Tag: Stringed

Time for a group hug!

Nicole Neal2 Comments
English: The Guitar Ensemble of the .
Guitar Ensemble (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Yes, you read it correctly. Time for a group hug!

 

Well, time to get together as musicians anyway…. The summer vacation is coming to an end here now in Australia and very soon the Classical Guitar Society of Victoria will be auditioning for new members of it’s awesome Guitar Orchestra. And yes, it is awesome. And no, not just because I play in it! Hah hah!

 

If you are in Victoria (and I know a lot of you, dear readers aren’t – bear with me here though guys what I’ve got to say will be relevant to you too…) and within reasonable regular travelling distance of Melbourne I can’t recommend highly enough coming on down to our regular rehearsal spot in Richmond on 24th February and auditioning for a spot in our beloved ensemble. Check out the website for more details: http://www.cgsv.org.au/default.aspx?d=693941

 

It fantastic fun and the other guitarists and our fabulous conductor (Ben Dix) are all fabulous people. You’d be crazy not to!

 

And the term “auditioning” is probably a little grander and a little scarier sounding than it really need be. We’re inviting folks to come down and check out our first rehearsal for the season to see what you’re in for (it’s all good, I can promise that too) and then you get to play a piece of two, followed by a bit of sight-reading for our lovely conductor Ben so he can check out your level, your abilities and where you may best fit into the existing group.

 

So, if you can, come on down – we’d love to see you there!

 

Why an ensemble?

 

If you can come along – and even if you can’t, as you’re in some other part of the world – there are MASSIVE benefits to playing in a group setting such as a guitar ensemble or orchestra. Yes. Massive. Tis true.

 

In a nutshell these are:

 

  • Honing your listening skills – being such a solo instrument, we guitarists tend to be quite self-indulgent at times, only having to listen to ourselves. Being part of a group with other guitarists or musicians pretty much forces you to listen to those around you, getting in balance tonally and dynamically, with sense of phrasing and so on. You also get really good at tuning up the guitar very quickly, even learning to tweak tuning a little on the fly!

 

  • Honing your tonal quality, touch and dynamic range – you thought your piano was soft and your forte was loud? Think again! you learn a whole lot about the dynamic range of your guitar and your ability to create those different variations when you’re in a group setting. And everything becomes magnified (well, kind of but we won’t go into the laws of physics here) by 12, or 15 or 20 or however many others there are in the group.

 

  • Stretching and seriously improving your sight-reading – when a brand new piece or section gets put in front of you and you need to read it straight off the bat….kinda scary at first, but exhilarating and fun in the end. Especially when you play that really prominent scale run one fret in the wrong position! Hah hah!

 

  • Fun! – Yes, it’s perfectly fine to make a few mistakes and to have a laugh about them! It’s such great fun to sit and play with other guitarists, and have a bit of a chinwag before and after rehearsal. You never know, you may even make a new buddy or two!

 

  • Improves your knowledge of the fretboard no end! – That scale run that you got wrong the first time through? You know for sure, each and every time where that starts. That D? S’right there. Easy. Bang. And yes, that of course then translates across into your solo playing.

 

  • Interacting and learning from other guitarists/ musicians – there will be musicians in the group who know a thing or two that you’d don’t – musically, technically, in approach – and it’s great to learn from your peers.

 

  • Helping other guitarists and musicians – yes, you may not think it but there are things that you know, you do, or have a certain approach to that your fellow guitarists don’t have in their armoury yet. And this is regardless of what level you’re at. By joining an ensemble you can help spread the love and get others thinking and others playing in different ways, ways they’d not thought about. How cool is that?

 

  • And if you’ve never played in a group setting before, it gets you a little bit out of your comfort zone and can help with issues of performance anxiety by playing in front of and with others.

 

So what’s stopping you?! Get in there!

 

Selecting A New Classical Guitar

Nicole Neal4 Comments
Busker
Scraping together the pennies for a new guitar (Photo credit: Neil Perry Photo)

There are a myriad of things to think about and look for when choosing a new guitar, be it your very first guitar, your first “good” guitar, or you’ve been in the game a while and looking for something different.

