Learn Classical Guitar
I am sure someone else has come up with this before but during my sight reading research I developed this little exercise that I call “Six String Scales”. The goal of this exercise is to practice finding notes all over the fingerboard and also reinforce your knowledge of key signatures along the way. Here’s how [...]
Wouldn’t life be boring if everything were perfect? I am not going to waste my time preaching that making mistakes is OK and that too many classical musicians are obsessed with perfection. Honestly, I don’t think it will make much of a difference. What I will say is what I love about live performance. [...]
The 120 Right Hand Studies were written by the Italian virtuoso Mauro Giuliani (1781 – 1829) in the early nineteenth century, and the fact that they are still widely used today is a testament to their quality. Using a simple alternation between a C Major chord and a G Dominant Seventh chord, Giuliani has come [...]
Vibrato on the guitar can make a note really come ‘alive’. It can make the note sustain for a longer time, give it more character and achieve a ‘singing’ quality that works wonderfully in melodic passages. Vibrato on the guitar is different to vibrato on violin, viola, cello or double bass. These bowed string instruments [...]
Tone production on the classical guitar is perhaps one of the most important, and most challenging aspects of learning the instrument. Many of us were attracted to the instrument in the first place because of the beautiful sound the guitar can produce. Creating a good sound on the classical guitar requires the player to work [...]
Purchase the score for this lesson: Etude 7 – Op. 60 $0.99 This study was one of my all time favorites when I was a young whipper snapper. There is something very exciting about the driving harmonic rhythm and the moto perpetuo writing for the right hand. Etude 7 doesn’t have to be played fast [...]
Feelin Slurry? Here are some slur scales that I came up with that really give a good work out to the left hand and also are quite fun to play! You will notice that the scale takes on a pattern (except in first position) that can be repeated. Once you have completed one slur scale, [...]
Our ears can often play tricks on us and one of the harshest truths we have to come to terms with as guitarists is…we don’t always sound as good as we think we do. By no means should we become hyper-critical of our own playing but in order to improve we must be aware of [...]
With multiple voices swimming around in a piece of guitar music it is all too easy to leave strings ringing, long after the note has finished on the page. The campanella quality of the instrument, which is one of the guitar’s defining characteristics, provides a beautiful sonority, however, in order to create distinct musical lines [...]