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.