William Kanengiser masterclass notes, part 2

Posted on July 1, 2011 by William Bajzek

Continuing on from last week’s post… Looking at the notes again, I was impressed by how much time William Kanengiser devoted to musical issues versus purely technical ones. I’ve decided to write this up in multiple parts, which will cover all the musical issues first and the final will cover technical and other miscellaneous ones.

The second performer played Guardame Las Vacas. Kanengiser mentioned that it was one of, if not the earliest written example of theme & variations. It’s based on a popular theme of the time and I seem to remember him singing a bit of it, although that may be a confabulation on my part. You can hear a version by Alonso Mudarra for voice and (I think) baroque guitar played by Catherine King and Jacob Heringman here. It differs quite a bit from the familiar version by Narvaez, but I wanted to put in a plug for one of my favorite albums.

I have only two musical-issue related notes from this piece:

  • The notes on top are supported by the rhythm underneath. Kanengiser has the student play it as alternating bars of 3+3 and 2+2+2 accents, found so frequently in spanish music. It helped the student give the piece a stronger sense of rhythmic structure and direction.
  • Rhythmic energy is not necessarily the same thing as dynamic strength. I haven’t recorded the context of this not but I assume the student at first put his previous suggestion into practice accenting the beats too forcefully but it is a great general observation. Often times a lighter beat can be more effective and appropriate as long as the beat is conveyed clearly.
The third student played Gavota-Choro by Heitor Villa-Lobos. IIRC, this student was a youngster, perhaps ten or eleven years old, who had broken his arm fairly recently and had just had the cast removed the day before. In spite of this, he only missed one day of practice. He was also playing a 3/4 size guitar and, frankly, had tone that most guitar students would be envious of. Needless to say, he was quite impressive, not to mention fearless. Of course, there was good feedback for him as well.
  • Tone – volume is sometimes less important than richness. A full tone produced by playing somewhat over the soundhole and giving due attention to the quality of each of the voices in the music and the evenness/continuity of their dynamics will give a better overall impression of loudness and projection than attempting to play loudly but without the sense of evenness.
  • Rallentando – Imagine the rhythm of the notes like a baseball card the spokes of a bicycle wheel as the wheel is slowing down gradually. 

William Kanengiser masterclass notes, part 1

Posted on June 24, 2011 by William Bajzek

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 three years ago as part of the Suzuki convention. My notes were hastily written and not terribly detailed, but I’ll use them to jog my memory and fill in what I can regarding topics that are generally applicable. Apologies if I’ve misinterpreted my memory from that far back, but I’ll do the best I can. :)

The first student played Sor’s Rondeau, opus 48 number 6, and in response Kanengiser made several suggestions about phrasing:

  • The shape of phrases follow the strength of the harmony. Harmonies are used for specific reasons, and especially so in classical period music like Sor’s. There are some general rules, like when you have a dissonance resolving into a consonance, the (tense) dissonance should be louder than the consonance (release), but the deeper your understand of how this works, the easier it will be for you to give a mature interpretation of phrasing. This is all covered in depth on Chris Davis’s website. 
  • Tension, release, surprise - This is related to the above. Consonance moving to dissonance and back create tension and release it, but be on the look out for sudden and significant changes of harmony. Many pieces change keys to break up the tonality, and we might want to change our tone color or dynamics somewhat to reflect the change. Sometimes we are given an unexpected chord quite suddenly – this is meant to give a sense of surprise and we should play that up. 
  • Crescendo – start soft enough to really get louder, to exaggerate the effect. Kanengiser suggested not just playing the section before the crescendo quieter, but dropping the volume at the beginning of a crescendo in order to give enough dynamic range to convey the effect and emphasize the new dynamic.
  • When playing bass notes, think like a bass player. It’s often said that we should work on the lines in the music we play individually to shape them the way we want. I think Kanengiser wants us to go a step farther. How would a bassist articulate the bassline? For that matter, if you consider the “guitar as miniature orchestra” idea and you have section of music that suggests a brass section, how would the brass section in an orchestra articulate that?
  • After using rubato/decelerando, we need a strong sense of rhythm to pull us back into the pulse. 
  • When making big leaps, think like a singer – it should have a sense of arrival, not a frantic grab for what we hope might be the right note. 
This is getting longer than I expected, so I will continue with it next week. 
Big thanks to the Longay school for sponsoring the masterclass, the participants, and of course Kanengiser himself, who is a thoroughly gracious and inspiring teacher. I had the opportunity to play in a masterclass for him a few years prior, but unfortunately for me I was very sick at the time and not able to focus very well nor remember much of the experience. 

