Re: Different advice for beginners? Revisited... Chapter and Verse

On Apr 7, 9:41 pm, Dicerous <Dicer...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 7, 11:28 am, Che <Comanchetr...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





I just returned from four days out of town.  While catching up on the
NG I read this thread

Folks, the answers and remarks in the thread tell a reader just about
as much as he would know about water if you told him it was wet! It
seems to me this happens quite often here in the RMCG Waste Land.

The answer is simple:  When the hand right tip joints are relaxed it
makes for a very indistinct sound...does it not?  Teachers, review Leo
Brouwer's "Lesson No. 1"  " Estudio # 1".  Note the notation marked "
cantado el bajo" note the dynamics.....EXCEPT when the top line is
ACCENTED the right and fingers SHOULD be very relaxed at the tip
joints to produce that indistinct sound....the more important distinct
sound is made with P, in the bass line.

It's not pointless.... it's interpetive technique and knowing when and
where to use it!

Damn it.... LESSON NUMBER 1.. Brouwer!!!!! And I'm not a teacher!!!

I might be even more harsh with poor answers of this sort in the
future ..... you don't have to like it.

Che' ......who ate another Kid Saturday night.

Che,

I've come across an important point with my teachings that I'm not
clever enough to convey to my students.  Namely,  the REALISTIC
expectations of what an audience can hear and the THEORETICAL shadings
of color that playing for oneself and for recordings can come across.
How do you teach your students to be *pragmatic* about their attitude
towards coloring?

David-

O.K. In truth I don't know how to answer this exact question. Your
question presupposes there is a difference between our expectations of
what's done in public as opposed to how we play at home.

I clearly recall being in David Perry's place a day or so after a
concert by Carlos Barbosa-Lima. Several guitarist, much better than
I, were discussing why Carlos struggled to produce harmonics that most
of the audience couldn't hear... it was rather useless. I very well
remember the word "Useless". I also recalled seeing and sorta'
hearing those harmonics. To me _intent_ was all I needed. I had no
problems with C B-L's efforts. If you were listening and watching you
_got_ the harmonics, imo. I didn't say anything at the time.... Big
Guitarist you know....the kind that could eat you in a second so I
didn't say anything.

I don't recall ever leaving something out because I was being
pragmatic.... I'd reach for the very best and sometimes not make it
but it was my intent. I think intent counts. A lot has changed since
my time. I didn't use a mike or an amp unless it was really needed
and the house system. We all make those big decisions at some point
in our life. I elected to play in places that worked for the guitar
in bringing the listener _in to the guitar_ as opposed to _playing to_
people. It's the difference in _speaking with_ someone and _speaking
to_ someone.... that element of intimate conversation which the guitar
does so well.

In practice, I once had a studio/home in what was the swimming pool
and shower rooms of an old hotel. The swimming pool had be covered
with plywood for safetly and worked well for me. I sat in the middle
of the plywood with a huge soundboard under me. You know what those
tile walls and ceilings sound like kicking back your tones. Often I
would "dream" a color and only manage to find a hint of it at first.
Hombre, if I got a taste of that I just kept working and sure enough
it would show up...maybe brief at first but when I began to expect the
sound/color and it was in my imagination well, there it was. In time
I could take it outside the studio and get the same effect in a good
room. Often when we have _intent_ and reach for things we bring the
listener with us.... and that's the point, is it not.

Another thing, when listener's have had their belief system properly
suspended they will reach with you and all's well, don't you think?
I'd suggest a student "Go for it" how can it hurt to do your very
best?

Lot's could be said about all this, pro and con, but that's how I
worked.

Here's a little something I wrote in color some 8 or 9 years ago. If
might give you an idea how I worked colors:


Prelude KMFA

He wanders the airwaves, and waded the web in search of the music
machines.
The alluring guitarist. The one who would tell it like it is, like it
or not. He
raised his arms in vain expectation to Hermes, high on Olympus (or
maybe just
slightly buzzed): "O, Hermes and Apollo, master musicians, archer
gods, far
shooting, gods of truth in who no false word ever forms, where is
the musical
machine anyway, huh?

" He strummed a sweet, useless song slowly
on a useless guitar, and in the same motion
extended his arm and pointed east, replying:

"Gone Fishing !" far away from the digital jungle.

Fantasy
Near Rockport

Wading flawlessly through the shallows back and forth, parallel to
the channel
in Deadman's Hole far from the shoreline. The music of the Laguna
Madre surrounds me and I cast my dying
crustacean with the wind into a possible trout hole. For a moment
there is silence- an intermezzo- then,
without warning, there is a break in the calm water, and from its
turbulence rises a
large fin that slices its way through the dark water with a
preternatural whooshing
sound. A large trouts tail is exposed, reducing a blood pumping
shrimp into
one more morning meal. My heart picks up the pace, in this early
morning concerto,
my pulse beating visibly in my wrist below my flannel sleeve. A
solitary heron
patrols the shoreline, head cocked, eyes askance to an inquisitive
rookie (dead fish
swimming). The intermezzo has concluded and the lagoon is in a
frenzied rhythm,
reel drag is screaming. At One with nature, one with music, life is
so simple.

