I was at Del Mar College for 35 years and one of my proudest achievements during that time was getting my students’ pictures on the wall of fame.

At Del Mar College, every year, we hold an Honors auditions.

When I first started, the auditions were held in the fall semester and the winners of the auditions would play in the Honors concert in the spring.

Later, we changed the auditions to the spring semester, and the concert was held a couple of weeks after.

Winning the auditions is no easy matter. You’d have to play in front of a jury made up of the music professors. The professors served on a rotational basis.

In the past, before the music department moved to its new buildings, the hallways in the department were lined with photos of the winners of past honors auditions.

If you were to look at them, you would notice that many of the past winners were guitarists.

In fact, there was one year when there were only three winners in the honors auditions and they were all guitar players—quite an honor considering this is a full music department with woodwinds, brass, strings, percussion and piano students.

Only three winners that year and they were all guitar players.

This is also a testament to how unique the music department at Del College was and is. No personal agendas or rivalries, no politics, just a shared love for music and for music making.

And this is why I feel so blessed to have been a part of it for 35 years.

I stopped listening to guitar players over thirty years ago, except for Leo Brouwer, whom I still get excited over every time I discover a new video of his.

Let’s take an analogy like movies.

To take the trouble to go to a movie theater to watch a movie, a movie has to fulfill a few requirements for me.

First, it must have a compelling story.

Second, it must have good acting—acting that makes the story come alive and believable.

Third, it must provide sufficient contrasts and spellbinding scenes; scenes that make you want to keep on watching.

Fourth, it must be so powerful, it transports me to another world, in other words, I find myself getting lost in the movie.

These are the basic requirements for a good movie.

I’ve gone to some movies where the action is so plodding, I left in the middle.

Or when the acting was so bad, I resolved never to watch another movie by the actor or actors again.

But how about production quality?

There was a movie years ago that quickly attained cult status—the Blair Witch Project.

The movie was low budget, shot apparently with a home camcorder, and the cinematography was so bad, I had to turn my eyes from the screen quite a few times because the scenes were jerking so hard.

But the story line and suspense was so compelling, it kept me glued to my seat—so production quality didn’t matter.

When I listen to music, the same is true.

To me, a good performance has to be compelling on these same terms.

There must be sufficient forward motion and unexpected contrasts to keep me engaged.

There must be enough variety in tone and presentation to make me want to listen more.

And most importantly, it must have those special moments—called moments of ecstasy by Gould—that make my heart just want to melt.

These are moments of magic which I hear all the time in Brouwer’s playing, as well as Glenn Gould’s.

Above all, there must be a sense that the performer is trying to reach me and create a special experience for me, and that he’s not there just to show me what a great player he is, or what a beautiful tone he can produce.

So yes, in general, I don’t find many guitar players very compelling.

Of course, I’m not there ticking off each of these criteria as I listen to each player.

Just like a movie, you know instinctively when a movie is not worthwhile watching.

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.

An old post from November 10, 2013 which I unpublished for some reason. Decided to repost it.

When we think rhythm, we tend to think of beats and pulses and metronomes and foot tapping.

But those are just ways to define a beat.

They’re not rhythm in themselves.

Rhythm is much more than just keeping time, rhythm expresses the character of a piece.

For example, what distinguishes one style of music from another? Say, jazz from flamenco?

It’s in their rhythms.

Every style of music has its peculiar rhythmic characteristics and its these characteristics that give it life and define it.

You hear Joe Pass and you know straightaway that you’re listening to jazz.

Or you hear Paco de Lucia and you know straightaway that you’re listening to flamenco.

There’s no mistaking the two.

(True, there’re other things that distinguishes one style from another, tonal characteristics, for example, but that’s another discussion altogether.)

Rhythm also defines a player.

What makes one player’s playing exciting and full of life and energy while another’s may seem lifeless and bland?

It’s in their rhythms.

One’s playing may be full of rhythmic inflections and swing while another may be mechanical and follow the beat rigidly.

