By Mike Roberts
In our most recent adventure we met the venerable Matteo Carcassi, the great 19th-century Italian guitarist. This time we’ll look at two more exercises from Carcassi’s Guitar Method. They are similar in style and degree of difficulty to what we saw last time, and continue to utilize all the good right hand technique we’ve been outlining over the last few months. It is simply impossible to review right hand fundamentals too often, and all too easy to fall into bad habits, so be sure to check back to past columns to give yourself a refresher.
One difference worth noting in the C Major Andantino: you’ll have to play two notes simultaneously. All of the same rules of technique apply here, but you have to be extra careful to keep your thumb outside your fingers (i.e., closer to the headstock than the fingers) and maintain a good scissor motion between your thumb and index finger. In other words, don’t let the thumb and index bump into each other when they play notes simultaneously; they should slide past each other smoothly.
Enjoy!
(Click on notation to enlarge)
This column will be on break for the holidays, but I’ll see you again in 2007 with some left hand technique, more patterns and tunes emphasizing the right hand, some thoughts on practicing, a primer on solo improvisation, and who knows what else. Any ideas for future columns? Please feel free to e-mail me:
Happy Hanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, et al!
Mike
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