Pillow Fight

Well, I've found that the fingering is easier with my pillow-classical-position solution, but now my back is starting to hurt after about an hour. That's not good. I'm going to bring it up with my teacher next week to see if what I'm doing is more harmful than helpful. It might still be better than the standard foot rest that you can buy.

VS.

Physical Considerations

Well, I talked to my teacher about these physical challenges, and we worked on a couple of the pieces in my lesson. After that I felt better and thought I might be able to manage the fingering after all, with some work.

Since then, I thought I might try for two weeks to use the classical guitar position. Instead of a stool or one of those fancy leg raisers, though, I opted for a pile of pillows, a more comfortable choice, I've found. This position seems more comfortable for my hands, too, although my arm gets tired from being held up higher.

I've been working on thumb position for both hands, too, and have concluded that playing guitar is a very physical activity. Who knew?

Fretting about Fingers

Well, yesterday I tried out some of those new pieces and unfortunately, some of them are currently beyond my capability--my fingers can't make the necessary configuration. That's kind of discouraging because I'm not sure there's a workaround for that. I may end up having to buy a different guitar. Ah, well, I'll see what my teacher says this week.

Future Looking Bright

Looking ahead to some of the pieces I will be learning in coming weeks, I'm happy they are going to be pretty and somewhat complex. Just what I need to be learning!

There is, for instance, a nice Bach fugue and a Prelude in A minor, both pretty and fun to play.

My Right-Hand Man

Yesterday I worked on the right hand exercises my teacher gave me. They look simple--various kinds of arpeggios--but they are actually somewhat difficult to play because they require coordination of fingers. I think, too, that they require an automatic action, as typing does: doing it without thinking about how to do it, relying on muscle to react quickly. Because such an exercise increases quickness, I think.

I found a YouTube video of an unknown guitarist playing the exercises, created by Mauro Giuliani, who lived and worked in Italy in the early 19th century:

Below is his portrait, and the link to a website dedicated to him: Giuliani. The site contains sheet music for all his works and audio/video performances of some of the pieces.

Mauro Giuliani

Notes Without Rest

This week, I learned I need to land on the notes at exactly the right time so as to give the maximum value to the previous note, to let the resonance continue for the full duration. This diagram (below) of note values does not really convey the sound of a note. After playing the note, the listener should hear it for the length of the time the note dictates. That means that the player must allow the note to reach its full length before stopping it. Stop the note prematurely and you have essentially introduced a rest, which means you have changed the notation and the sound of the piece.

So, for instance, a half note, which normally looks like the note on the left, would, if its length were depicted, look like the one on the right.

What that means in playing the note is that once you play it, you shouldn't stop its sound prematurely. I was doing that by putting my finger on the string prior to playing it, in order to be prepared to pluck it at the appropriate time. Wrong! Putting my finger on it silenced it until I sounded the next note. So what I have to do instead is to prepare to pluck it without touching it, to pounce on the string at the last moment. Not easy, but more effective. I've been working on it and it's coming along.