 |
|||
|
|
||
|
|||
|
|
||
| CLASSICAL GUITAR | |||
| The Classical Guitar course is ideal for guitar players who already know how to read notes or guitar tab, but are otherwise beginners on the instrument. Many composers have written for the Classical Guitar over the centuries, creating extensive guitar literature that will keep you busy for the rest of your life. This introductory course covers the basics, starting with sitting position, right and left-hand technique and rest-strokes. The lessons also teach you Classical Guitar terminology, good study habits and using color. |
|||
|
Return to Course Catalog List |
Printable PDF Version |
||
| COURSE | LESSON | TEACHER | DESCRIPTION |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Basic Terminology, Positioning and Technique | Martha Masters | Thanks for checking out the classical lessons here on WorkshopLive. This series of lessons assumes that you play the guitar and read music or tab, but don't necessarily have any experience playing the classical guitar. In this first lesson, we're going to learn a bit of basic terminology as it relates to the classical guitar; we'll establish a good stable sitting position; and we'll talk about the principals of a great right-hand technique. By the end of this lesson, you'll be playing a mean open-E string with good technique. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Basic Left-Hand Techniques | Martha Masters | So you're getting comfortable holding the guitar in the classical position, and your right hand is starting to feel good about rest-strokes. Let's talk about the left hand now. In this lesson, we'll talk about the basics of good left-hand position; we'll start playing some chromatic and diatonic scales on the first three strings; and by the end of this lesson, you'll be playing a melody you know from Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite." Through all this, we'll continue to check in with your right hand to make sure it isn't misbehaving. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Rest-Stroke, Unprepared Strokes: Beethoven (Right Hand) | Martha Masters | So far we've been playing with prepared rest-strokes. In this lesson, we're going to learn about unprepared strokes, meaning your finger no longer rests on the string in between notes. The preparation and the plucking become simultaneous, allowing the notes to connect to each other. This will open up possibilities in terms of the music you can play with your fantastic new technique. By the end of this lesson, you'll have done some scales using unprepared strokes, and also learned Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy.' |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Introducing Dynamics | Martha Masters | So far, we've been focusing on the technique necessary to play the classical guitar. But a big part of all music making is bringing the music to life. One of the ways we do this is through the use of dynamics - varying the volume level of our pieces. Changing dynamics in your playing requires practice, just like everything else, to be able to control your dynamic level, and to be accustomed to thinking about it, instead of thinking about "just playing the notes." We'll do some dynamic exercises here, and talk about the basic ways you can experiment and improvise dynamic plans in your pieces. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Introducing Free Stroke | Martha Masters | To this point, we've been playing exclusively with rest strokes - each stroke comes to rest on the adjacent string. The next step with our right-hand technique is to learn to use free strokes, where the stroke clears the adjacent string instead of resting on it. Free strokes are necessary down the line for playing arpeggios and chords, and are also a big part of playing all classical guitar repertoire. Of course we'll start out learning the stroke on open strings, and in scales, and we'll finish this lesson by applying this stroke to some pieces you already know. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | The Right-Hand Thumb: J.S. Bach | Martha Masters | Up to now, your poor little thumb on the right hand has been sadly neglected; used only as an anchor. In this lesson, we'll bring it into the action. We'll talk about how to use the thumb, we'll play a few scales on the bass strings and, by the end, we'll learn a melody by Bach called 'Sheep May Safely Graze'. You may not know the title but you'll probably recognize the tune. Of course, as we go through this lesson, we're still keeping an eye out for all of our new hand positions and trying to continue to make music with every note. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Introducing Chords: Diabelli (Right-Hand) | Martha Masters | This lesson introduces the concept of playing chords. If you have other styles of guitar playing in your background, you may think this lesson will be a breeze for you! But, on classical guitar, we tend to pluck chords instead of strumming, which adds a level of complexity to what the right hand is doing. Not to mention, you have to read all those notes! So, we'll be dealing with the technique of playing chords, starting with just the right hand motion in various combinations of chords, and finishing with a nice piece by Diabelli, a contemporary of Mozart. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Ascending Arpeggios: Carulli (Right-Hand) | Martha Masters | Arpeggios are a very common technique on the guitar, and produce a beautiful sound with relative ease. In this lesson, we'll learn the basics of ascending arpeggios, starting just with the fingers, then using thumb and fingers together. As always when adding a new right hand technique, we'll start with prepared strokes, and gradually move towards unprepared strokes for a fuller sound. We'll do some exercises on open strings, with chords, and finish up with a nice little piece by Carulli, which develops your new skill of ascending arpeggios. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Right-Hand String Crossing: Sor | Martha Masters | So far we haven't played a melody that has gone beyond the range of 3 strings. This lesson will address how to cross all the strings with the right hand in one move. We'll start by talking about the way your hand should move, of course with our goal being to use the hand in the same manner as much as possible; then we'll cross some open strings, then some scales across six strings. We'll finish up with a piece by Sor that really uses the entire range of our right hand movement. