I’d like to personally thank Marcus Dominelli for this wonderful and educational guest post. Last year I bought a Dominelli guitar (spruce/indian) and love it. You can see photos of my guitar here. I didn’t order this guitar, I just visited Marcus and decided to buy this one which he had in the shop. I was previously playing a guitar by Stephan Connor.

I’ve written a spotlight post about Marcus which you may also like: Spotlight: Marcus Dominelli – Luthier, this one includes a video interview and more!

For more information about Dominelli Guitars see the end of this post or visit his website: www.dominelliguitars.com

Bracing Styles for Classical Guitars
This is a guest post by luthier Marcus Dominelli

I’d like to discuss the basics of bracing used in classical guitar making. This article is intended for those who know little about how classical guitars are made; however, some experienced luthiers and musicians might find it of interest as well. It’s not possible to overview every type of guitar bracing in existence, my goal here is to briefly examine the common types, and some of the forces that have pushed the evolution of the classical guitar in new directions.

The soundboard bracing basically does two things. First, it stiffens the soundboard so as to minimize distortion of the top from string tension. Second, the bracing affects the sound of the guitar, and the string response.

The neck, back and sides, scale length, box size, string type, and many other elements affect the volume and tone of the guitar. But the intent of this article is to focus on the soundboard and how it’s braced, because it is this area which has the biggest affect on the over all sound. It is, in the truest sense, “the heart” of the guitar.

Ladder Bracing

Around 200 years ago, most guitars had what is often called “ladder bracing.” It’s probably the simplest form of bracing, consisting of struts glued in perpendicular to the grain of the soundboard. The guitars made by the famous French luthier Rene Lacote had ladder bracing. Here is a photo of an 8 string Lacote style guitar I made for the guitarist Murray Visscher.

8 string Lacote style guitar

This photo shows the inside of the same guitar. You can see how the two braces that cross the lower bout are not parallel. Instead, the braces get further away from each other toward the bass side of the soundboard.

Many luthiers believe that asymmetrical bracing, such as pictured in this guitar, will resonate to a broader range of frequencies. I’ve found that excellent guitars can be made with either symmetrical or non-symmetrical bracing. As always in guitar making, a number of things are required to make a great sounding guitar. Well made ladder braced guitars like the ones made by Lacote had excellent clarity and projection, and could fill a concert hall as well as any modern instrument.

The best sounding ouds are made “under the brink of collapse”, with just enough bracing to keep them from imploding.

Many lutes also have ladder bracing. Here is a bracing photo of an Arabic lute, or “oud” that I recently made. It has many cross struts. Lutes and ouds are made with very thin soundboards, usually 1mm to 1.5mm thick, which gives them their characteristic tone. The best sounding ouds are made “under the brink of collapse”, with just enough bracing to keep them from imploding. It is said that they sound their best when made to these fine tolerances.

American steel-string acoustic guitar manufacturers used ladder bracing as well, although it was slowly phased out after the Martin Guitar Company invented X-bracing in the 1920’s. Ladder bracing did not withstand the high tension of steel strings very well. X-bracing was not only stronger, but produced a warmer tone and an all around better sounding guitar. Still, ladder bracing continued to get used on less expensive makes and models well into the 1950’s despite its shortcomings when used with steel strings.

Fan Bracing

fan bracing

Antonio de Torres (1817–1892) is generally given credit as the father of the modern classical guitar. He radically redesigned the instrument, giving it a larger body, lighter bracing and a thinner soundboard than did his predecessors.

The bracing pattern shown here, or slight variations of it, is the most widely used pattern in the classical guitar since the time of Torres. It is now commonplace, but 150 years ago it was truly revolutionary.

You can see from the picture how the braces are now running more in the direction of the soundboard grain, and not perpendicular to the grain like in the lute and many of the early 19th century guitars such as those made by Lacote.

This change in brace orientation is significant to the musician. Combined with the larger body and the thinner soundboard, fan bracing makes for a warmer, earthier sounding instrument with a much stronger bass response than the ladder braced guitars of the early 19th century. Simply put, Torres’ guitar had a greater dynamic range of tonal possibilities, and was a more versatile tool for making music. This image shows some variations in fan bracing patterns.

