From: basinski@biosci.arizona.edu (Mark Basinski)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical.guitar
Subject: Re: Good books
Date: 21 Dec 92 22:05:24 GMT
Followup-To: rec.music.classical.guitar
Organization: Univ. of Arizona

In article <20DEC199212023160@meena.cc.uregina.ca>,
pdickof@meena.cc.uregina.ca (PDICKOF) wrote:
> Charles Duncan
> The Art of Classical Guitar Playing
> Summy Birchard (sp?)
> 
> 	I used to own this and am considering re-purchasing. It seems to me the
>      most clear, practical guide to a variety of technical issues. I had
>      Carlevaro's "School of Guitar" at the same time (not any more), and
>      thought it less clear (it's in translation), and more radical; I
>      considered Duncan better (though I suspect that many of the ideas in it
>      are originally from Carlevaro). I would really like comments and
>      comparisons here, especially from Mark Basinski as a former student of
>      Carlevaro's. 
> 
  Well, I don't know Duncan's book, so I can't speculate on whether any of
his ideas originated with Carlevaro or not, but I will make a couple of
comments regarding Carlevaro's own book "Escuela de Guitarra" (School of
Guitar). I have both the spanish and english versions, and the english
translation is reasonably good, but if you're fluent in spanish, the
spanish one is a bit clearer. BUT! Having studied the book fairly seriously
before I worked with Carlevaro personally, it was something of a surpise to
discover how much of what he talks about in the book just didn't really 
get across to me until I had him correcting me physically. In other words,
the book is addressing many aspects of technique, which like any other 
kinesthetic procedure, is VERY difficult to learn from a book - nobody
reads books to learn to dance, etc.  I mean, there's loads of really 
useful and insightful info in the book, and I *thought* I knew what he was
talking about when I read the book, but when I worked with Abel, he was
constantly monitoring what I was doing physically, and it took quite a 
lot of work to really "get the hang" of what he was after. I use that
term "get the hang" to emphasize that much of it has to do with learning
new ways to use your whole body, and it took quite a lot of coaching for
me to get past the way I was used to doing things and really *feel* the
new idea.

	  It's difficult to think of an example of this that will come across
in print...AC discusses using the left *arm* - the point is that many 
guitarists are only thinking about the left *hand* and what the fingers
are going to do, and may not have ever given much thought to what they
do with their arm. So, AC has a lot of material on training the arm, 
or rather training the guitarist to learn how to use the larger muscle
groups of the back, shoulder, and arm to best advantage. In my own 
teaching I use these ideas, and I don't think I've ever had a student
that seemed to catch on without a lot of physical and visual feedback.

   In general, I find Carlevaro's approach to left hand (and arm, etc) 
exceptionally insightful. I'm not so wild about his right hand approach,
but I will say that he does get an amazing variety of articulation and
tone out of it. I will also say that Montevideo (where AC lives) is a
VERY humid place, like Houston at it's worst, and when I was there I 
found that my normal right hand approach (using a diagonal attack for
the most part to get a nice round tone) was hopelessly dark and muffled
sounding due to my guitar's reaction to the humidity, and the Carlevaro
"straight-across" attack worked very well and got a much better tone there.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Basinski      Internet: basinski@biosci.arizona.edu