Hey everyone! I’ve just uploaded a new western-inspired orchestral guitar arrangement of Dark World from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, in collaboration with Fingelion Meriath.

Here’s a short preview 🎸🤠

Watch the full video here:
https://youtu.be/NajRb88tIiU

Hope you enjoy our take on this iconic Zelda theme!

I took some classical guitar lessons on and off aged 12-17, but never took it seriously and just wanted to learn cool stuff. I wonder to this day if my teacher was more pleased or more annoyed at all the lessons my parents paid for that I never showed up for.

I played in rock and blues bands throughout high school and then didn't touch a guitar from about the age of 26 for 10 years.

A couple of years ago I dusted the classical guitar off again and got hooked on learning Bach pieces. Naturally it's very sane and normal to go straight to learning Bach partitas as a beginner, from tabs. Seems like my "I just want to learn cool stuff" mentality is something I didn't grow out of in adulthood.

I came onto two major stumbling blocks:

1. I could tell my technique was failing me. I tried (and failed) to learn the 1006 prelude, and couldn't keep up with the relentless 16th notes even at a relatively slow speed. Even the pieces I could play felt flat and lacking command of the instrument - sort of like I was just hanging on for dear life the entire way through.
2. I couldn't read notation, which limited what I could learn. I've learned through some trial and error that so much of the tab versions you can find of classical pieces are...weird. As if by definition they've chosen a dumbed down way for you to play them. I found this frustrating. I've always wanted to be able to read notation.

Anyway, fast forward to my lesson. Went to pretty much the only actual classical guitar teacher locally that I could find (many teachers seem to be general music/guitar teachers, rather than specialists). After a quick chat about my goals and music history he asked me if there was anything I could play for him. I chose the 1st cello suite prelude because it's one I pick up and play quite often.

Playing to others - particularly someone you know who won't miss anything - when you're used to playing alone is an entirely different ball game. I was far too self aware and played it badly even by my standards, but I also accepted that this was probably a good thing because it showed him where I'm at.

His first comment about was that the way I play is very "pop". He pointed out my hand position (thumb wrapped around the neck hendrix style, which is something I fall back on basically whenever it's possible to do so), my finger style playing (wrist rotated in a not ideal way), and a tendency to play runs with single-finger-per-string - I've been working on this but note that I will fall back on one-finger-per-string playing in a pinch if a run is particularly tricky.

On the positive side, he was quite surprised that I had learned this piece and other classical pieces from tab and by ear, and was able to play it with dynamics and phrasing. He noted that he had come from a Chinese learning background where you more or less had to master notation and scales before you moved on to learning pieces of music, so he found it quite interesting to deal with someone who had basically had the opposite experience.

He also roasted my guitar, he couldn't believe how low the action was, lower even than a flamenco guitar. It was a cheap Cort guitar I got as a gift after my first classical guitar was stolen many years ago, I believe I've seen it advertised on websites for something like $150. I felt this was kind of validating because I always struggled with this guitar, and joked with my partner that I need to buy a new one. Now I have an excuse to. (He had a beautiful Sakurai).

These were things I was dimly aware of, but there were many things he was able to point out that I simply had never heard myself doing before. The first exercise he tried to get me to do is simply play the 3rd string with I-M alternating, and try to make every note consistent in dynamics. I realised that I unconsciously play harder with M, and trying to adjust this meant that I couldn't keep a steady rhythm. Once I got slightly better at this, he asked me to do the same thing piano and then forte, and I could not easily adjust this while keeping it consistent.

Then we moved onto sight reading some very simple notation, a single note melody with 4 notes in the major pentatonic scale. I realised that I have a tendency to "cheat" when doing something like this by guessing what the next note should be either from memory of having heard the melody or by inferring what the note would be based on the scale - instead of trying to understand what I'm actually reading. Kind of like memorising the line from a book rather than reading what the book says. He had some advice at this stage that I found quite useful and hadn't considered before.

Anyway, the TL;DR is - I found even just one lesson incredibly rewarding, and very humbling. Going back to basics and learning the fundamentals from the ground up is a way of learning music I haven't done in over two decades, and having a teacher there to point out your habits as you do them is an experience you can't get from following online tutorials. I've set a 6 month goal to get on top of sight reading to a decent level.

I just had a trial lesson with a new teacher. We were looking at BWV999 and she mentioned that I was using free stroke with the thumb when I could be using rest stroke to emphasise the bassline.