When I first started to play jazz, I bought all the jazz books I could find and memorized all the licks in them but somehow I could never get that jazz feel.

It didn’t sound like jazz at all.

It took me a year of complete immersion in the hallways and ensemble rooms of Berklee before I could feel the swing and play it convincingly.

The same thing with Bach.

When I first started to record my Bach CD, I thought, great, I would just roll the tape and I would have the CD done in two sessions.

Big mistake.

After listening back to those first few sessions, I had to go back on the drawing board and relearn how to play Bach all over again.

And the same thing with Chopin.

In each of these ventures, I learned I had to get into the spirit of the style, to experience their inner energy, the tensions and resolutions within their rhythms, feel the nuances and their infinite variations before I was able to ‘speak’ it convincingly in my playing.

Yes, in a way, it’s much like learning to speak a language.

You have to understand all the inflections and nuances and the rhythms of a language before you can speak it convincingly, like a native.

If you’ve ever called up one of those phone helplines, you’ve probably had to listen to those automated messages giving you those endless options.

What’s the one thing that strikes you about all these robomessages?

Flat, lifeless, monotonous voice.

And that’s what happens if you don’t express the rhythmic character of a piece.

Flat, lifeless, and mechanical playing.

Sure, a listener will still hear all the notes and they may even feel a strong rhythm in your playing, but it will be as exciting and uplifting an experience as listening to an automated phone message.

I found these notes among my papers. They were written, I think, around 2007. They eventually formed the basis of the AOV.

The Principles: A Short Preview

1. The basis of all virtuoso movements is a light touch. A light touch is the essence of all efficient motion [because it utilizes minimal energy].

2. In initiating an action, start from a position of rest, which is a state of soft body.

3. All actions generate tension; release this tension at the points of action and return to a state of soft body.

4. Pace your actions by synchronizing them to an inner pulse. Do not rush towards the beats. Wait for them to arrive and gently execute your actions lightly on the beat.

5. Maintain stability and balance each action with a counter force. Drive your action towards the counter force, allow that force to neutralize the action and keep you in stability.

6. Anticipate every move. Be in a state of constant readiness for the next moment.

7. Internalize your actions and let the unconscious mind take over your execution. Most physical actions are too complex for the conscious mind.

8. Link your actions together. Let each action drive you to the next. As you complete one action, capture the energy from that action and redirect it to the next, creating a chain of actions, each action powered by the previous action.

9. And tap into the power of everything around you. There is power in the strings. Feel the snap as you release each string and use that energy to drive you to the next action.

This was written back in 2010 and posted under a different title. Updated and edited.

Every sound or tone has four basic attributes. These are attack, consistency, relaxation, and color.

These four attributes give us the tools to shape our sound to achieve the effect we want in our playing.

First, the attack.

The attack describes the initial onset of a tone. It can range from an imperceptible attack (a whooshy attack) to a sharp percussive attack (a bam).

The attack determines the level of intelligibility of a tone.

Intelligibility here refers to clarity. Just as clearly articulated consonants make speech more intelligible, clearly defined attacks produce greater clarity.

What kind of attack you use depends on context.

If you’re playing a stream of fast sixteenth or thirty-second notes, you’d need to produce a stronger attack to allow the notes to speak more clearly.

If you’re playing a slow melody, you’d need to minimize the attack to make the notes sing more expressively.

The key is variety – too much of one attack can quickly lead to listener fatigue.

For example, if you play only with whooshy attacks, you risk sounding unintelligible because your notes will lack definition.

And if you play only with sharp percussive attacks, it will also begin to grate on the nerves after a while.

Consistency is the second quality of sound. It describes the sound in relation to other sounds.

No sound exists in isolation, it is always part of a larger group of sounds.

The trick is to control the dynamic level of each sound so that it blends in with other sounds around it, so that it sounds as part of a larger group (as in a phrase).

On the guitar, I’ve discovered that control over consistency exists at a very tactile level right at your fingertips.

Just pluck the strings, feel the release and you should be able to tell from the release if the notes are even.

