Category: Right Hand

Three Fingering Tips for Villa Lobos’s Etude Nº2

Published on by Leo GarciaLeave a comment

If you all were inspired (or recovered) from watching Ekachai Jearakul whip off Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Etude Nº2, you may find this post helpful. While I was a student at the New England Conservatory, the second half of one of my degree recitals was simply Villa-Lobos’ Twelve Etudes. While some of the etudes are manageable, others require relentless and careful practice, and they all have moments that can fill endless practice hours with frustration. To add to the matter, I was studying with the great Eliot Fisk and despite all of his valuable advice and help, watching him display what was possible on a regular basis conjured both extreme inspiration and a sense of hopelessness at achieving such a level of comfort with these pieces. Needless to say, the year preceding that recital, I was immersed in a figurative amazonian finger jungle and found my own way of surviving.

For those working on this particular etude, there are a few spots where I found less obvious fingerings less problematic. These solutions are personal but if the spots have been frustrating for any of you, give the following solutions a try.

Measure 3 (repeats not counted)

In order to increase the resonance, I like having the 3rd and 2nd strings open on this one so I shift to 5th position to enable this. There are a few alternate right hand fingerings to explore but I prefer the 1st.

villa-lobos-2-alt-fingerings

Measures 10-12

In this solution, guide fingers are highlighted in red. While the right hand solution is personal, I like switching to rest-stroke on the highest note of the run. If you prefer to play free-stroke, you might choose to switch to 1st position by playing the first note of measure 12 on the 1st string open and using that to shift. The second finger would still work as a great guide in this situation.villa lobos 2 alt fingerings 2.jpg

Measures 21-22

In this example, ending the repeat with a slight alteration makes a noticeable difference in playing measure 22. Again, I’ve included some alternate right hand fingerings for exploration but I prefer the 1st.

villa lobos 2 alt fingerings 3.jpg

Hope this helps!

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Artist Spotlight: Ekachai Jearakul

Published on by Leo Garcia1 Comment

I had the pleasure of taking both my boys to a private concert given by the phenomenal young Thai classical guitarist, Ekachai Jearakul, last spring just south of San Francisco. We drove through monsoon like rains and wind to get to a house sitting on the edge of the pacific ocean. It was worth it. The concert was hosted by Richard Patterson, the director of the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts and their Dynamite Guitar Series for the supporters of the series.

The highlights of the concert were performances of a seldom heard but highly captivating piece by Leo Brouwer titled Rito de los Orishas about the invocation of voodoo gods, several Luigi Legnani Caprices that displayed a Paganini-like virtuosity, and a piece dedicated to Ekachai by Welsh composer Stephen Goss titled Sonata Capriccioso.

Keep an eye out for his performances. They are exciting and worth watching!

Tremolo, Part 1

Published on by Leo Garcia1 Comment

Over the years, I have never regretted working on tremolo pieces and technique. From early recordings of John Williams playing Barrios’ Una limosna por el amor de Diós and Un Sueño en la floresta to Pepe Romero playing Francisco Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra and Sueño, these pieces are not only special but evocative in ways other instruments cannot replicate. The greatest players manage to give the illusion of an unbroken melodic line while maintaining a well-controlled accompaniment.

There are many skills that must come together to achieve a beautiful sounding tremolo. The most important ones are rhythm precision, consistent intensity from note to note, uniform tone, and speed. One of my favorite guitarists and dear friend, Marco Tamayo, once mentioned that the result of rhythmic regularity and precision created the illusion of speed. I’ll post various ways of working on some of these skills but we’ll look at rhythmic precision first.

 

The following set of exercises help develop rhythmic control by practicing the tremolo pattern (pami) precisely within the whole of the main beat. When going through the exercises try to remember the inherent hierarchy of the meter and aim to feel p as the main beat. Start slowly with your metronome set to the sixteenth or eighth note. One way to truly feel “in the pocket” with the rhythmic subdivisions is to say the rhythmic breakdown aloud as you play (tee-ka-tee-ka, one-ee-and-ah, etc…). Spend a lot more than one repetition on each pattern. Remember, even Steven!

Exercise 1

Concise Technique Tremolo 1.jpg

Exercise 2

Concise Technique Tremolo 2.jpg

Exercise 3

Concise Technique Tremolo 3.jpg

Exercise 4

Concise Technique Tremolo 4.jpg

After spending a lot of time on the above exercises, you can expand them by varying the string and displacing the thumb onto adjacent or distant strings.

