Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

Porteño internet chess amigo and fellow guitarist, Horacio Villa sent me a link with the recommendation that I watch a couple of videos of the charango player Oscar Miranda. There is some very elegant playing here by a big man on a small instrument – particularly in the final minute of the first video. At one point the cliché “his hands are moving too fast to see” is literally true.

Also of interest to me is the posture of Horacio Castillo in the very first video of this sizeable collection. I have found myself intuitively using this posture – which contravenes classical orthodoxy - over the last few years. However, I do not pass it on as standard to pupils for the simple reason that I’d already been playing for more than 30 years before falling into it and I remain unconvinced that it would offer enough stability to allow a beginner truly to relax the shoulders, arms and hands. Is this simply an untenable case of do as I say, not as I do?

Right at the bottom of the page you can hear a cheerful audio file of the puzzingly entitled milonga, Y no entendieron nada (And they didn’t understand anything) by Eduardo “Toto” Mendez (interestingly put together, trilingual website). If you’ve ever wondered what a Uruguayan accent sounds like, there is a short video of him enthusing about the first ever Festival de Cuerdas de América. I’d never come across Eduardo Mendez before and a little research on YouTube threw up this short, comical video of a recording session with some pals. I tried embedding the video twice and while it had all the appearances of success, pressing Play elicited the message “Sorry, this video is no longer available.”

I conducted a short experiment over the last couple of days, concerning who gets what part in the first of our East Lothian Guitar Ensemble arrangements. The piece is in three parts – top, middle and bass. I’ve also created four heterophonic parts so you could say the structure of parts is:

1, 1a, 2, 2a, 3, 3a, 3b

Using Sibelius, I played the score to the pupils at performance speed – which is pretty brisk . In addition to the speed there are two other unusual factors:

• there are 7 beats per bar – grouped as follows 12 12 123

• it is based on a very unusual scale (E Lydian Dominant) – resulting in unusual harmonies - one effect of which can be to make the less confident pupil occasionally doubt that they have landed on the correct note

Before the music began pupils were asked to identify which parts would meet the following criteria for them:

• the part would (eventually*) be manageable

• it would provide some element of challenge and interest

• it might appeal to their natural strengths e.g. by being essentially melodic, harmonic or rhythmic in nature

• it would avoid any feeling of distress

Somewhat to my surprise, every group and individual chose as I would have predicted. This could mean one (or possibly more) of three things:

• that pupils are aware of their current levels

• that they are aware of the likely speed of progress over the remaining months (even although some have not yet played in the East Lothian group)

• that I am unconscious of Derren Brown-style levels of manipulation

Over the holiday, I hope to upload not only play-along midi files but parts of the piece so, if you play the guitar, you could simulate the experiment. For this particular piece, Hungarian Wedding Dance, most of the parts will be in TAB as opposed to traditional notation. This is due to the fact that many of the notes have been relocated onto strings other than the one where they would normally be found. This is done for two reasons:

• increased resonance e.g. using 2^nd string E at fret 5 instead of open E on string 1 – the sound of which is a little thinner

• the note is more easily reached from the previous note than it would be in its normal location

* eventually, in this case, is the Showcase Concert on Friday 27 March at 7:30 in Musselburgh Grammar School

I’ve been a bit quiet lately. Plans have not worked out as I’d hoped. I politely knocked back Ewan’s offer of a 10-minute spot at the SLF and the opportunity to go to a RSNO concert with Knox Academy in school time as I wanted to spend time with pupils. Having taken Week 1 to complete all primary school testing (a decision I still consider correct) I didn’t wish to miss any more contact time. There were school groups to get underway and the first East Lothian Guitar Ensemble rapidly approaching (Friday 26^th).

However, a 22-year old back injury flared up last Sunday and, in the end, I missed six school days – the last of which was today. That time was a mixture of spasms and medication, the cocktail of which seemed sufficiently strong to sedate an angry stallion. Possibly sooner than is sensible, I’ve weaned myself off these as tomorrow (Tue 30^th) sees the HITS Conference – the only national conference of instrumental instructors. I’d like to be lucid enough to take in the content of the topics for which I’ve signed up in order to write them up here.

Thanks to everyone for their recent good wishes – especially to Pat Holden who, despite living in Haddington, drove to Edinburgh to pick me up for a concert in Haddington and then returned me safely home.

I’m looking forward to returning to normal school life on Wednesday, probably still sporting a walking stick. To continue the equine theme, I currently have the legs of a young foal – if not in youthful shapeliness, then in uncertainty, and a third leg – albeit it wooden – comes in very handy when core stability is transformed into comic salsa (no, that’s not a new font).

p.s. as I have to leave at 6.45 a.m. to hobble along to Waterloo Place for the coach to Glasgow tomorrow, I now regret watching Newsnight while writing this. I don’t see a refreshing night’s sleep being helped by dreaming about the collapse of the banking system. Perhaps a chamomile tea might help – as (to paraphrase Marx) proper tea is theft!

The second half of yesterday’s Material World came from The Cavern, where the BA Festival of Science – Brains, Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll was considering the fields of music, memory and emotion.

One thing to emerge was that important memories, associated with specific pieces of music, tend to be formed between the ages of 15 & 25. I’d come across this notion a few times and, for some reason, was reluctant to believe it – almost as though it belittled musical content of the remaining 23 years. However, when considering tracks for a Desert Island Discs project I recently proposed for an In Service* many were works I’d come across in that very period. Why not consider your own choices and see whether this is true of you?

The programme mentioned the The Magical Memory Tour which invites people to contribute a memory associated with the Beatles.

