on Monday night. I'm not sure how it happened, but I came out of it with a...

Wooten's metronome games

Philip Hii's been writing about rhythm a lot on his blog lately, and so I feel like it's a good time to work on my rhythm (it's...

Always have a positive musical intent

Philip Hii has been putting up a series of posts about speed and fluidity on his "Art of Virtuosity" blog recently. They're a...

You have to REALLY listen

"Concerts undoubtedly have great value in developing the student technically and mentally; but too often they have a directly contrary ...

Louis Drouët: On the Method of Finishing a Piece

Some food for thought today culled from Louis Drouët's 1830 method for playing the flute. I left the pre-Victorian ESL wording alone, be...

What is expression?

Breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules isn’t usually art; it’s just anarchy. And following rules for the sake of following rules is j...