The next set of exercises help develop uniform intensity by changing the initial finger of the tremolo so that every right hand finger within the pattern has a moment to shine in the downbeat spotlight. Think of it like shifting accents in a subtle way.

Exercise 5

Concise Technique Tremolo 1b.jpg

Exercise 6

Concise Technique Tremolo 1c.jpg

Exercise 7

Concise Technique Tremolo 1d.jpg

Again, vary the thumb’s string as you start to gain proficiency and spend lots of time on the weaker patterns. Good luck!

Legato and Dissonance

Published on by Leo GarciaLeave a comment

Creating a beautiful melody on the guitar is challenging due to the fact that every note you pluck decays from that moment on. If you play two consecutive melodic notes on one string, the touch requires extreme precision to give the impression of legato. At certain times, it is easier to achieve a sense of legato by using cross string fingerings. But there is a fine timing line between achieving beautiful legato and dissonance with cross strings and it requires the use of controlled damping – sometimes with the left hand and sometimes with the right.

Here is a great example from Leo Brouwer’s beautiful piece Un dia de noviembre. For a benign light passage there is a lot to think about musically.

Dia de Noviembre Ex.1.jpg

Notice that in the example above muting occurs the moment after the new melodic note turns on. This is a great way to exploit the resonance of the guitar. Of course, there are many variations on this, including one where you would turn off the notes simultaneously with the entrance of the new note but this would achieve a less legato line.

Coming soon, I’m going to post a workout based on Leo Brouwer’s Axioms!

 

Leo Brouwer’s Axioms

Published on by Leo Garcia1 Comment

Years ago, I came across an article on a Spanish site guitarra.artepulsado.com posted by Oscar López who had taken notes during a summer course with the great Cuban composer and guitarist, Leo Brouwer. The title of the post was Axiomas básicos de Leo Brouwer. I found the word file and thought I’d translate it for all non-Spanish speakers. It provides a wealth of advice. I’ve added a few commentaries below to expand the ideas a bit. Hope they are helpful.

Warm Up

Use chromatic octaves for the left hand and arpeggios and rasgueados for the right hand. Play close to the body in higher resonant positions upon starting your practice.

*I think this may mean to start your practice without having the left hand in an extended position. Starting in higher positions is less stressful for the left hand.

Speed and Scales

Use fixed, non-shifting positions in the left hand that are close to the body (i.e. higher positions) to play short bursts of notes. Play bursts in short crescendos (soft to loud or light to intense). Start on one string, then expand to two strings. Add one note at a time and pause between each mini-scale.

Add color and articulations to scales.

Left Hand Shifting

Left-hand notes should be played staccato (*perhaps he means before a shift). Focus on the arrival (not the departure) as you shift from 1st to 2nd, 1st to 3rd, 1st to 4th, etc., position.

Left Hand Independence

With a fixed first finger bar, play slurs and scales across all the strings with the rest of the fingers. Try all combinations possible.

Memory

To avoid embedding errors, do not start memorizing at the very beginning of learning a piece.

Fingerings

There are never definitive fingerings.

*What Brouwer most likely means to covey here is that fingerings evolve throughout the lifetime of learning a piece. Inevitably, we discover better, more efficient, more musical, more interesting ways to play passages and discard or change older fingerings as our familiarity with the piece increases.

Color

Exploit the three primary sonorous zones of the guitar: over the sound hole (resonant zone), over right part of the rosette (resonant and clarity zone), and near the bridge (clarity zone).

Harmonics

Do not pluck harmonics diagonally.

More Advice

  • The position of the guitar to your body should remain consistent.
  • Remember that the 2nd and 3rd strings tend to be the weakest so we must compensate when necessary.
  • Pluck consonant chords with no arpeggiation. Pluck rare (dissonant) chords with arpeggiation for clarity.
  • Velocity contains impulse and direction.
  • Cadential ornaments should be in time.
  • Resonance is at the heart of the guitar.
  • Vibrato is used for intensity not rest.
  • The thumb (left-hand) acts as a pivot during slurs.
  • Forte is found at the limit of a beautiful sound.
  • Breathe between phrases and project energy towards the end.
  • During rasgueados the energy is channeled towards the 1st string.
  • Anything that is repeated should be varied. Change either the color or the volume or the timbre.