The music cascades through a veil of mist that moves across St.
Charles bay
like a graveyard ghost. I'm standing belly deep in my waders and I
welcome the obscure
breeze that moves unseen through the fog this morning. The feathered
horn section moves in, roseta spoonbills at dawn, with the mummer of
the wind while small waves beat upon the shore in percussive
redundancy. The
sound of the automobiles behind me on the road that holds the lagoon
at bay, drone by
in the dimness of the dawn like bows across a cello. Like the melodic
eloquence of
Piazzolla or exuberant harmony of Asuncion Flores's guarani harp the
terminally
beautiful strains of another useless song, nature provides, on this
most
majestic of mornings, the ultimate in improvisational music.

I let the shrimp do the talking. He bounces on the grassy bottom like
a
skydiver landing on a springboard. His senses are dulling down there
in the cold water,
but he remains strong and determined in these final minutes. Fighting
off a
something with his sharp horn - his legs extend and are committed to
battle (come and get
me bitch), he fights for his life, looking like some medieval menace
in his
translucent armor plate, with a # 1/0 gold hook through his head. )

I wade back towards a tiny pencil dot on the map, the shoreline of
historic old
Lamar with Texas oldest tree. I'll be damned if a dowdy brown pelican
bobbing on the dance floor doesn't
follow and nods his head to me. I move out of the water and put my
gear away. I stand back and have one last
look at the musical pulse of this enchanted morning. The whole place
is swaying and
crooning in the breeze. The egrets in the trees look like dancers.

"Wayside
Elegy"

The roar of an uncorked, big V8, the sickening thump, the drunken
rebel yell. I
didn't see how it happened. Wearily I pulled off my waders near the
roadside. As usual, there was a body in
the road, the body lay still, a thin trickle of blood making its way
between tiny
cracks in the pavement. The early morning quiet seemed to suck all
life into
itself. The eyes stared into the void above, the mouth showed no
expression.

Usually I don't mind seeing an armadillo casualty lose the battle
against cars,
But this one was different, he had a companion. His life was
simple... something we
all desire. Still as lead near the center yellow line, his body still
intact, a
complete being, physically and spiritually.

Staring from the brush... was a significant other. It's two beady
eyes barely
visible next to pointed ears and among striped scales. Their
prehistoric past was clear. The warm one
wobbled over to the cold one, it was his closest one... a brother
mother uncle wife grandfather... whoever it
was... loved him.

A nudge from a pink wet nose seemed to ask, What happened? Wake up,
move, lets
go! It's time to go root for palmetto bugs, I'm hungry. The wife,
climbed up onto
the fatality and bounced, as if to perform the Hymlic Maneuver or
CPR. Seeing the
mother... still praying, pushing, and prodding around the lost
armadillo
child... for such a long time... deeply touched me. Seen in the
exchange between the
living and the dead... was... fragility, speed, compassion, the love
of one life for
another, a close relation... lost... some say... forever.

As a soldier on a battlefield, I lit a smoke, just another death on
the side of
the road but I saw the armored medic watching from the tall grass.
She shook her
head... no. I carried his body to the weed bed, where I lay it
tenderly on the
moist morning soil, hat in hands, a pile of moss under the head.
After I
stepped back and away the comrade advanced and remained by the side
of it's fallen
countryman, only to be disappointed. He was gone and nothing could
be
done...but remember, they foraged together in the simple life.

I nodded towards her before leaving....... those sad little eyes
spoke prehistoric mute agony.

Guarani
Music

" Accidental Guitar and Tone Casualties Absurdito On the
Theme of Armadillito"

Why do armadillos get hit by cars so often? Two reasons. First,
armadillos are nocturnal. It is hard to see animals
by the side of the road at night, so it is harder for motorists to
avoid hitting them. Second, armadillos jump up in the air when they
feel threatened. This often works to startle a predator, but against
an automobile it doesn't work; they
just end up jumping right into the front or underside of the car, with
disastrous results. Tourist driving by wonder why armadillos take
naps beside the road.

Rockport and Lamar are old Texas coastal fishing and shrimp fleet
barrio towns turned into something like an artist colony. Set amongst
abandoned warehouses and rusted shrimp boats half-sunken in the murky
waters and piers. *** steel walls, corrugated roofs, even bits of
the boats and warehouses mix together which are painted in a soft
geometry of green, red, orange, white, blue and yellow. I like the
blues and retro yellow.

To express hope through color, it takes nature to show the artist
vision.

Good-bye, Mr. Armadillo

Che'








.

Loading