Unforgiving

Posted on June 17, 2011 by William Bajzek
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 tell you what they are, but they are much lower tension than I normally use on my guitar.
I strung it up, tuned to pitch, and played a few notes and was really blown away by how beautiful they sounded. All the warmth, fullness, and volume I’ve ever wanted in a string, yet so easy to play. 
Today has been kind of a crazy day for me, though, and after playing for a while I was really unhappy with my sound. At first I wanted to just swap them for something familiar, but I thought maybe I’d damaged my nails, so I redid them. As I tested them out, I could get that great tone again, but it went away when I started playing normally. Frustrating.
These strings are just totally unforgiving, and with any carelessness on my part the tone is unusably lousy. But with nails well-cared-for, solid contact with the string, and well-directed plucking motion, they reward me beautifully. That’s how I want to sound all the time, and that’s how I want to play all the time, regardless of the strings. 
I think it’ll be worthwhile to leave them on for a while and focus on whatever I need to do to get that classic tone.

Martha Masters: Reaching the Next Level

Posted on June 10, 2011 by William Bajzek

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 music I could easily work up and record in a day. It had to be fairly straightforward and, almost more importantly, it needed to not require page turns.

Robert recommended Martha Masters’ book “Reaching the Next Level,” because it contained many pieces that met that criteria and also offered thoughtful suggestions before each piece.

I bought the book, but I didn’t end up using it for my recordings, although I was reminded of the Reginald Smith Brindle pieces by it, for which I already had the sheet music. The music is well-selected, mostly offering pieces which are not likely to be found in other similar books.

Masters offers anecdotes throughout the various topics which I found to be refreshingly candid and honest. They help reinforce the idea that as we study and perform music, we should consider all the available input into consideration and make our decisions thoughtfully.

I found her recommendations for each piece, as well as her suggestions in general to be great advice. Overall, there is more focus on musical issues than technical, although both are covered. I really respect the author’s efforts here as often times these things are not covered, or are if they are covered than the surface is barely scratched.

The book is geared towards intermediate players looking to, well, reach the next level although its principals are pretty solid and valuable for players at any level. Realistically, much of it would probably go over the heads of readers who don’t have a certain amount of experience under their belts. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it, though, because anyone who’s open to learning could very well find something useful in it. What it comes down to is that this book fills in some of the gaps left by most other instructional materials available.

—
PS: I’m more or less settled in in Tulsa now. I’ve rebuilt my website and created a new one called Classical Guitar Tulsa which is primarily to advertise my lessons, but I am considering adding a blog to it where I can post info about local classical guitar related events. It’s just not yet clear to me how often there are any local classical guitar related events to post about…

The Norton Manual of Music Notation

Posted on June 4, 2011 by William Bajzek

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, but there are a lot of subtle elements that can help clue us in on what’s going on when we don’t have time to process each symbol individually. Spacing is a big one. A lot of computer-generated scores that I’ve seen online have poor spacing and it makes them more difficult to read than they should be.

The Norton Manual of Music Notation is a great book on how to write music properly and quickly.  Although its focus is on hand-written music, its principals apply to any western music notation. I recommend all musicians learn to recognize and apply these ideas, through this book or other similar ones, in order to make sure we have quality written input for our music making.

Quick tip

Posted on May 27, 2011 by William Bajzek

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 Tulsa, OK, then unpacking and getting my bearings, I haven’t had much time to think about blogging. I promise to get back to it ASAP.

Here’s a quick tip. An hour before my guitar duo’s last gig, I had a mishap with my nail file and basically stabbed myself in the quick, under my left pinky nail. It was painful and bloody.

I took my duo partner’s advice and put vitamin E oil on it, including under the nail as best as I could. It helped the wound heal within the next day, but it also dulled the pain considerably. I was able to play the gig without any trouble.

