 |
Performance Sharing your stories by putting it all together in performance. To perform you need a Repertoire. A performance can take place with an audience of one. Without emphasis on performing, music students can spend decades waffling about with not-quite-ready pieces and miss out on the ultimate satisfaction of sharing their passion and interest with others. |
 |
Improvisation Making up stories. How do you improvise? Improvisation is not a special or unique gift, every person improvises, every day. Do you always brush your teeth exactly the same way each day? Perhaps you do. Try varying the routine a little, begin on the opposite side of the mouth, or with the lower instead of the upper teeth. This conscious variation of a known routine is improvisation. Put another way,improvisation is telling a familiar story a little bit differently to the last time you told it. To improvise, or tell musical stories in an interesting way you need first a Repertoire. Then you juggle the basic ingredients of the story: Rhythm, Melody and Harmony. |
 |
Repertoire What kind of stories do you want to tell? Music is expressed in styles and genres, each demanding attention to detail and familiarity with its conventions. Examples of genres within Popular music are:Country, Rock, Pop, Folk, Dance, Musical Theatre. Within Classical music you find Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionism etc. Within Jazz: Swing, Latin, Bebop etc. Repertoire development can begin at the first lesson with, for example "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" played on one string (section 10.2.2) as the first part of a 5 tune Nursery Rhyme medley. These tunes can be easily memorised over the first month or so and then the student has a 2min 30 sec performance piece which they can play the rest of their life, adding polish and content as they grow musically. |
 |
Harmony Voices singing together. The guitar belongs to that smaller group of instruments which can create harmony, with two, three, four or even six voices sounding together. The largest family of harmony producing instruments is the keyboard family, and the guitar has the expressive qualities of the string family as well as the harmonic abilities the keyboard family. |
 |
Melody Sing a song on the guitar. Most instruments are melody instruments, playing one note at a time. The guitar is capable of very expressive and fluid melody playing, having much in common with the string family (violin, viola, cello, contrabass). |
 |
Technique Technique is best defined as the ability to express musical thoughts on your instrument. No less,no more. Anything that doesn't help you get your message across can be discarded. That still leaves plenty to do! The technique you want to develop also depends on what kind of story you want to tell on the instrument (what style of music). |
 |
Rhythm Rhythm is the source. Musical rhythm is movement in sound. It has analogues with movement in architecture and art, except that music has the added dimension of movement in time. Just in this respect alone music can claim to be the art form that most closely relates to the experience of being human. |
This article demonstrates subjects from "Guitar playing and how it Works" (3rd edn) by Peter Inglis. (ISBN: 9780980459203). The book shows how guitar performance skills can be developed to a very high standard by any average person.
(c) 2009 by Peter Inglis. All rights reserved.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