When you develop this strong tactile connection, you don’t even have to hear yourself play to know whether you’re playing evenly, you’d be able to know just from the physical sensation at your fingertips.

The best way to develop tactile control is through the tremolo technique.

The tremolo never lies. To play it well, you’d have to produce perfectly even tones on one string with three fingers.

Once you develop a good tremolo, transfer the same sensation to the rest of your playing.

Once you can produce the same sensation in your arpeggios and scales, they’ll assume the same consistency too.

I’ve described this in greater detail in the AOV for guitar.

The third quality of tone is relaxation.

This is one tonal attribute that has not been talked about much, but to me it’s a crucial element of tone.

Tonal relaxation is all in the fingertips and how much give you allow in the finger tip-joints.

If you want a tighter steely sound, stiffen the tip-joint and play closer to the bridge. If you want a more relaxed sound, relax the tip-joint and play further from the bridge.

How much relaxation you want in your sound is a matter of personal preference.

My own preference is for a sound that is light, relaxed and yet has a certain amount of tension in it. I like to think of it as a smoky woody kind of sound.

To produce this sound, I hold my thumb over the lower edge of the sound hole and my fingers just below the sound hole.

I find that this particular position gives me just the right blend of tension and relaxation in my sound.

Color is the fourth attribute of tone.

For some reason, tone color, specifically one particular tone color, has suddenly assumed a dominant role in guitar pedagogy and became the yardstick by which guitarists are measured these days.

These days, it’s all about having a warm full sound.

I’ve never understood this preoccupation with one particular family of sound.

It’s as if suddenly, the only colors that are allowed in paintings are warm reds and orange and cooler colors like blue and green are considered bad and to be avoided.

Color is a neutral element.

It’s all part of the universe of sound, part of the full palette of colors that nature has given us to provide contrast, variety and context.

When considering tonal colors, it’s instructive to look at orchestras.

Every orchestra has a full complement of widely divergent sounds. From the warm sounds of the flutes to the more edgy colors of trumpets to the pure noise makers, the percussion.

Imagine an orchestra that consists only of flutes, or an orchestra that consists only of percussion. (Actually in the latter, you don’t have to do much imagining. All you need to do is listen to Varese’s ‘Ionisation.’)

The four tonal attributes provide you with a full complement of tools to shape and create your unique vision of what you want your music to express.

Under your fingers, you have the entire range of sound possibilities at your disposal, to create any sound you want, capture any effect you hear in your mind’s ear.

When you take advantage of their full capabilities, your music will come alive with vitality, energy, and most importantly, variety.

Transcribing a piece of music from one medium to another is like translating a book from one language to another.

There’re so many variables to consider and decisions to make.

In translation, for example, you have to make decisions on how best to convey the meaning of the original, and usually this would involve picking the right word or words out of a number of possibilities.

The same is true for transcribing to the guitar.

Many times, there’re an array of possibilities as to choice of key, register, not to mention the revoicing of chords to make them playable on the guitar.

The most important consideration for me, however, when I transcribe a work is:

Can the piece stand alone?

Does it sound like it was written for the guitar?

Does it play like a guitar piece?

Fidelity to the original is a big consideration, but fidelity more in spirit than in details. In other words, I don’t try to adhere rigidly to what’s in the original.

So there’s a lot of thought put into each transcription.

But why transcribe at all?

The answer lies in a comment Brouwer made in one of his interviews.

In the interview, Brouwer said something to the effect that he was jealous of all the repertoire of the other instruments and he wanted to rectify the situation for the guitar.

Which is what he has done. He has filled the gap in our repertoire with his compositions.

But that still doesn’t change the situation when it comes to music from the past.

The fact is, the great masterpieces of the past are unique pieces, each one of them.

They can never be replicated.

There will never be another Toccata and Fugue, or any of the nocturnes from Chopin or for that matter, Asturias or Granada.

In the same way that there will never be another Recuerdos de la Alhambra, which is why it has so often been adapted and transcribed for other instruments too.

If we want to partake of the great artistic creations of the past, we can’t just sit down and write new compositions in the hope that they will match those creations.

