50

43

This is the excerpt I promised myself I would make a recording of in yesterday’s post. This is where the Preludio and the Danza blend together. ‘Attacca’ is the musical direction.

With these lighter strings, I tend to feel that my guitar is tuned kinda low. Although, I know they are turned to 440.

68

A little bit of the introduction from Carnaval de Venecia

This is the same excerpt from the same piece I posted for yesterday’s video. It’s Legnani Caprice no 7. Only here I’m trying out another fingering that I’ve been working at for a while now. I think I like it better. There’s more string crossing involved, but I think it runs smoother with this fingering since I play faster scale passages better using ‘a m i’. And the string crossing works better in this instance.

18

In this video I am addressing a left hand problem I have been having. I have to play a three note slur, followed by three plucked notes, all while holding down a note a in the lower voice in the fourth position (c#). This passage is impossible without applying a barre. The problem was: when do I put the barre down?

In order to prevent ringing while playing the slurred notes, I decided that I should wait until the slurred notes have been played, then put the barre down when I play the three plucked notes.

Now, I am playing the slurred notes too fast, but I was focusing on when to put the barre down in this mini practice session. I will play them all evenly now that I know where I should place the barre.

73

This is from today’s faculty recital I played on at GCSC. Corranda by Agustí Grau. I think overall that my default right hand position could be closer to the sound hole. I’m glad my student sent me these videos so I could catch that.

Day 14

Quite under tempo, this is an excerpt from the ending of Innocent Meandering by Harold Blanchard.

Day 5

Attempting to post another video of myself performing an excerpt from Harold Blanchard’s Innocent Meandering, since my previous attempt was flagged as inappropriate as soon as the excerpt was published. This is frustrating, especially when one considers the amount of time it takes to make a decent recording of a piece of music. I chose to use Tumblr as a platform for sharing my daily music videos, because I’m just not comfortable using FB, IG, and YouTube. I liked how Tumblr worked. If this video is immediately mistaken for having inappropriate content, and flagged, I just might have to look for another outlet if Tumblr thinks my music is inappropriate.

There’s a lot of shifting in this part of the piece that requires a lot of work to make the timing work out right. . .

Day 8

Decided to post a little slower version of Llobet’s 5th Variation on a Theme by Sor.

The right hand technique here is something I have been struggling with. The idea seems simple: you pluck one string twice, and another string once. Then repeat the pattern which result in a nice triplet. However, I have trouble making it sound clean and rhythmically clear. It’s frustrating to have trouble with such a simple concept.

I’m also usually better at playing harmonics. I have a suspicion that this set of strings is quasi faulty when it comes to playing artificial harmonics (and I long considered not even commenting on this).

70

Played this entire piece for an audience. Here I’m working on one of the variations that I’ve had problems. In this video I’m trying to make a new habit with my lefthand pinky. When I do a glissando with my fourth finger, I have a habit of landing on the far right side of the finger. This can make the pitch sound out of tune. So, I’m trying to land closer to the left side of the finger.

This is a hard piece to pay if you haven’t had much time to warm up.