Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
|
|
Sight reading
|
You are logged in as Guest
|
Users viewing this topic: none
|
|
Login | |
|
srshea
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
|
RE: Sight reading (in reply to John O.)
|
|
|
John, My step-father was a classical guitar teacher and the two main texts he always started his students out on were Aaron Shearer’s “Classic Guitar Technique Volume I” (Not the same Shearer book mentioned above, the one with the red and black cover) and Christopher Parkening’s “The Christopher Parkening Guitar Method Vol 1”. I worked through both of these last year to brush up on my long-dormant sight reading skills. They’re both excellent introductions to the basics of first position reading, easy to work through, introducing notes a few at a time. If I had to pick one over the other I’d go with the Parkening. The Shearer book has kind of a dry, ball-busting, school-marmish tone and there are a lot of exercises late in the book that, even though most all the first position notes have been introduced by that point, are really kind of tuneless and un-musical. The Parkening has a warmer tone, and the exercises are more pleasing to the ear, which I think helps things along. But they’re both good. Neither have anything to do with Flamenco, of course, but they're a good place to start. Also, Shearer has a Guitar Note Speller workbook thing that’s a nice supplement to learning the names of the notes and their positions on the staff.
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Apr. 23 2007 19:32:49
|
|
Mark2
Posts: 1862
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
|
RE: Sight reading (in reply to John O.)
|
|
|
My memory tells me the Nelson book presents the different keys but the Niehaus does not. The nice thing about the Niehaus is that there are a lot of short exercises in different keys. Of course I agree about the nature of the study, which is to read through a ton of material and move on before memorizing and playing by ear. The Niehaus stuff contains some fairly outside type of lines which makes predicting by ear fruitless. It also makes you question if you hit the right notes, which is what you want to learn to read well. I'm not real familiar with the level at which classical guitarists read, but can say that very few guitarists of other styles read well. When I was in college I auditioned for the jazz big band. All the other instruments had to sight read as part of the audition, but the guitarists were given a tune and told to come back the next day. The tune was joy spring by Clifford Brown, a mother of a tune. Luck was with me as I knew the tune already. I spent all night woodshedding the tune anyway, and I got by maybe fifty players, most better than me at jazz, to get the gig. Then I spent the next semester sweating over these big band charts which required a lot of tough reading, resting, soloing, and stressing!
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Apr. 23 2007 22:45:04
|
|
New Messages |
No New Messages |
Hot Topic w/ New Messages |
Hot Topic w/o New Messages |
Locked w/ New Messages |
Locked w/o New Messages |
|
Post New Thread
Reply to Message
Post New Poll
Submit Vote
Delete My Own Post
Delete My Own Thread
Rate Posts
|
|
|
Forum Software powered by ASP Playground Advanced Edition 2.0.5
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 ASPPlayground.NET |
0.078125 secs.
|