It’s like someone saying, I’m going to sit down and paint another “Mona Lisa.’

The best thing we can do is to take these masterpieces and adapt them or ‘transcribe’ them as is commonly known.

We have to be selective of course. Not everything will transfer well to the guitar.

So the first thing I do when considering a piece for transcription is to try to hear it in my head as a guitar piece.

If it sounds good and doable, then transcribing is just a matter of trying to replicate that sound in my head and notating it down.

For me, transcribing is a very personal and creative process. It’s almost as if you’re a co-creator with the composer.

Almost as if Bach or Chopin asked you, “Hey, could you try to play this on the guitar?”

And because they’re such pragmatic musicians, they would take your advice and allow you to make the necessary modifications in their score to make the piece playable on the guitar.

Which leads me to my next point.

There’s so much that goes into the process of making a piece of music work on the guitar it’s a little disappointing when someone comes along and take your transcription, and change a few things here and there, maybe some fingerings or change of register, and call it their own, without giving any credit.

Of course, if they have made substantial changes or if it bears no relationship to your work, it’s a different matter.

In academic circles, the word is plagiarism which is, of course, a form of dishonesty.

People have asked me if I worry about all the file sharing of my work and I tell them, no, I’m not concerned about it at all.

We live in a digital world and that’s the way it is.

What I’m more concerned about is thievery at a more elemental level, which is to steal your ideas and work without giving any credit.

I have, in my possession, many translations of poems from different languages.

And so far I have not seen anyone take someone else’s work almost verbatim, and maybe change a word here or there, and call it their own work.

Unfortunately, those high standards of scholarship and professional integrity don’t seem to apply in the guitar world.

Interestingly enough, my Chopin CD was released 20 years ago and so far, no one has as yet tried to ‘transcribe’ the lesser-known works on that CD (‘lesser-known’ as in never before played on the guitar).

Maybe, I suspect, because they’re waiting for me to publish the scores.

Going back to the Brouwer’s comment, yes, I too am jealous of the repertoire of the other instruments, especially the piano.

And that’s why I transcribe.

Because I also want to experience the thrill organists experience when they play the Toccata and Fugue, and be able to recreate the heartbreak and sensual beauty of the Chopin nocturnes on the guitar too.

In fact, I think some of them sound better on guitar than on piano, IMHO of course.

I first discovered the book in 1980, and it has been an invaluable resource ever since.

The book was originally titled, “The Teachings of Artur Schnabel,” my guess is that it was retitled to avoid any religious or spiritual connotations.

There’re 13 chapters in the book.

For me, the most instructive chapters are those on Melodic, Harmonic, Metric, and Rhythmic articulation.

Chapter Four—Melodic articulation, is especially useful in understanding linear phrasing.

The terminology, ‘linear phrasing’ is never used in the chapter, (because it’s something I came up with myself) but the concept is very clearly explained in the section on Melodic Directions.

The word ‘Directions’ here describes forward linear motion rather than static metrical phrasing.

To indicate this forward motion, Wolff uses an arrow symbol to mark the direction.

The second paragraph on page 39 is especially instructive:

“Melodic direction normally begins with the first and ends with the last. It should not be disturbed, especially not by accents on top notes…”

I would add that it should also not be disturbed by a persistent emphasis on the metrical beat.

Here are pages 38-39 of the book.

Schnabel-Page 38-39

The final points of reference are of course in his recordings.

Listen to how and when he pushes a line forward, or when he slightly holds it back or when he keeps it steady, all to create specific effects.

Finally, two quotes from the book are particularly relevant in these times of extreme dogmatism in guitar pedagogy and attempts at literal (and unimaginative) interpretation.

Page 25

“Schnabel did not impose his way of playing on pupils whose technique, though different, enabled them to have musical and technical control. He looked at his pupils’ hands only when something went wrong.”

Page 26

“Unwritten rules govern subtle nuances of dynamics and rhythm. There are no symbols that would make notation of these subtleties possible…”