See you next week

Posted on May 6, 2011 by William Bajzek

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 Rolf Lislevand playing a Chaconne by de Visee on Theorbo.

Sustained notes within a line

Posted on April 29, 2011 by William Bajzek

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 know about it.

Classical guitar is a rather percussive instrument with quick decay, and often times the music we play has notes written within a line which are far longer than the instrument will actually sustain. Yet, when you hear this music played by a great guitarist (whose expensive guitar may or may not offer an extra millisecond of sustain), the line sounds unbroken.

There are tricks for increasing sustain, vibrato can help, but this is what really makes it work. You need to match the next note to the memory of the attack and tone of the sustained note. Otherwise, if you accent it too much or too little, you may give the impression that you’re starting a new phrase.

Also, sometimes (especially in baroque or renaissance music), a voice can disappear for several measures before returning. To my ears, it’s particularly effective when, for example, a piece with three voices sounds like they’re the same three voices throughout. This doesn’t mean there can’t be dynamics or variation in the tone color, it’s a matter of intention and attention to detail. I noticed this effect a lot with Paul Galbraith’s Bach recordings.

What it all boils down to is that you should make a goal of matching the sound your create with the instrument with the intention you’ve got in your head. Then you just need to listen a lot to great music and educate your imagination.

–

PS: I’ve concluded my video project, as I have to finish moving out of my house and am just too busy for the next few days. I will keep posting music I work on periodically, so please subscribe to my Youtube channel.

Here’s a link to the playlist with all 13 videos I made this month.

Get off to a good start

Posted on April 22, 2011 by William Bajzek

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 well or better than ones I’ve worked on for months or years. It’s not comfortable to admit that, but now that I know this, I can make progress and hopefully help others who are in the same boat.

You see, usually I would sight read through various pieces I liked from time to time, to gauge my readiness for a given piece. If I could play all of it, I would decide it was OK to start learning it. 
The problem was, I had unwittingly already started learning it in a lazy and unfocused manner and I’d probably ignored the fingerings, missed some dynamic markings, etc, figuring it was OK because I would address them when I started learning the piece for real. But I’d built in some habits already, and then readying a piece for performance was a process of unlearning the errors and shaping the piece the way I wanted it. 
Well, I’ve had no time for that, so I had to just decide on an overall interpretation for the piece, break it down into manageable chunks and then commit to getting them to sound how I wanted ASAP. Then I could put the whole thing together and refine things from a more solid state of preparation.
The lesson is this: The more attention paid and intention invested in the details at the beginning of the process, the quicker, better, and more consistent the results. 

Video project

Posted on April 15, 2011 by William Bajzek

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 a great time with it, and heartily encourage others to give it a try. Here’s a link to my Youtube playlist for this project. I invite you to subscribe to my channel!

Here is my process:

  1. Choose a piece (or related pieces), preferably something relatively simple and unfamiliar to me. They will very in difficulty but will need to be short enough to not require page turning, and should not have more than a few technical difficulties. 
  2. Record myself sightreading it.
  3. Analyze the result; make note of any difficulties, determine interpretation.
  4. Isolate technical issues and practice
  5. Refine interpretation
  6. Record again and post!

The audio will be somewhat close-mic’d (2-3 feet away) and will remain unprocessed.

The end result probably won’t be perfect, but one thing I have learned from performing is that at some point you just have to let the music out into the world. The sooner and more often, the better.

I’ve just started, but here are some random things I have learned or been reminded of so far:
  • Recording yourself is good, especially with video, but doing it frequently is even better. The feedback you get is incredibly helpful.
  • Give yourself a deadline every now and then to help you focus. A recital, open mic, video recording, etc. 
  • I need to pay more attention to my right hand fingerings. I’m surprised by how much I repeat fingers, although left to its own devices, my hand will start alternating once it becomes necessary to achieve the necessary speed.   
  • Left-hand positioning is really important. I don’t think there’s one universally “perfect” position, but if you’re making a shift (for example) make sure you land in a position that’s advantageous for what you’re about to play. 
  • You can learn a lot about your playing by watching your face while you play.