Letter from New York

Julia Crowe interviews Peter Argondizza in New York regarding his career as a guitarist

Faculty Recital: Trey Wright Trey Wright (feat. Laura Coyle and Sean Thrower )

KSU faculty guitarist, Trey Wright and vocalist, Laura Coyle present an eclectic mix of music. Special appearance by guitarist and KSU Artist in Residence, Sean Thrower.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/2312/thumbnail.jp

"Living and playing in the material world" : facing the challenges of freelance gigs

This discussion/lecture demonstration explores the challenges faced by a conservatoire trained guitar soloist working as a freelance musician. Guitarists are trained, primarily, as both soloist and chamber music participants. These skills are often supplemented with classes in career development, publicity, networking, pedagogy, etc. Whilst these—and all the other requisite classes in harmony, counterpoint, history, etc. —are essential, there is another rewarding side of the profession for the classical guitarist in the genre of playing plucked string “parts” with orchestras, large ensembles and opera companies. It is been my experience that, despite the real opportunities in the profession, this is an area in which classical guitarists are little prepared. I know this was my “real world” experience and my excursion into this area was fraught with joys and sorrows, as well as frustration and satisfaction. This discussion/lecture/demonstration presents a cross section of my own experiences, “war stories,” experiments, and performances. Including "real life" tips on repertoire, preparation, equipment, score/part study, listening, and courtesy, recording and performance situations with these ensembles I hope to pass professional and practical advice to the emerging classical guitarist to prepare them to cope and succeed in thee rewarding and challenging performance opportunities

Ramon Ybarra, Classical Guitarist

Capen Auditorium Wednesday, February 7, 1968 8:15p.m

Repetitive strain injury (RSI) in guitarist: causes, effects and preventions / Ronny Philip

This study was carried out to determine the causes and effects of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) in guitarist. Two male guitarists with previous history of Performance Arts Injures were chosen to be the respondents of this study. A set of question was designed to gain primary data from the respondents. Secondary data were collected from journals, websites and articles with the same topic. The overall findings of the study indicate that misuse and overuse of body parts are some of the main causes of RSI in guitarist. In conclusion, some suggestions have been made to minimize the development of RSI in guitarist and recommendations for future research have also been included in the final parts of the report

The State of the Guitar in Kathmandu

The thriving guitar scene in Kathmandu is not well known outside of the country, and particularly not in the West. It has also not been the topic of much recent scholarship. It has been assumed that for Nepalis the guitar, as a foreign instrument, represents freedom and modernity; but, is this true, and what else might it signify to Nepali guitarists themselves? This article gives an overview of the history of the guitar in Kathmandu by drawing on both published scholarship and interviews conducted by the authors with twelve prominent Nepalese guitarists and guitar educators to establish the current state and future outlook of the guitar in Nepal. Findings suggest that, in addition to freedom and modernity, the guitar is connected with individualism, and is becoming naturalized and less foreign than it used to be

Hearing with the eyes: A distributed cognition perspective on guitar song imitation

Many guitarists learn to play by imitating recordings. This style of learning allows guitarists to master both new songs and new techniques. To imitate a song, a guitarist repeatedly listens to a song recording until the entire song, or the desired portion of that song, can be reproduced by the guitarist. This kind of imitation can be a very difficult process particularly if the recorded guitarist plays fast and other instruments are involved. Besides the difficulty in hearing the guitar music, the many different ways to finger and articulate the same notes and chords on a guitar, can also make playing the music difficult. In this paper, we describe some of the knowledge guitarists use to minimize these difficulties. We then propose an external representation that guitarists can use to unload some of the cognitive burden imposed by the imitation process. This external representation — the bar chord — transform many of the imitation activities from those requiring both internal computations and memory to those that require the guitarist to merely look and see the desired results. Moreover, bar chords facilitate the social distribution of these individual benefits. This research contributes to the growing field of distributed cognition and to our understanding of both internal and external representations used during music learning and improvisation

The Creative Modern Guitarist

My project is a portfolio, or collection of works, revolving around the guitar. I have explored the scope of what the instrument can do, and its numerous roles and applications.https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-contemporary-performance/1074/thumbnail.jp

On a Purple Note

A passion for jazz helps this guitarist find his own beat

Towards Overcoming the Guitar's Color Research Gap

Most (classical) guitar music comes from guitarist-composers. Yet according to guitarists who collaborate with composers, color research on this instrument is better achieved by those who do not play the instrument. Thus the guitar lags behind many instruments in regard to color research. Various reasons can be faulted for the tendency of non-guitarist composers to avoid the instrument. Examples of such reasons may be: the difficulty to write for the instrument, and its weak projection and lack of sustain, all of which are intrinsic to the guitar. This is, however, not the case of the paradigmatic sound for which the instrument is also dismissed, which is rather the legacy of the conservative guitarist Andrés Segovia, who was one of the main promoters of the guitar in the twentieth century. When composers dismiss the guitar for being difficult to write for, collaboration with guitarists has proven fruitful. Given that Segovia's conservatism still prevails among many guitarists, if the sonorous possibilities of the instrument are to be expanded, it is essential that the guitarist is adventurous and has a good arsenal of techniques. New color-research results could entice composers dismissing the guitar for its limitations or its paradigmatic sound to reconsider composing for the instrument. The amplification of sounds with low intensity can be a useful tool to obtain new colors. However, sounds arising from conventional instruments require some caution. It is important to introduce novelty in order to avoid connotation with their respective non-amplified instrument. The technique of multiphonics, which produces sounds of unusual colors, is believed to be a suitable tool when the guitar is amplified with close microphone placement. Through making audible the sounds' components of a lower intensity, this situation would reveal to the audience colors otherwise only heard by the guitarist