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I think this video was posted before but can remember where. This is why we put golpe plates on classical guitars!!! (yeah, I know he is is not playing flamenco by the way)
RE: Why they invented Golpe plates! (in reply to Anders Eliasson)
Elie- If you look carefully at the guitar you can see the strings are widened at the bridge. He has widened the neck by cutting the fingerboard down the 2cd string and adding more wood. The frets dont match exactly. I dont think its for intonation, just looks like a home made job. The neck is wider presumably for his big hands and unorthadox technique.
Rory Gallagher was the only other guitarist I can remember who was well known for playing a beat up guitar...the famous "battered strat"
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RE: Why they invented Golpe plates! (in reply to Pimientito)
Tommy's getting pretty close to a Willie Nelson.
This is about how Willie's looked twenty years ago, so it's just a matter of time.
Based on current guitar prices, if Willie's Martin (Trigger) ever came up for auction, I would think it would bring at least $500,000 to $1,500,000, but we will never know because it will be in the country music hall of fame or the Smithsonian Museum.
RE: Why they invented Golpe plates! (in reply to Patrick)
quote:
Based on current guitar prices, if Willie's Martin (Trigger) ever came up for auction, I would think it would bring at least $500,000 to $1,500,000, but we will never know because it will be in the country music hall of fame or the Smithsonian Museum.
RE: Why they invented Golpe plates! (in reply to Sean)
This thread is now out of control Thats the worst movie trailer I have seen for a long time...so glad I didn't ever waste 90 minutes of my life watching it. I have very mixed feelings about the sonata. Its beautifully executed BUT absolutely leaves me cold. To me the guitar is such a beautiful sounding instrument. I have never understood in the classical world why anyone would spend half their life time becoming technically proficient enough to perform a composition that sounds like a chain saw attacking an iron gate. Call me old fashioned and closed minded but I prefer music to be melodious!
RE: Why they invented Golpe plates! (in reply to Pimientito)
Well the guy playing the Ginastera is a great player, but I would leave the room if he did that pretentious posturing in front of me. That is the most affected playing I have ever seen from anyone, even a pianist. Liberace would blush at that guys stage presence. I think artists cultivate those faces just to add drama for listeners who want to be entertained. Sometimes I wish YoYo Ma would play with a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket over this head so I would not have to watch him open his mouth and swallow flies.
Ginastera wrote a lot of great music I don't like his guitar music as much as some other things he did. The Pampeana for cello is more suited to his composition style.
There is something about the guitar that I feel does not work well with a lot of modern music. Ginastera has a thing about using open strings, which is fine, but I agree it can be cold with his style of composition.
RE: Why they invented Golpe plates! (in reply to Pimientito)
If you have the patience to watch this is a Ginastera piece which uses a lot of open strings, but in my opinion this works better on the bowed string instruments that the guitar in Ginastera's work.
I choose this one because you can see him playing open fifths on adjacent strings.
I someways I think Tom Ward's piece is better than the Ginastera guitar sonata. If you think about how he structured it based on a series of ascending scales and motifs and then compare it to the piece for cello which opens the same way, he's not far off from making great pieces for guitar. He's just not as clear as Ginastera in his structure. Only problem is he choose motifs that are cliche' quasi flamenco bits. But the same can be said of Ginastera who drew the source materials from Rio Platense area guitar playing like popular milongas and such. Only Ginastera is much more sophisticated in how he uses harmony and structure.
Even great classical composers have some cheesiness in their work.
And in the end Tom Ward has more PLC's than the classical face maker.
RE: Why they invented Golpe plates! (in reply to Pimientito)
Haha Todd, You crack me up. It's all in bad taste so why not take it to the limits?
When it comes to classical music I can out snob all you. All I'm saying is why pick on this Tom Ward guy when there are equally appalling things in other kinds of music.
What I'm saying is I can't stomach the pretension of the classical guitarist, even though he's better musician. Tom Ward is more sincere and does not lapse into nonessential histrionics. It's as if to say one flamenco dancer makes over determined faces but is a great dancer while a another might not be that great, but they are more comfortable with who they are as a stage presence.
Cheesiness is a wonderful thing in small amounts. But if you want to talk about the sublime in music I'm up for that too, it's just not as fun.
I can also talk about why velvet pictures have a place in history, but I rather be drenched in room full of De Koonings.
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Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Why they invented Golpe plates! (in reply to estebanana)
Pavel Steidl is a really great classical guitarist, IMO. He mugs even more than Bream. But both of them look so goofy you have to think it's not just put on. I take both of them as sincerely responding to the music--if a bit unconventionally. I kind of get used to both of them.
I had never seen Dylla perform before, just heard recordings. I wonder if he does all that **** in the studio?
RE: Why they invented Golpe plates! (in reply to Pimientito)
I was thinking this was a comedic thread, but I was getting at something in terms of composing;That is the idiomatic peculiarities of different string instruments tunings ( forths vs. fifths) and how the method of setting the string to vibrate ( plucked vs, bowed) can change how a composer chooses to lay out a work on a particular instrument.
I suppose I find Ginastera's works as a whole to be more cellistic than guitaristc. I feel he lays things out better or more naturally on the cello than the guitar, even though his works for guitar are accomplished. As much as I am in favor of using open strings as part of the basic structure of a composition, it comes through the filter of knowing that for many hundreds of years of musicians were discouraged to use open strings because of the sound differences between stopped strings and open strings. Ginastera and many other modern composers dropped this prejudice against using unstopped strings as basic components in pieces and I think this is good, but in my opinion it does not always work. I don't care for the unstopped string sections of the guitar sonata, but that's just me. I think the unstopped strings are more effective in Ginastera's compositions for cello.
I apologize in advance for any bad taste my opinions force others to experience.
RE: Why they invented Golpe plates! (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
quote:
Pavel Steidl is a really great classical guitarist, IMO. He mugs even more than Bream.
I've seen many great players who don't mug, I prefer them. But I hear you when you say that some are making honest emotional responses to the music. I just think a lot of it is kinda over the top to the point where it's cloying and distracting from the music. It's like if I can't feel that much facial expression within me while I'm listening then I feel the player is over mugging.
There was time when music teacher had mirrors in their studios and told the students to not over express. The problem with full on gesture 100% of the time is then you never have any real gesture in reserve for when you need to emphasize something emotional in the music. It's like the boy who cried wolf, when you need to express something the audience can't tell because you've already bombarded them with an overbearing stage presence.
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