The Best of YouTube 2

Published on by Leo Garcia2 Comments

Winner of many of the top guitar competitions, French guitarist Thomas Viloteau needs no introduction to all of you following the younger generation of highly gifted classical guitarists.

Here is a video where Thomas talks about the subtleties in playing a pimami in Mauro Giuliani’s Etude 5, Nº48 (sheet music link). For those of you who do not speak french, I find that speeding up the video to read the subtitles is a quick way to get a great lesson in a fraction of the time!

In the following video, he discusses various techniques for enabling and disabling resonances on the guitar.

And in this last one, he talks about SPEED!

Hope that inspires you all. Thomas has a great dvd and cd and you can visit his website thomasviloteau.com and find out more about what he is up to. I’m going there right now to purchase his book on technique!

Comfort and Speed in Arpeggios

Published on by Leo GarciaLeave a comment

I thought I would take a moment to stress how important it is to know how to apply the principles from the last post to identify and problem solve mechanical weaknesses in repertoire you are working on. Because I am working on a lot of music by Agustín Barrios Mangoré (1885-1944), I thought I would use two examples of passages you all may be familiar with. I have played the music of the great Paraguayan virtuoso for decades and I still find it fun to work on. I especially enjoy his works with perpetual motion activity. Barrios’ Estudio de concierto, Las abejas, La catedral’s allegro, Danza paraguaya, and passages from his famous waltzes are perfect pieces to spend hours on. So, for this post, we’ll focus on using rhythms to strengthen our understanding and facility of the patterns in these pieces.

Estudio de Concierto

The following example illustrates 5 rhythms in which to work the arpeggio pattern for Barrios’ Estudio de Concierto. Begin by choosing the right hand fingering that most suits your technique. Whether you know the piece or not, practicing each measure in these rhythms will help develop the comfort of playing the arpeggio faster than if you were to only play in a straight rhythm, though it is necessary to do this as well (!).

Arpeggio Fingering                                Rhythm 1                                  Rhythm 2right hand barrios rhythms.jpg

Rhythm 3                                                   Rhythm 4                                  Rhythm 5

right hand barrios rhythms 2.jpg

Vals Op. 8, Nº4

Here is the campanella passage from one of my favorite pieces. This passage deserves more writing but for now I will limit myself to rhythms.

right hand barrios rhythms 3 vals.jpg

Because I know this piece well, I use rhythms to warm up and will often play through the entire section of the piece in as many as 16 rhythms. Here are four that I like to start with:

Rhythm 1                                     Rhythm 2                      Rhythm 3                     Rhythm 4right hand barrios rhythms 4 vals.jpg

Do not feel obligated to go through the entire passage. Instead, spend some time repeating certain groupings in an attempt to make them feel natural and ultimately easy. You may find that you are better at some and that certain patterns remain sticky. Work on the sticky ones.

right hand barrios rhythms 5 vals.jpg

And, if you are not exhausted by this point, here are some additional groupings (notated in shorthand) rotating two eighth notes (represented by a space) through sixteenth notes:

pi  am  pi, pia  mp  i, pi  ampi , p  iamp  i, pi  a  mpi

Or rotating a triplet of sixteenths with 3 eighth notes:

p  i  a  mpi, p  i  ampi  , p  iamp  i  , piam  p  i

Or Using only one dotted eighth note (two spaces):

p   iampi, pia   mpi, piampi   , pi   ampi

I hope this helps. If there are any technical questions you are thinking about in your practice please leave a comment. I’m thinking about a post answering some common questions that I keep getting. And, in the future, I’m going to try to include a video to supplement the posts when I have the time. Until then!

 

 

 

Developing Arpeggio Speed

Published on by Leo Garcia1 Comment

There are some basic principles that I think most guitar students should know to develop speed and flexibility when practicing right hand arpeggio patterns. These principles are applicable to other areas of technical development, so once you become familiar with them, you can try to apply them to your scales and to difficult passages in your repertoire.

Assuming you have a decent base, a clear stroke, and you’ve logged sufficient hours of basic arpeggio practice, the next step is to explore them to uncover weaknesses and discover your own limitations and strengths.

