The Maestro speaks.. - Page 2

wordsmith · #31 04-29-2009, 03:48 AM

....of classical guitar as my chosen instrument, posted elsewhere here yesterday. I hereby pledge to be a nice, friendly, jolly classical guitar player, on whom one can always rely to be civil, courteous and caring.
I have always seen the playing of music as something which nurtures the positive aspects of being human. I can't imagine I would ever put anyone else down. Even if a player is quite terrible to listen to, he or she is at least making an effort creatively, and should be admired if only for that.

elixzer · #32 04-29-2009, 04:06 AM

Yes! I was going to comment to the interesting post at end of my thread about modes, but agreed with poster not to derail the theme, but hope that a new thread about the Blues could be started....In the post is said how guitar players who have done 'bad things' like for example, playing on an upside down guitar have been some of the really great original players!

This reminds me of an old Chinese saying I love:

"Sometimes the right way works the wrong way for the wrong man"

Meaning that, yeah for some strict conformity to technique etc may really work, but for other creatives you can kill their spirit. So the good teacher has to be aware of that I reckon...

Charles Henry · #33 05-01-2009, 02:47 PM

Not that we need more abusive or mean people, but the world sure could use a lot more less-well-rounded people.[/quote]

wordsmith · #34 05-01-2009, 03:16 PM

....that less well-rounded people are in short supply in an increasingly 'copycat' world, with TV stardom seeming to be the measure of success for hoardes of people. Plastic smiles, too much make-up, talking rubbish and giving no clue as to who they actually are......
Morrissey, formerly lead singer with British band The Smiths, came up with a great lyric in one of his later solo songs:

"....it's just more lock-jawed pop stars, thicker than pig shit, nothing to convey,
so scared to show intelligence - it might smear their lovely career......this world, I am afraid, is designed for crashing bores...."

Not one to mince words! Top guy, Morrissey, in my view. It's love him or hate him in Britain - no middle ground! For more quintessential British complaining with great style, the album is 'You are the Quarry'. A great sense of humour, the man has, often subtle.

A few more grumpy goats would be a welcome sight amongst all the sheep.

franco6719 · #35 05-02-2009, 03:09 AM

It's extremely disturbing and frustrating as hell to me when some educated conservatives actually go out of their way to encourage ignorance and shallowness in this modern world of "hollow men". I will say nothing else or the discussion will turn to such horrors as the eight-year reign of Bush administration fascism.

wordsmith · #36 05-02-2009, 08:39 AM

...this is 'Chit Chat', the right place for any discussion or point of view. Where else is there?
This forum gets better by leaps and bounds. I'm a jazz novice, so I just chip in where I can.

I have the feeling that this 'hollowness' and 'shallowness' is starting to wear thin among people. The 'credit craze', started by Thatcher and Reagan in league with the financial institutions back in the early eighties, has finally run its course and vapourized. I remember in about 1986, my local back offering a free, crappy camera for just filling in an application form for a credit card, regardless of whether you were successful in the application or not.
I also remember telling people at the time that this was the road to hell. You've guessed....nobody listened, and I remained a voice in a plastic wilderness for two decades.

Every generation can express dismay with the antics of the following generation (I think Segovia just became grumpy.....he was 64 when Elvis started out) but I think we are in different times. We should express our concerns that young people today are getting a raw deal in many ways. Money is very important, no two ways about it. But there is more, and a lot of that 'more' is inside the individual, and need not be nurtured purely for financial gain.

With many schools at breaking point and teachers being harassed to 'perform' ......ie produce better exam statistics for the bureaucrats...., and the banal state of modern popular music, and many parents just too tired working all the hours God sends to make ends meet, and rappers spouting that it's better to 'get rich or die trying', etc etc etc etc etc etc.........who is going to tell young people anything of what many here would consider to be of value?

