#techandtone

Am I Ready?

I am in a phase when I am learning music I wrote from September 2019 to January 2020. It’s a blast. I want to record soon, but am I ready? Never, of course! But my time is limited and so I struggle to look deep and deeper into my expressive capabilities. As always I want this to be my best ever…yeah, yeah, it’s a silly notion, but it’s there. How can I do it?

Let’s go Deeper

I go to great lengths these days to make sure my expressive markings are clear and thorough on my new compositions. In my early years as a composer, coming out of two decades of focusing on early music that had no marking whatsoever, I was committed to the idea that the performer had total freedom, and total responsibility to be intelligent, responsive to the musical language, etc. Tempo, dynamics, etc. were not to be ignored, but rather puzzled through and creatively crafted.

Along the way, I became aware that modern players need guidance  particularly when they don’t have a lot of time to prepare a score. Large guitar ensembles or even smaller chamber groups need assistance, and so I changed and started to enjoy the ability to finely craft what I was doing. Improvements in Finale software made it gratifying when listening to a few of the more authentic midi sounds of flute, English horn, cello and violin.

I have also been working intensely on a pamphlet to guide students and professionals in the special techniques  and demands of polyphonic music. Some of these ideas (presented in Polyphonic Exercises) are very useful in crafting dynamics and many expressive devices as well. I have some personal concepts of particular markings, such as when I write mezzo piano I mean to play sul tasto. Fortes I generally intend to be more ponticello to enhance the quickness and drama of louder notes, chords and passages. There is more resistance in the string closer to the bridge and the natural response of the hand is to meet that resistance with more force. As always, these are just guidelines. a starting point for true inspiration in performance.

In this example, I use one of the suggestions I make in Polyphonic Exercises: on each crescendo I move from sul tasto to sul ponticello to enhance the growth and expressive potential. So at the beginning of the second measure, the high A is played with my a finger close to the bridge, while my thumb is extended far to the left, over the sound whole, so as to be soft both timbrally and dynamically. The two staccatos in the third measure contrast markedly with the legato that follows on exactly the same notes and the staccatos that follow need to be very clear.

sample of expressive marks from Of the Spheres

Teaching Myself

So, all that is written into the score. Am I doing it? NOT! That’s where the teacher comes back — the teacher being me the composer! Telling me the performer what to do. But I often ignore or alter the markings myself! Come on — the composer is not God, certainly he couldn’t mean all these things literally! Sometimes this leads to a change in the concept and I do alter markings, but often I simply need to pay attention. So “going deeper” is no big mystery, it’s just a refinement of attention to be totally present in the sound I am making now. If it’s soft, how soft? Go softer. Should it be a pianissimo, or just a piano. If mezzo piano is sul tasto, what is pianissimo? That’s a rhetorical question for you, but my opinion is that it can be whatever you want, determined by the gesture, the phrasing, the musical intention. Extreme sul ponticello can be used for a very light free stroke that does NOT meet the resistance, but rather passively submits to it. What timbre might be most supportive of the dynamic, the mood, the intent.

Ultimately, the performer has all power, and she is right, the composer is NOT GOD, simply a human trying to do the best they can at the moment. But those highly pondered markings should not be totally ignored and can in fact be used for real inspiration and contemplation. They should inspire the desire to always be searching for deeper truths about the music and ourselves. All in all, I’m going deeper into the endless subtleties that are possible in music, on the guitar, in the mind, the concept, the execution. Following instincts can be good, but sometimes the mental process can examine new possibilities and lead to creative solutions as well.

I will let this tutorial video on thumb technique speak for itself. Here’s a quick overview of the principles involved:

The thumb has three joints and is closely tied to the position and movements of the wrist and arm all the way to the root of the clavicle and the sternum in the front, the shoulder blade in the back

The subtle adjustments of those bones and joints allows the thumb to play either rest or free stroke and achieve a great variety of timbre and dynamic.

As with all the beginning pieces in Sketches I, I have designated that melodies are played rest stroke and accompaniments are free stroke. The purpose is to clearly define the multi-layered aspects of all music. It prepares one to be more conscious of the role each note, each voice, and each texture has to do with creating a compelling and intelligent performance.