You can listen again or download a podcast from the Material World site – until Thursday 18^th.

* the idea here, rather than simply listening to music at tax payers expense is to encourage colleagues to experiment with sound editing software (such as Source Forges excellent and free program, Audacity) to produce 8 x 1 minute extracts, each intended to convey specific expressive ideas. I think it would be interesting to see one another discuss expressive content, emotion, composition, technique, cultural and personal context etc.

Imagine you’d been allocated one of the four inner-harmony parts in this six-part arrangement. Would the sea of syncopations, rests and fussy articulation seem daunting? one-note-samba-all-in

How about if you could play along to just those parts in class? one-note-samba-harmony-only

…before trying it against the contrasting – and therefore off-putting – bass line one-note-samba-harmony-bass

…and then trying it with the treacherous tune present – I say treacherous as its rhythms are similar to those of the harmonies but not identical – and therefore untrustworthy: one-note-samba-all-in

One of the things I love about Sibelius is that you can mute some lines, allowing pupils to hear others in isolation – before re-introducing rival lines, when familiarity and confidence build. If there are lessons in life to be extrapolated from musical situations, might one be that problems can be as much about context as substance?

New midi files have been posted on the Guitar Group Midis page.

I received an email today from José Antonio Chic, the musical and business brains behind Guitar in Ensemble. This website offers music for classical guitar in various settings – duo with another instrument; ensemble with other guitars; ensemble with mixed instruments. To allow you to sample the wares, there are some free mp3 and pdf downloads: The Language of the Wind for solo guitar; 30^th of December for flute & guitar and The Language of the Stars for guitar quartet.

Do I have any evidence of emerging technologies improving ensemble skills? Nobody has ever asked me this but I found myself reflecting upon the topic recently as a result of gradual changes in practice. In days gone by, I always began secondary school guitar ensemble rehearsals in Week 1. Increasingly, the result of this was that pieces peaked too soon and so, more recently, I’ve tended to start in week 3 or 4.

The single biggest factor has been pupils being able to access play-along midi files on this blog, facilitating more meaningful home practice. This year I hope to experiment by producing mp3s which pupils can import into their mp3 players. I don’t imagine that they’ll listen for pleasure, but they’ll probably drive their families not quite so far up the wall in households where the family computer is in the living room.

Freed from the rush to begin rehearsals, we have spent a little lesson time trying out a few ensemble pieces for size – playing along with Sibelius scores on a laptop with external speakers attached. This allows pupils to try out not only varied pieces, but different parts within the same piece – with some surprising results. Some pupils have bid for parts more difficult than they would have been allocated – the appeal of the part sweetening the extra practice required. Another surprise is that arrangements, shelved a few years ago as too ambitious for school use, are beginning to seem possible. Pieces with syncopations* and cross rhythms** intended to wrong-foot the listener can have a frighteningly similar effect on some players if sufficient familiarity does not materialise. As most instructors spend only one day in each secondary school, today’s technologies create a space where that familiarisation can take place.

* Int 1 concept                       ** Int 2 concept

At this time of year the formal timetable often yields to entertainment, liaison and evangelism. Apart from the obvious benefits, this removes the incongruity of final lessons where no homework is given and no sense of urgency obtains.

Here are a few examples of recent and pending events:

Fri 13^th

The Big Gig @ MGS. This event always involves self-taught pupil bands, dance groups, staff performances (usually comical) and a staff-student band. This year a new element was included in the staff-student House Band which had interesting consequences – a horn section. As the horn parts had to be arranged and written out, this meant that the band had to adhere to and memorise the structure. The rehearsals were definitely a little more fraught than usual as there was clearly more discipline than some would have liked in their spare time, but the results made it all worthwhile and I feel sure that all involved felt that they’d raised their game.

Mon 16^th

Campie PS – guitarists from P5-P7 put on a concert of ensemble and solo music for P4 pupils. The audience contained next years new guitar players, and I was bowled over by their rapt attention. The situation also includes an opportunity for the P4s to question the existing players about what is involved in learning an instrument at school.

Tue 17^th

Four S3 guitar pupils from NBHS will accompany me on a trip to Law PS to play for the P7s. This coincides with the eve of the P7 pupils’ visit to the High School and so there should be an extra edge to the transitional feel of things. The P7s eduBuzzers plan to podcast the event so keep an eye on the Law PS blog. There will also be time for questions at this event.

Thu 19^th

MGS Summer Concert. There should be a doubly transitional feel to our Guitar Group this year. We are to be joined by two extremely enthusiastic P7 pupils from Wallyford PS and also by two former pupils who, as they are coming in to lend a hand with sound-mixing, will no doubt join the ensemble. This means the age gap between youngest and eldest will be 8 years (I’m not including myself in this equation). In addition to playing in our own ensemble, some of the pupils play in the orchestra, jazz band and a new traditional music ensemble.

Wed 25^th

P7 Leaving Assembly @ Wallyford. I can’t be at this event as I’ll be in another school but will be present in digital form – on a CD to accompany the pupils. This will be a new discipline for them as a CD can’t jump to their aid like a teacher.

Fri 27^th

Retirement Assembly @ Wallyford for a much loved member of staff. The plan is to bring six former pupils across from MGS so that, along with the P7s we can play, for the pupils and staff at this send-off. I can’t think of a nicer way to end the school year.

 I’ve posted mp3 files of performances in the East Lothian Showcase Concerts 2006-08 on the East Lothian Guitar Ensemble page. It’s strange to think that a few individuals who took part in all three concerts are now only finishing S3!