Summer fun

This summer, I'm finishing writing up my doctorate. I'm currently preparing Ponce's Sonata romántica, Thème Varié et Finale, and the 24 Preludes to record about a month from now. Also, during my warm-ups every day, I'm spending a half hour or so on Al di Meola and Bob Aslanian's Guide to Chords, Scales and Arpeggios. I really want to improve my jazz guitar skills. I also find that working out chords and positions etc. . . is really helpful to my classical work.

I thought I would share a couple of the things I suggested to my students for the summer: 

1. Get a copy of Scott Tennant's Pumping Nylon. It's cheap, and it contains a lot of good exercises. My favourites are the tremolo and rasgueado excercises in it, as well as the finger walking. 

2. Get a copy of Matteo Carcassi's 25 Studies Op. 60 (download here) and learn a dozen of them. If you're a university / conservatorium music student, it's really good to do a harmonic analysis of these. They're not too hard, and they teach you a lot about how harmony is used in early 19th Century music. A lot of expression in this music requires an instinctive harmonic understanding that is underpinned by  an analytical understanding. Once you've worked out what's going on in each piece, you'll be able to talk about expression in these pieces in much more concrete terms. (I might do a blog on one of these early in the new year). And that's better than just peppering the notes with random-ish rits and rubatos. (That sort of playing makes me think of these guys, you know - they know not to what they groove.)

3. Get a copy of Stephen Dodgson and Hector Quine's Progressive Reading for Guitarists. It's an excellent book. Sight-reading training often gets overlooked, yet it is profoundly important to any musician who relies on reading notes (yes, it helps your non-sight-reading, and it improves your knowledge of the guitar a lot!)

Wishing everyone a very festive New Year's Eve and the best for 2011. 

PONCE: Segovia editions vs. Manuscripts, Part 1: Sonata romántica (the first 8 measures)

ABBREVIATIONS:
AS = Segovia edition

MS= autograph manuscript (for all intents and purposes, also as reproduced (newly typeset) in the Tillman Hoppstock edition published by Schott in 2006, catalogue # GA 544)

Alright, so it can be a bit hard to convince people that with Manuel M. Ponce's guitar music, you should, when possible, start with the manuscripts rather than with the ubiquitous Segovia editions, which many cling to despite the availability of strong alternatives.  

This is just a tiny little starter, where we look at the opening 8 measures of Manuel M. Ponce's Sonate romantique (a.k.a. Sonata romántica), Homage to Franz Schubert (1928). Here's an extract of the first 8 bars of the Segovia edition. Following it is the same passage taken from the Tillman Hoppstock edition published in 2006, which is based on the Ponce's autograph MS.  (Because of the bulkiness of the image, I've reproduced the MS extract at the bottom of this blog.)

(The extract as it appears in the Hoppstock edition matches the autograph manuscript, a copy of which I obtained from Angelo Gilardino in 2005, and the original of which I cited at the Ponce Archive in Mexico City in 2005. I'm reproducing the Hopptock version here for legibility's sake. )



So, let's get to it.

1. The tempo indication in the Segovia edition (AS) is "Allegro moderato". In the MS it's "Allegro non troppo, semplice". Which tells you more?

2. Next, let's look at the dynamics, particularly under mm. 4-8. . . . There's a whole lot more dynamic detail in the MS, and this detail helps underline the melodic direction and the harmonic action. It's in Ponce's hand, and it works, so why would you not play it?

3. Let's look at the harmonic action since we've mentioned it. See how in m. 5 of the MS there are accidentals and stuff, for the first time? In tonal music, the first appearance of the accidentals is usually quite significant, right?  Well, see how the AS does not have those accidentals?   A bit boring, huh?

What's going on?

Well, technically, the MS version is a pain in the ass to play - it's got more notes and the stretch is hard. But not like it's impossible. But why bother with it? Because after maintaining a tonic pedal for the first 4 measures, the first half of m. 5 micro-tonicizes the relative minor (F#min) with its own dominant (C# maj). The D#-E#-F# motion in the inner voice, together with the root of the dominant C# in the bass makes it a much bolder gesture (which may also be why Ponce placed a forte at the beginning of that bar, a forte that's missing from the Segovia edition).

4. Next, let's look at the bass notes in mm. 1-4. In the AS, they are whole notes. In the MS they are dotted half notes. Not a big difference? Try playing it with the quarter note rest on beat 4, and very quickly you find that the silence in the bass subtly activates the 4th beat and prepares the downbeat of the next bar. It's either that, or there's another reason Ponce wrote those dotted half notes and then the quarter rests, every single time. Why fight it?

5. You may have noticed that in measure 4, Ponce maintains the A pedal, where in the AS the bass moves to D and C# on beats 2 and 3. Ponce's insistence on the use of the pedal seems pretty intentional and clear. Apart from anything else, it makes what happens afterwards more dramatic, and it's consistent with the wonderful use of the E pedal in the same passage in the recapitulation.

So that's just the first 8 measures, and I haven't mentioned everything. . . There movement is 152 measures long. . . So you could learn it from the Segovia edition and then go through with picking bits of the MS you want to incorporate, or you could just go to what the composer wrote.

(By the way, the differences I've listed here are nothing compared to what happens in the development section.)

You can get Hoppstock's recent edition of Ponce's guitar works at GSP (San Francisco) or at Sheet Music Plus, or indeed you could ask your local sheet music dealer.

Manuel Ponce: Sonate Romantique, 1st movement, mm. 1-11. Autograph manuscript. Click here to download a PDF of the entire MS for the piece (movts 1-3).

Left Hand Shifting Problem

Exploring left hand position shifts


This is pretty simple, and teaches you a lot about left hand movement.

Play any scale up and down one string. Just one string. Let's say the open third, and let's say we're just going to play the C major scale (white notes): G-A-B-C// D-E-F//G-A//B-C// and then down. The "//" indicates a position shift. Try it. . .  OK, got it?


Now do it again, slowly, and try to play all the notes completely legato (connected). What do you have to do to connect the notes between position shifts?  Work on just one upward position shift to begin with (e.g. G-A-B-C//D) and get all those notes clean and connected. How DO you connect the C that you play with 4th finger with the D at the 7th position that you play with the 1st?   (Work it out and say it out loud!)

Then try it going down.  It's going to be a different story going down, and it might be a bit less obvious. . .

Take your time and don't force it. Just play around with it for 5, 10, 15 minutes. Then do it again the next day.

Work it out until 1/ the notes are completely connected and 2/ there is no "bump" or "accent" on the destination note after the actual position shift.

Work it out and apply to all your legato playing and position shifting needs! :-)

(This exercise was prompted by some ideas in Mick Goodrick's excellent book "The Advancing Guitarist", although he deals with the single string exercise for a different end. It's an excellent book, and if you're a guitarist planning to advance, you should really spend the USD 17.99 or whatever it costs!)