These same principles greatly inform the rendering of polyphonic works as well, those works which are at the root of our precious five centuries of guitar/lute heritage. Those specific techniques are explained in my blog Polyphonic basics | how to make voices clear | Part I and will be more deeply explored in a coming video/blog.

Download a PDF of Thumbs Songs 1 & 2 from Sketches I

Purchase the Sketches I edition here.

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Save the date, please…

It is with great delight we announce that our dear friend and colleague Bob Ward and the Boston Classical Guitar Society will present a concert in my honor this October 25th. The concert of my compositions will feature Bob with Alex Dunn playing Duo Sonata #1; Chris Ladd, guitar and Ása Guðjónsdóttir, violin, on Gryphon, Violin Sonata #1, David William Ross on Cyrcles, Sonata #3, Daniel Acsadi playing Débil del Alba and more.

The concert will be held at the First Lutheran Church at 299 Berklee St. in Boston. Pre-concert talk will begin at 7:30, concert at 8pm. Hope you can make it.    —Frank

Single String Etude #6

Watch the entire playlist at YouTube, or read all the corresponding blogs here.

Review of the basic principles (notes from the edition)

Even in a simple classical etude, melodies cross strings and chordal demands hamper their execution. In the Single String Etudes, all melodies are on one string from open to twelfth fret. Shifting smoothly and using portamento to enhance melodic playing, essential to artful guitar proficiency, is best taught early. The medieval/traditional practice of using a drone, a single tone, as accompaniment (think bagpipes) inspired these six works and allows focus on melody. Accompaniments are on a single string (or 2 or 3 adjacent) strings. Roman numerals denote position in the first, but I suggest you write them in for subsequent etudes. Use the following study suggestions (as appropriate to your level) for the six Single String Etudes and throughout the book.

First, play the scale on the given string; try different fingerings and shifting patterns, i.e: two or three notes per position; don’t just think notes, but think smooth and be aware of your position. Play all melodies rest stroke including thumb in the bass (except #2, #4 is optional), accompanying drones are free stroke and softer, more distant-sounding. Explore portamento when shifting, a soft slide over the departing fret. As I say in the video, keep your LH fingers loose and allow the tip to remain on the fret as you begin to move your wrist and arm to a new position, be reluctant to let go. This roles the tip over the fret as you leave minimizing scraping noise (in the bass) and enhances your legato. Feel the relation of movement between fingers, wrist, arm and shoulder. Use vibrato on longer notes, or even a continuous vibrato through all notes (difficult!, but try this on #5).

Play once ponticello, repeat sul tasto, and then explore a flowing combination of both, requiring comfort in the right hand/arm position on every point on the string from bridge to frets. Laissez vibrer (l.v.) means literally “let vibrate.” Often not notated, l.v. is an essential part of guitar music. It is most obviously used in arpeggios when all the notes of a chord are allowed to ring over each other. It is an art knowing when to use it and when not to. The beauty of a single string melody is that one is never tempted to let a note ring over another and so these six pieces develop good habits of melodic playing. The subtle slide required by position shifts, portamento, is essential to vocal style.

Always listen to what is ringing: is it part of the harmony; is it part of the musical language or intention of the composer; is it a low bass note that should be stopped or a high harmonic caused by sympathetic vibration; does it enhance the structure of the music or does it confuse the harmony?

Thanks to Aaron Green at Vintage Classical Guitars for the use of his gorgeous and rare guitars for these videos.

All Frank A. Wallace editions are ASCAP registered and published by Gyre Music.

In my video/blogs about Single String Etudes I, I repeatedly spoke of rest stroke on melody, free stroke on accompaniment. We discussed the essential roll of the arm adjusting to aid the angle of fingers so that thumb can play rest stroke easily while the fingers use free stroke, and vice versa. The end was to balance melody and accompaniment and allow the music to sing. But what about when there is no accompaniment, only other melodies! This is called polyphony – multi-voiced. The same techniques can be used to accomplish our goal of independent melodies.

It’s not a mystery

The simple exercise in Part I of this video is the result of many years of pondering the technique of polyphonic playing. It’s not a mystery, it is a skill that can be learned. One that will greatly enhance your musicality and make music more fun to play in general. In this video I discuss how to smoothly and artfully use this technique to create a continuous interplay between voices, one rises while the other falls. The basic exercise is written out in this document along with several musical examples that will be demonstrated in a coming video: download Polyphonic Exercises and Examples now and get acquainted with the concept and musical examples, which will be presented in Part II.