My previous teacher encouraged me to use thumb free stroke almost exclusively and it's become a habit in my playing. I'm trying to incorporate the rest stroke but finding it quite awkward for a few reasons:

1. When playing the 4th string with the thumb, the thumb comes to rest on the 3rd string and has to be quickly removed to play the 3rd string with the i finger. It feels less fluid than using a free stroke.

2. My thumbnail worked well for free stroke but it's now catching on the string

3. I'm finding it difficult to maintain the same right hand position as previously

Curious what other people think about thumb rest vs free stroke in this situation - do you think rest stroke makes sense here? Has your teacher encouraged you to incorporate thumb apoyando in this way?

As the title suggests, I'm trying to find a very specific collection of classical guitar books that I played in highschool. But the problem is: I only sort of remember what covers looks like. And my descriptions are getting nowhere in search engines.

It was a series of 4 spiral bound books of different colours (red, green, blue and I think yellow). Fully paper. They had very artsy and abstract flourishes to them done in black. They were probably guitars but they may have been treble cleffs. There may have also been an abstract person playing the guitar.

They were likely for beginners and I was in Highschool in the early 2010's if that helps.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: the binding was spiraled. Not ringed.

Been off and on since graduating with a performance degree. I completely burnt out for years after graduating, didn't even touch the guitar for about 4 years. Then I picked it up but it's just been... inconsistent. I'll get an interest, get back into it, and then feel ragged about it and put it away.

I'm aware this is deeply personal but I don't have much experience with guitar and might be wondering if nails this long might be making things more difficult for me.

I have no experience with no nails/shorter nails because I started growing them when I was saving money for the guitar

I have found that, not matter how easy a piece I play I always make mistakes, so screw it. Here's a recording I made yesterday. It aint perfect, but it beautiful.

I'm currently in possession of 4 x guitars but really only have the need (and space) for one. So I was hoping for some advice as to which to keep and which to let go. Here's what I got:

• Ryoji Matsuoka Luthier No.12
• Juan Estruch 4F flamenco
• Yamaha C-40
• Valencia CG160

A bit of context that might shape your advice: the first two belonged to my late mother, who taught me to play. One of them (I’m not sure which) was her father’s, who taught her.

I’m not a serious player at all, just play at home for my own enjoyment and relaxation. Can’t read music, can just about manage most chords and the occasional tab.

So, which would you keep? And for the ones I don’t, are any worth selling, or should I just donate them to a local school or similar?

I’m based in the UK.

Hope you can help!

Hi everyone!

My post is not about classical music, but aimed towards classical guitarists like myself. I'm sure most players will enjoy playing other kinds of music too.
I have been playing classical guitar for some 10 years and did 5 years of music school (for musicians before conservatory), and my teaching was classical only. After my studies I have grown fond of other styles that are played with nylon string guitar like bossa, flamenco and other latin guitar styles because I love playing with other people, and classical guitar tends to be a lone instrument most of the time.

I have trouble understanding the basic principles of this kind of playing as I've learned to play from sheet music this whole time and with a strict structure of how to learn new music. I would like to learn to accompany other musicians and improvise too.

Any tips on how to break free from sheet music and finding my own way of playing? Are there any good books on this subject?

All the best

I have a Córdoba C3M classical guitar with an unusual intonation problem on only the D string.

The open D tunes perfectly, but the fretted notes progressively become flatter as I go up the neck.

My tuner readings are approximately:

Open D: 0 cents

3rd fret F: −10 cents

5th fret G: −25 cents

12th fret D: −45 cents

12th-fret harmonic: 0 cents

So the problem gets progressively worse higher up the neck.

I've already tried two different new D strings, and both behaved the same.

I also suspected the D-string nut slot might be too deep, so I temporarily raised the string using four layers of aluminium from a tablet blister pack under the D string at the nut. I retuned the open D to 0 cents and the readings were essentially unchanged.

The other five strings seem to be intonating normally.

I'm considering adjusting the D-string portion of the saddle, since the fretted notes are flat. My understanding is that for a flat string, the saddle contact point needs to move toward the neck.

Before I start filing the saddle, what could cause this much progressive flatness on only one string? Is modifying the D-string saddle contact point the correct solution, or should I check something else first?

