Don’t sound like a cheap piano
When I was young, most of the pianos I came across were cheap pianos with some generic sounding names.
I never grew to like the piano for that reason.
They all had a muffled mellow tone as if they had a cold and the notes would not come out clearly.
I never heard a good piano until I went to New Zealand and that was when I realized that the piano is an incredibly beautiful instrument.
I realized that good pianos do not have that muffled tone; instead they have a beautiful ringing sound.
Their bass have a kind of energy in its deep resonance and the trebles a clear sparkling sound.
And then I discovered the playing of Glenn Gould.
The first recordings of Gould that I heard were his Mozart sonatas and I was instantly captivated.
It was not just his clear sparkling tones that drew me to him but the energy and the aliveness in his phrasing.
Classical music became alive and contemporary under his fingers as opposed to just some serious historical thing that one has to play correctly and with reverence.
That was why I loved the classical guitar in those days too.
There was incredible energy and excitement and expression in the playing of John Williams and Julian Bream and Segovia.
John Williams was my favorite player.
I loved his early recordings, especially the Paul Myers albums—the clarity and excitement in his playing is still unmatched today.
When he started getting into the close-miking in the mid-seventies with Michael Stavrou, I remember being quite disappointed when I first heard them.
Especially the Ponce and the Barrios albums from that period.
Gone was the energy and the power and the spatial depth. Instead they sounded flat and two dimensional. I found them so boring and uninspiring I never bought another recording of his.
And then I discovered the Vox/Turnabout recordings of Manuel Barrueco.
The word was electrifying—the playing, the interpretation and miking technique all came together to create what I consider the gold standard in classical guitar playing and recording.
For years after that I tried to find out more about the miking technique behind the sound and the sound engineer David Hancock who came up with it.
Then Barrueco started recording for EMI/Germany and I remember having the same disappointment when I first heard his Albeniz and his Sor.
Gone again was the energy and excitement—everything sounded so clinical and mechanical and two-dimensional.
I remember buying those CDs and just giving them away.
Back to the subject of cheap pianos.
I’m not sure when the change in guitar playing came about but I think it has to do with two British guitarists—John Taylor and David Russell.
The former had come up with a book that was like a manifesto for a different kind of guitar playing and the latter had applied the theories and principles in that book.
Suddenly the sound of the guitar has to become gentrified.
You must eliminate the natural percussiveness because it was considered noisy and uncouth.
Instead you must try to imitate the sound of a piano and minimize the attack—in other words; the preferred sound is a mellow muffled tone, which is the cheap piano tone I had detested so much.
And whatever you do, never overplay, stay within the safe boundaries.
And that’s what you hear most of the time these days in guitar concerts—an hour or two of endless soft mellow tinkling on stage and little else.
Interestingly enough, this timid and safe approach to guitar is only reflected in less mature players.
When Jason Vieaux came to Del Mar a few years ago, I was blown away by his playing and the great variety in his tone colors. Instead of sounding like some cheap upright piano, he sounded like a great grand piano.
He was definitely not laboring under some artificial standards that some pedagogue somewhere had laid down about tone.
That’s the difference, I guess, between a student and an artist.
Students are always afraid they’d break some rules and they’re always trying to do things correctly and looking for approval.
Artists have a whole different agenda and that is to breathe life into the music and give it its fullest expression.