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Left-Hand Shifts: Sor | Martha Masters | In our last lesson, we talked about moving around with the right hand. In this lesson, we'll learn to shift with the left hand. Again, we'll start with a discussion of the principles of movement, which are particularly tricky with the left hand. We'll start with small shifts from between 1st and 2nd positions, then 1st to 5th, then all the way up to 9th position, all within the context of scales. The final exercise in this lesson is another study by Sor that takes you up and down the neck with every eighth note - this one's a real challenge! |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Good Study Habits | Martha Masters | This lesson is all about good study habits. We'll talk about common mistakes we all make in our practice, and how to develop good solid practice habits. We'll take these concepts and apply them to the Sor Etude from the last lesson. The main ideas we'll go over are slowing down (of course!), and general awareness to help solve problems. By the end of this lesson, the plan is to have a great set of study skills at your disposal to learn all your pieces more quickly, accurately, and painlessly. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Combining Right-Hand String Crossing & Left-Hand Shifts | Martha Masters | We've learned lots of different skills in the previous lessons, but so far we've tried to isolate the addition of complicated new techniques. In this lesson we're going to work on combining the shifting of the left hand up the neck with the shifting of the right hand across the strings. We'll start with some simple scales and small shifts, and get a bit more complicated as we go. We'll also cover a bit of musical exploration once we've got our new technique down. By the end of the lesson, we'll tackle another etude by Sor that really moves around the neck and across all six strings. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Descending Arpeggios: Spanish Romance | Martha Masters | Earlier in this series of lessons, we did some ascending arpeggios using various combinations. But there are lots of great pieces out there that use descending arpeggios so, in this lesson, we'll take a look at that technique. We'll start with -- of course -- open strings, just working on the technique: beginning with fully prepared, then sequentially planted, then unprepared arpeggios. The final exercise of this lesson is one of the most beautiful and popular pieces played on the classical guitar, called 'Romance.' |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Combining Finger Rest-Strokes with Thumb Free Stroke | Martha Masters | This lesson will cover using rest-strokes in the fingers simultaneously with free-strokes in the thumb. We'll start by simply mastering the technique on open strings; this can be a little harder than you might think at first! We'll finish the lesson by revisiting "Sheep May Safely Graze," by Bach, but in a different arrangement which combines many of our newer skills. You'll be playing up in higher positions, and shifting during the piece. And of course, you'll be playing rest- stroke fingers with free-stroke thumb! |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Combining Rest Strokes & Free Strokes in Fingers | Martha Masters | We're going to complicate the right hand just a bit more in this lesson by combining three types of strokes: playing rest stroke melody with the m finger, inner voice free stroke with the i finger, and free stroke with the thumb in the bass. This technique is really useful for emphasizing the melody in a complex piece. We'll start by trying this on open strings to get the hang of it, then we'll apply the technique to another one of classical guitar's most famous pieces, Lagrima, by Francisco Tarrega. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Slurs (Hammer-Ons & Pull-Offs): Carcassi | Martha Masters | We're going to take a look at slurs in this lesson - hammer-ons, pull-offs, whatever you want to call them. We're going to really address proper technique, using the finger to do most of the work, and letting the hand remain relaxed. We'll start with a few isolated hammer-ons, then a few isolated pull-offs, then we'll combine the two into a little exercise. Finally, we'll take a look at an etude by Carcassi that gives you a good workout in slurs, as well as a bit of shifting. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Introducing Tremolo (Right Hand) | Martha Masters | In this lesson, we'll learn one of the coolest-sounding techniques we can do on the classical guitar... the tremolo. For those of you who don't know what tremolo is, the technique is basically the same as a descending p-a-m-i arpeggio, with the fingers all playing on the same string, and the thumb playing a bass note. When you've got it mastered, tremolo is the closest we can ever get to approximating the sound of truly sustaining notes. We'll go through the basics of the technique, and then work on an etude by Carcassi that's a great introduction to tremolo. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Thumb Rest-Stroke (Right Hand) | Martha Masters | In this lesson, we'll cover the only type of stroke we haven't looked at yet: rest-stroke with the thumb. We'll start with reviewing the basic motion of the thumb, then figure out how to position our hand for the new stroke. We'll try some rest-strokes with the thumb on open strings, and we'll finish up with a fairly complex etude by Carcassi. The etude just has a small section that uses thumb rest stroke; the rest of the piece will continue to stretch you in all areas of your technique. This is my very favorite of Carcassi's etudes, and a challenging one for sure. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Interpretation: Using Color (Right-Hand) | Martha Masters | In this lesson, we'll talk about another way we can make our music more interesting with the use of colors. We'll start with some terminology and experiment with the different sounds we can create by plucking the string in different places. We'll do some exercises on open strings in changing colors, and then try changing colors while also changing dynamics. At the end of the lesson, we'll revisit the Tchaikovsky 'March' from earlier in this series, and see how we can make it more interesting with the use of color. |
| Introducing Classical Guitar | Right-Hand Speed Development | Martha Masters | Everyone wants to play fast. In this lesson, we'll talk about some of the tools you need to get there. It doesn't happen overnight, so remember to be patient with yourself! We'll do some work in speed bursts on open strings and then try coordinating with the left hand in some chromatic scales. We'll finish this set of lessons with another complex piece and another staple of the guitar repertoire. Pavan No. 1 by Luis Milan involves a lot of chordal playing--it's actually a great study for chords, as well--and two little bursts of speed. This is a great place to get your feet wet on scales. |
|
Return to Course Cataolg List |
|||