  The technique coming up, but first…

The Back Story

In a guest blog for This Is Classical Guitar, I wrote several years ago  about the origins of guitar music:

Where did Narváez’s music come from? Why did he write what he wrote and from what traditions did he emerge? The vihuela de mano repertoire commonly played on the modern guitar is but a tiny portion of the extant repertoire. Seven books by seven different authors contain roughly 700 pieces. Of that, at least half are arrangements (intabulations) of choral repertoire. Most of the rest are fantasías in the choral, or polyphonic style. The few sets of instrumental variations called diferéncias are in fact quite rare and dance music is virtually non-existent.

I was immersed in this music as singer and instrumentalist for 25 years. I developed both a fascination for and deep respect of the music. Much of it is extremely difficult and esoteric by most standards. It is contemplative, and was probably mostly played for the self or a small gathering in a resonant chamber where the soft vihuela could sing robustly and normally short lived notes hung in the air much longer.

A central feature of 16th music is the art of imitation. It is the essence of most large works such as masses and motets by such greats as Josquin des Prez, Palestrina, Gombert, Tallis. And these works are the model for most vihuela repertoire. [The one exception, Luys de Milán, appears to have been less educated in this high art, but, nevertheless, had a flamboyant and effective style of his own.]

An example, the tenor sings a phrase and then the basses sing the exact same relative notes at a different pitch and so on. Even in a choir, if these imitations are not clearly delineated, the piece has little meaning. The dynamic and articulate shaping of the phrase must be nearly identical in all parts.

So how do we do it

Here lies the rub for vihuelists or guitarists playing any such repertoire. How do we make one voice grow (get louder) as another falls (gets softer)? Like this…

As described in the video, if one uses three combination strokes, all the various dynamic combinations can be accomplished. It is crucial to think only about each individual combination at first, before trying to make music. They are: 1) finger loud rest stroke with thumb soft free stroke; 2) finger and thumb equal free strokes; 3) finger soft free stroke with thumb loud rest stroke.

The precise direction of each movement is essential: free strokes are directed slightly upward, away from the string only barely touching it to make a thinner, lighter attack; rest strokes are planted firmly into the rest string in a downward effort to excite the top of the guitar and get not just loud, but solid full tone.

Of course, with growing skill, one can adjust in countless ways to vary angle and timbre, and more subtle gradations of dynamic and attack. The end result is not just a series of unconnected chords, but smooth flowing crescendos and decrescendos at the same time.

Part II will demonstrate this technique in the pieces attached in this document – download Polyphonic Exercises and Examples now and get acquainted with the concept and musical examples.

  Legato melodies sing

Single String Etude #5 provides more opportunity to improve your melodic skills. What are melodic skills? This series of videos and articles offers a simple oversight of various techniques to enhance your playing: legato, portamento, glissando, timbre and more. The music is from the book of simple artistic etudes entitled Sketches I. Purchase a PDF download here.

Knotted together

Legato literally means tied together. I use to explain the concept with my fists butting up to each other. Each hand represents two notes that have no gap between them. So there’s no nail click, no fret buzz, and no silence between the notes.

Then I thought again about the word legato – knotted. In a knot, the two strings are woven together making one. That’s the purpose of a knot. So now, with my fingers intertwined, I visually emphasize that two notes need to be closer than possible. Well we guitarists can actually do that by playing two melodic notes on separate strings. In scale passages this is called campanella, another Italian word meaning bell tower. But I believe good taste requires that this campanella technique be reserved for fast scale passages, its original purpose in Baroque guitar literature. In slower true melodic passages, it is best to avoid any overhanging notes with harmonic implications. It muddies the intent.

Most common problem in guitar performance

The inadvertent gap between two melodic notes is always there! It is in the nature of our activity. Both hands take a millisecond or two to touch the string before accomplishing their goal. That is pressing the string to the fret in the left, and plucking in the right.

Therefore legato playing only happens when these two actions are simultaneous and efficient. If there is even the slightest delay between them you’ve added at least four or five milliseconds, or perhaps many more. Too much!