Well, Morrissey, for sure.

franco6719 · #37 05-03-2009, 02:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wordsmith

...this is 'Chit Chat', the right place for any discussion or point of view. Where else is there?
This forum gets better by leaps and bounds. I'm a jazz novice, so I just chip in where I can.

I have the feeling that this 'hollowness' and 'shallowness' is starting to wear thin among people. The 'credit craze', started by Thatcher and Reagan in league with the financial institutions back in the early eighties, has finally run its course and vapourized. I remember in about 1986, my local back offering a free, crappy camera for just filling in an application form for a credit card, regardless of whether you were successful in the application or not.
I also remember telling people at the time that this was the road to hell. You've guessed....nobody listened, and I remained a voice in a plastic wilderness for two decades.

Every generation can express dismay with the antics of the following generation (I think Segovia just became grumpy.....he was 64 when Elvis started out) but I think we are in different times. We should express our concerns that young people today are getting a raw deal in many ways. Money is very important, no two ways about it. But there is more, and a lot of that 'more' is inside the individual, and need not be nurtured purely for financial gain.

With many schools at breaking point and teachers being harassed to 'perform' ......ie produce better exam statistics for the bureaucrats...., and the banal state of modern popular music, and many parents just too tired working all the hours God sends to make ends meet, and rappers spouting that it's better to 'get rich or die trying', etc etc etc etc etc etc.........who is going to tell young people anything of what many here would consider to be of value?

Well, Morrissey, for sure.

Yes, that little plastic beastie thing that Americans worship seems like it is going to be the next House of Cards or "bubble" to implode. I don't know where this extraordinary financial/economic crisis ends for the US (and, by extension, the rest of the world). It's interesting that Italians never fell for the credit card thing, for some reason. Italy has massive economic weakness and problems. Some of the commercial banks also got heavily involved with the "derivatives" and sub-prime easy money mania. There's also a public debt that us much vaster than the US: 105% of GDP or something close to that.

However, it's interesting that Italians themselves never became spending-crazed. Over here, almost no on I have ever met uses a credit card regularly!! They are DEEPLY distrusted.

Anyway, as I was born and raised in the US, I am very much concerned with the situation of my home country. I don't know what to make of it, or whether the Obama adminsration won't end up being blamed for increasing the deficit while trying to stimulate the ecomony. It looks like the Republicans have set up a situation where "heads I win, tails you lose."

elixzer · #38 05-03-2009, 05:42 AM

I am 'alone' in this world. I look at it and it looks insane, people fighting each other, the greed, conning, doubletalk, cruelty to animals, and total disrespect for nature. I am happy to look at it this way

Music can dissolve all this. Have anyof you walked down some dirty consumerized typical city high street with all its corporate drabness and blank faces hurrying about, and then you hear music---a busker, and all is transformed into magic. Even THAt ugliness...

I look at places which are extremes of oppression. They all ban music! Our consumer obsessed shopowners have also done the same in our town claiming the 'noise' is 'bad for business' and is 'giving our staff headaches', etc

wordsmith · #39 05-03-2009, 08:45 AM

......gives us this forum, great music software to play with, instant communication with anybody, anywhere......
The price we pay is the equally instant news media in all its forms, drowning us with the 'news' that it is all insane.
But the world always has been a crazy place. Just that years ago a bunch of guys would come rushing into your village, hacking folk to pieces with swords and axes and taking what they wanted. The craziness continues, in different forms these days.
So I don't worry about myself......I'm fifty-two. It's the kids I worry about, as I wrote. When I was a child we had a valve (or tube) radio and a hoover, and we played outside a lot, getting dirty and often into trouble with the owners of local apple trees.
I really can't imagine what the effects of all this electro-technology will be as things proceed. I was in a multimedia technology superstore recently, and actually felt nauseated. All these gadgets and stuff....none of which anyone needs at the level of daily survival. I do try to possess the minimum amount of these goods. I suppose I have quite a lot, like many people, but I am aware that what I have is rather devilish in some ways, like the internet itself.