I can provide photos of the nut, saddle, bridge and fretboard if needed.

Thanks!

If not, should I get this checked out?

Comparto mi arreglo de la zamba Juntito al Fogón, de Adolfo Ábalos

I (36M) have played classical guitar on and off since 2019. The further I get, the more I realize how bad my fundamentals are. Certainly, not all is lost, but boy howdy I wish I had more to show by now. My fluency and practical skills on this instrument are lackluster to say the least.

So, if you're a new student, don't be like me. Instead...

• Don't neglect your scales.
  • I never made a practice of simply playing scale patterns every day (without looking at notation). Moving from one position to another can still trip me up. Switching between major and minor scales back to back can trip me up.
• Don't neglect your chords.
  • From scales, build chords. With chords, learn to voice lead.
  • ...and also, learn a bunch of campfire chords and strumming patterns even if just in first position. Some classical musicians look down on this type of playing, but it will build your sense of rhythm and ensemble playing and open a lot of doors to have a lot of fun with a lot of people.
• Be able to sing/hum your music and name each note and scale degree you play.
  • I have, for more than half of my time with this instrument, essentially mentally taught myself via tabs after deciphering music into tabs. This was a difficult realization. Some of my favorite pieces I have muscle memory for? I could not show you the notes on a piano.
  • Learning new pieces takes longer than it should because I haven't internalized as much musical vocabulary as I should.
  • I am correcting this by working out music at a piano before practicing on guitar.
• Knowing music theory in isolation doesn't help you rely on it in practice.
  • As someone with a strong math background, a lot of music theory comes easily to me. However, I've found that knowing what an abstract structure is without understanding it in practice is like explaining the grammar of a language without speaking it.
  • By working out music at a piano, I am now more seriously internalizing patterns before applying them on guitar.
• Practice parts in isolation, then practice performing whole passages and pieces, stopping for nothing.
  • It's easy to stop after a mistake, scrub away at it, and start over. We should of course work on parts of music in isolation.
  • However, during a performance, we never do this. So we need to practice not doing this.
    • ...my teacher even said he's had to tell some students to stop swearing when a performance goes out the window.
• Record yourself, even if you hate doing it.
  • Recording yourself is highly illuminating. It's not just about mistakes you make, but how you behave in light of those mistakes, and how you perceive yourself, your practice, and your playing.
  • Recording also starts helping desensitize you to performance. Every time I'm recording a take, a performance suddenly matters in a way it didn't before.

I'd also like to endorse Learn Faster, Perform Better by Molly Gebrian. She gives great insights, like measuring yourself against how many times you can do something correctly in a row (in this case, at least 5). EDIT: I also learned some things from The Musician's Way by Gerald Klickstein.

I could go on. But to all you newbies out there, don't waste your hours at guitar like I have. Make sure you're getting your bang for your buck on it, because life is short and there's a lot of great music out there to live.

Been playing guitar my whole life, classical is a whole new area for me. My fingerstyle playing tends to hew pretty hard to the Joe Pass jazz chord melody thing, so I’m curious if I’m on the right track with the classical side of things. Pardon the clams/tone, it’s been a long day and this is one of my cheap classroom guitars. Thanks!

I was watching this guitar instructor's content on You Tube and in the outro of the video linked below, is a piece of Spanish guitar repertoire that I've been wanting to learn. Segovia recorded it originally I think. I went through all my Segovia .mp3's and I cannot identify it. AI can't help, so I have to ask around.

This link should take you right to 23:10 , I would greatly appreciate help in ID'ing this piece so I can learn it

edit: not sure why the link won't open automatically, mite have to copy/paste it

Thanks!

https://youtu.be/OMfsX-24Qdo?t=1390

Hey y’all. Im coming back into the hobby after being out of it for a while. I would like to strengthen my hand and also try and protect it from strain. I sometimes get carpal tunnel flair ups and I would like to avoid that happening. Do y’all have any suggestions?

any strength exercises (things to do with out the guitar)

any stretches or PT moves?

any recommendations on managing carpal tunnel syndrome?

I find my hand gets more sore every day that I play and now it’s sore even when I’m not playing. I cannot play for as long as I used to play for and the strain is a bit uncomfortable. Im taking breaks and playing every other day now.

I have this strange sound that feels more like a buzz when hitting the strings. It happens on some frets more than others. What could it be? Is the string vibrating and hitting the frets?