For all of the following ideas, spend time on each one as if were the only one to master, stick with them for longer than you may have the patience for because careful and consistent repetition really helps. I’ll illustrate the principles using pima across strings 4, 3, 2, and 1. This is a default position for your right hand that should used ALL the time in arpeggio practice and through ridiculous amounts of practice, it should start to feel like home. Once pima is mastered try the other combinations of four fingers across four strings: piam, pmia, pmai, paim, pami.

Accents

Simply play through each trying to accent the note indicated. You can exaggerate the follow-through of the stroke to achieve this or turn the exercise on its head by playing all unaccented notes in a more relaxed fashion.

right hand pima accents.jpg

Downbeat Rotation

Though related to accents, I swear that when I start this arpeggio on m it feels out of balance. I guess I’ll go work on that right now.

right hand pima rotate downbeat.jpg

Active Preparation

I like to think that if my finger is on the string it will pluck that there is no way José that I will miss that note. So, guess what I try to do all the time? I try to simultaneously pluck and prepare the next pluck so that I’m theoretically always prepared and waiting on the string. Practice landing on the x but do not pluck.

right hand pima prep focus.jpg

Meter

I love doing this. Take a 4-note arpeggio and play it through as a continuous triplet until the first plucked note (p) cycles back into the downbeat.

right hand pima asymmetrical 2.jpg

or try this one:

right hand pima asymmetrical.jpg

Bursts

Set the metronome to a tempo that is near your limit or beyond. Think of it like a mini-sprint. Exert hyper-control when you go slow so that the bursts remain as accurate as possible.

right hand pima bursts.jpg

Rhythm

Related to bursts but meant more to develop rhythmic flexibility, here are the basic six rhythms I use (there are MANY more) all the time when warming up.

right hand pima rhythms.jpg

Good luck!

 

Resting the Right Hand

Published on by Leo GarciaLeave a comment

Apoyando, the word used to describe rest-stroke in Spanish literally means to lend support to and whether it’s rest-stroke with the fingers or thumb, the strings should support inactive or transient fingers while others pluck out pretty passages. Between you and me, my right hand needs all the support it can get. So with that in mind, there are moments while playing where you should search for opportune moments to provide support for your right hand by resting the fingers on strings as you play. Resting right hand fingers during play imparts many technical and musical benefits:

  1. STABILITY – Fingers in motion gain stability as they are moving against a fixed object (i.e. try kicking a soccer ball with both feet in the air vs. kicking the soccer ball with a solidly planted foot).
  2. FINGER INDEPENDENCE – Though this takes more time to develop, it is fundamentally important to develop the skill of moving a finger without exerting influence on the movement of an adjacent (or distant) finger.
  3. REFERENCE POINT – Wouldn’t it be nice for the right hand fingers to know where they are in relation to the strings?
  4. REST – Fingers recently held in motion can release tension by waiting on a string.
  5. MUSICAL TOOL – A resting right hand finger can inadvertently or intentionally silence sympathetic resonance or a note bleeding into another note. We can harness this new found super power to control voice ringing more accurately to reflect the intentions and articulations of our interpretation or, heaven forbid, the indications of the composer while benefitting from the above points.

For example if you are playing a p i m arpeggio, could a find a string to rest on? Could you plant all fingers before executing the first note? Or in playing Villa-Lobos’ Etude Nº1, could a rest on string 1 until it is necessary for engagement and then re-plant a quarter note or half-note later? When strumming with i or m, could p rest on a lower string? Think of the analogous situation to the left hand principle of connecting two pinches. While playing an arpeggio can we both play and plant the next finger to insure that our right hand is not floating? Is an arpeggio an opportunity to plant all the fingers before execution or to sequentially plant as the fingers play?

Be on the lookout for right hand’s absolute lack of contact with the strings while playing and you will likely find many opportunities for improving your right hand’s technique.

 

Grisha Goryachev

Published on by Leo GarciaLeave a comment

If given three wishes, I think one would be to play flamenco like Grisha.

I remember searching out Grisha’s posts when Eliot Fisk’s wife, and phenomenal guitarist in her own right, Zaira Meneses showed me a video of Grisha playing Enteban Sanlucar’s Panaderos. I was floored.

Lucky for us, here he is demonstrating some useful scale tips.

And, here is that video of him playing Sanlucar’s Panaderos:

Part 2 of Modes coming soon….