I suppose my decision to concentrate on acoustic playing with classical guitar for now was partly influenced by all this. Electricity is needed to produce the strings, but that's the end of it.

elixzer · #40 05-03-2009, 12:14 PM

Yes, I feel like that, and feel what you mean about preferring unplugged guitars. That you have the freedom to be without electricity when doing something you love, play music

and I know exactly that feeling in one of those tech stores--overwelmingly

I never really took to techno music. It sounded mechanical to me. For instance, if you familiar with gnawa music, and Yoruba music which is real musicinas playing very complex rhythms and compare with the sample like loop electro rhythmic musics there is--for me no comparison. The former breathes, is organic because people are playing it not machines
Some of it i like though because of the very interesting sounds you can get, and with a real creative person some really interesting music. But I prefer unplugged. Has more soul for me

mattymel · #41 03-19-2010, 07:46 PM

the more you get into the recent history of classical guitar, the more you discover that segovia's reputation is not as SOLID as a player or a teacher as he would have had you believe. of all his talents, self promotion was definitely his most natural.

he was inarguably very conceited and liked to spread the idea that he single handedly brought the guitar out of the shadows and that his OPINION was unquestionable. in reality, there have always been GREAT classical players. and his self advirtisement as the saviour of the guitar had more to do with his own ambition than reality. some of whom were his contemporaries AND WAY more talented than him. the only guitarists that he EVER liked were young student guitarists that accepted his word as FACT.

dont get me wrong, i like some of segovia's playing. there is something romantic that i like that i dont hear in many other more technically developed players. but just like anybody that gets all the recognition early on...they are the standard that is very quickly surpassed. there are 1000s of players (likely way more) that would school segovia nowadays. in this way, hendrix is more inspirational to me than segovia. still havent heard anyone do what he did better than him.

this video basically shows segovia getting all worked up that someone would have the gall to come up with their own interpretation of a piece. he doesnt even listen to the piece before criticizing his fingerings (different from his own). he just comes across as a salty old crank...chapdelaine has way more class then this so called master.

YouTube - Segovia Chapdelaine Master Class

reventlov · #42 03-20-2010, 02:05 AM

This is from the book "Maestro Segovia" by Graham Wade:

''When George Harrison of the Beatles acclaimed Segovia as 'the daddy of us all', Segovia remarked: 'The Beatles are very nice young men, no doubt, but their music is horrible. Even as illegitimate children I could not accept them.' ''

This is typical of how Segovia spoke of anything that didn't fit with his own narrow view of music. He was a great success as a guitarist and an utter failure as a human being.

elixzer · #43 03-20-2010, 02:42 AM

haha I just saw the video. Now last year I may have had a different feeling from watching it--even last week, yesterday, I don't know. But the thoughts and feelings I got watching it were: I would like to hear the piece the way Sergovia prefers in comparison with how the youngman was playing it. So then I woud be able to hear a comparison for myself.

Also, instead of projecting onto Sergovia that he is a control freak etc, I thought of myself when sometimes judging music. For example (Sorry if it seems change of subject but its not really.) the other day I was watching a Youtube video of a an old Blues--just audio it was guitar and singer from way back, and I had never heard of them before but it REALLY moved me, because it had this real intensity that has to be natural.
In the comments someone wrote something like 'the Blues evolution culminated in the 1970s with the likes of Eric Clapton' . Now, I have of course listened to and watched Clapton over the years. At one time his playing was likened to 'God', and there's no doubt he is highly skilled, yet I had to reply to that commenter that that old Blues by people I had never heard was vastly more to me than anything I'd heard from Eric, and in fact his playing left me cold.

So, if I was a judge of some player and they began with the Blues cliche stuff I too would be tough on them lol. I cannot criticize Sergovia because I don't know Classical enough (though I know what I like), and his unique perspective will always be that, and so you would have to bear it if you played before him!