So with a new year now well upon us, and nearly into its second month, school and new university courses (hello new music students and well done for getting places by the way!) starting back in Australia shortly, some may be contemplating either picking up a guitar for the first time or upgrading or changing up their existing model.

And different folks will probably tell you different things to be looking for, some probably completely different to my own! Anyhoo, I thought I’d share with you some of my own thoughts, experiences and sage words of advice that I’ve picked up over the past few years as I’ve become more and more intimately aware of the nuances of different guitars and the indescribably exciting journey of picking a new axe.

First up, a good solid practical one for you – know your budget. How much are you willing to spend on your guitar? You don’t want to be testing out a whole bunch of awesome axes to find that they’re about $1000 over what you’re willing and/ or able to spend.

Where you can, make sure you can get the best guitar you can for your budget, particularly so if just starting out. That orange box of a beginners guitar – yes, how terribly rude of me but it’s true, that’s what they are. And I have it on good authority that that’s what the Spanish call them. So must be true. Anyway, I digress….. So yes, that orange box of a guitar is soon going to become quickly redundant as you become a better guitarist.

An “el cheapo crappo” guitar (that’s a technical term of the trade….) may in fact also hamper your learning and your playing because they’re quite awful instruments, physically, to play, they sound awful (which is never an encouraging thing for a beginner) and thereby you’ll perhaps be less inclined to want to play it. Probably a bit of a false economy, the ol’ orange box beginners guitar. There are some fantastic beginners student guitars being made now, for an investment of around AUD$500 mark. As a beginner, it’s worth paying a little extra.

Be aware that you don’t know what you don’t know. Huh? Getting all Donald Rumsfeld on you now. Go with me on this.  When I was selecting my first “good” guitar, I wasn’t aware that there was a whole plethora of choice out in the widey world about the guitars I could play and choose from. I didn’t know this at the time, and didn’t know the right people to ask about finding out. I’m not saying I made a bad choice in my guitar (I didn’t; it was the right guitar for me at that point for sure), but some other points of comparison wouldn’t have gone amiss.

So talk to a few folks, your teacher will be a good start and is likely to know the best places to check out in your local area, and do a bit of research.

Knowing what you want can be a good thing. Sounds kind of like an obvious thing to say, but you’d be surprised. How well can you articulate what you’re looking for? Knowing what you want, or at least some notion of what you’re after can help you in searching out the guitar for you. It can help those searching out guitars for you or selecting stock from their shopfloor to pinpoint a few options for you (helping them to help you) and give you a handful of instruments to try rather than 20 gazillion options which all start to sound very similar after the 900th one.

And even if you do know what you’re looking for, it pays to be open minded. There may be an option that you’d not been aware of (see point above on unknown unknowns) or not really given much thought to, that may just pleasantly surprise you.

The piece of advice I’ve reserved for last is probably the piece of advice that I consider the most important. The right guitar will find you. That sounds a bit “woo woo” doesn’t it? Heh heh! It’s not really.

You’ll know when you’ve picked up the instrument that is the right one for you – something just clicks, it plays perhaps more fluidly than any of the others, the sounds, the tones, the vibrations resonate in your ears and your body like none of the others do. It just feels right. It’s something akin to falling in love. If you can’t take that guitar away with you right there and then, you just can’t stop thinking about it. The sound. The vibration. The feel. It’s true love! Well at least deeply amorous infatuation!

If haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about then you’ve probably not experienced it yet. But you will know. Trust me. Follow this piece of advice and you’ll definitely not make a mistake in your purchase.

OK. I did lie when I said that was the last piece of advice. There’s one more.

To coin a phrase I heard an associate of mine use recently (you know who you are!) – “there’s no “perfect” guitar, there’s only “perfect right now””. This is excellent because it means we get to go through the whole exciting and enthralling journey again in the future, experiencing developments in both guitar construction but also in ourselves –  hearing with different ears, playing with different hands and fingers…..Oh, and gives you a chance to top the piggy bank back up again!!