I edit my own recordings. I notice time and again that I can fix a bad edit by adding or subtracting three or four milliseconds! It is truly amazing to me that the ear can detect such a small difference.

And so it behooves us to focus on simple training to perfect not just the hands, but the ears that guide the hands. The degree to which both hands attack a note together makes the primary difference between a good player and a bad one! Milliseconds make the difference.

Take a look at all my tutorial videos and blogs. Or just the previous blog:

Single String Etude #4 – thumb rest or free?

Vibration is all

Why do we play guitar – or music in fact? To feel vibration. That’s all it is. No vibration equals no sound, no feel, no emotion, no joy or sorrow. Nothing. So what matters most is to vibrate your guitar to the maximum. How? By plucking. That’s what we do. But how you pluck is the secret.

Pressing instead of plucking

The i finger presses firmly into 2nd string while thumb dampens bass E and prepares to play the fifth

Watch the video below to gain insight into how I touch the strings, or rather how I press the strings into the top for full vibration. Normally called rest stroke, the act of pressing and releasing the string engages the full potential of your guitar. We don’t want to hear nylon vibrate, we want wood! Don’t grab the string and pull it. You need to release a vibration that transfers the maximum amount of energy from your finger (your intent!) into the wooden body of the guitar. Why pay thousands of dollars for gorgeous exotic woods and then fail to engage fully with the instrument. Too many folks today buy loud guitars so that they can play lightly. This is nonsense!

Maximum vibration

Primarily the vibration set up in the string causes the soundboard to vibrate. Sympathetic vibration follows in all parts of the guitar that are intended to vibrate. I say “intended to vibrate” because different styles of construction have very different resonances. Some modern guitars intentionally limit the vibration of the back and sides. Whereas traditional guitar design employs sympathetic resonance between all parts of the guitar – even the neck and fingerboard.

The quality of the vibration is entirely dependent on the quality of our stroke. The shape of your nails and angle of attack are crucial. But it is the attitude of approach which accomplishes the most satisfying results. Meet the resistance in the string and the top itself with the full force of arm, hand and finger. Feel a sense of weight pushing into the string. The smooth release over nail surface is crucial, but is a separate issue. It is covered ever so thoroughly by Bill Kanengiser in his video at Learning with Legends.  It is excellent and features Bill’s thorough knowledge and classic sense of humor.

Simplicity leads to success

Single String Etudes are designed with simplicity that allows even advanced guitarists to focus on very basic but satisfying musical goals. In previous videos we have talked about shifting smoothly, vibrato, and rest stroke in the thumb. This video discusses classic rest stroke in the fingers and how to make the most of it. These basic concepts effect how we balance a simple two voice texture. That perhaps 90% of what we do on the guitar. More will follow on how to hear and play polyphonic textures.

Shifting to Learn

Shifting is a technique that I believe should be taught very early in a guitarist’s studies. Fear of upper positions is created when we get stuck playing chords and arpeggios in first and second position. High frets become foreign territory. Reading is more difficult.

These simple lessons incorporate a basic knowledge of the fingerboard and the logical structure of scales, whole steps and half steps. By focusing on one string at a time, the student can see AND feel the proper, though variable distances between frets. Learning to shift and learning to read become one.

The Basics of Melody

Single String Etudes begin the Sketches series and incorporate shifting from first to twelfth fret. As I said in my previous blog, all six etudes embody the most basic of concepts. This is the second lesson on the subtle techniques of melodic playing. Watch the series as it develops on the YouTube Playlist.

Shifting Mechanics

The physical aspect of shifting comes from high in the body. It involves all joints, bones, muscles and tendons of the finger, hand, wrist, arm, shoulder and even into the chest, neck and back. When young players are taught to shift, the entire body opens and good habits are established. We avoid the rigidity of becoming a one or two position player. I think we even come a little closer to being a sustaining melodic instrument. The body and the mind become more one with the flow of melodic phrasing.

Guitars and Music

The excellent guitars I use are usually for sale at Aaron Green’s Vintage Classical Guitars. Read more about my background on my bio page. Buy my music at www.gyremusic.com. Scores are organized by instrument, ensemble, voice and level of ability. Buy a PDF download of Sketches I here. Ask questions or sign up for online lessons: wallacecomposer[at]gmail.com.

Thanks for watching.