The Modern Concert Guitar

By the 1950’s, thanks in large part to Andres Segovia, the classical guitar had made its way into the concert hall. This really marked the beginning of the separation between the classical and the flamenco guitar, the latter evolving very little over the next 50 years to the present. Until around 1950 it could be well argued that there was little difference between flamenco and classical guitars in terms of design. I will not discuss it here, but this could be the subject of a future article.

The other significant change that happened in the mid 20th century was the advent of nylon strings. The nylon polymer was invented in the 1930’s by The Dupont Company. Prior to around 1950 virtually all classical players were using gut strings, and guitars were built with gut strings in mind.

Gut is about 20% denser than nylon, the net effect of which from the point of view of the musician is that nylon does not sound as bright. The problem for the luthier is how do we get that brightness back? One way is to increase the height of the bracing to stiffen the soundboard, thus enhancing the treble frequencies of the guitar, which many luthiers did.

Nowadays we have access to carbon strings, some of which are even denser than gut, but these have only been available for a few years. In the 50’s guitarists did not have a plethora of string choices like we have today, so luthiers they had to increase the stiffness of their soundboards to compensate for the mellower sound of nylon strings.

Further compounding the problem is the fact that the fan-braced Torres guitar tended to be more bass heavy in terms of balance. A good concert guitar needs to sound bright, clear, and articulate in order to project to the back of a hall.
Most luthiers will admit that it’s relatively easy to make a guitar with a strong, lush bass response, but making one with strong penetrating trebles is a much greater challenge. This was as true 60 years ago as it is today.

This switch from gut strings to nylon, and the need for a louder, bigger sounding concert instrument forced many luthiers to change the way they built their guitars. Let’s look at how one famous luthier responded to these challenges.

Jose Ramirez 3rd

Many will know the Ramirez name because it was Andres Segovia who played and endorsed Ramirez guitars for much of his career. Jose Ramirez 3rd had an interesting approach to making the concert guitar louder and brighter. He tried a number of things:

1) First, he stiffened up the treble side of the soundboard by introducing a new brace which, not surprisingly, has become known in lutherie lexicon as “the treble bar” as you can see in this diagram of his bracing pattern:

2) Second, Ramirez was the first manufacturer to widely use Western Red Cedar for soundboards, as you can see in the photo above. Cedar has some advantages over spruce, the main one being that cedar is on average about 15 -20% lighter in weight. Jose Ramirez 3rd believed so strongly in the superiority of cedar over spruce that he wrote in his book Things about the Guitar that “Stradivari would have used the American wood had he known about it.” The top in the above photo has a cedar soundboard with spruce bracing.

Prior to the 1950’s European spruce was the standard material for guitar tops. Nowadays cedar is more commonly used for classical guitars than spruce, although spruce remains an excellent soundboard material, many still preferring it to cedar for its tonal complexity.

3) Third, Ramirez commonly started using longer scale lengths on his guitars in an attempt to increase the volume. Scale length simply refers to the vibrating length of the string. Torres commonly used scale lengths of 640 to 650mm, which have become the standard. Ramirez guitars often had scales of 660, 664, and 668mm.

The physics of string length is fairly simple. A longer string is heavier than a shorter one. It takes greater tension to bring a heavier string up to the same pitch as a shorter string. The greater string tension of a long scale guitar equals more energy to drive the soundboard. If this energy is optimized with the design of the soundboard, it has the potential to make a louder guitar.

Although Jose Ramirez 3rd clearly made some progress in the evolution of the Concert Guitar, none of his developments can really be considered great departures from his predecessors. His addition of the treble bar was still only an improvement within the context of fan bracing; he did not truly invent a new type of bracing.

Also, it could be argued that his use of longer scale lengths was a backward step, if you consider how much more difficult longer scales can be for the player. Longer scale lengths don’t always translate into greater volume or projection in practice like they do in theory.

But to give Jose Ramirez 3rd credit, he pioneered the use of western red cedar and made it standard, and his use of the treble bar is still widely used today.

Radial Bracing

I’m not sure who to give credit to as the inventor of radial bracing. I’ve seen it used on Yamaha guitars from the 1970s. The luthier probably most well known for radial bracing is the late Richard Sneider, who worked in conjunction with Dr. Kasha, an American Physicist during the 1970’s and 80’s. There are many types of radial bracing. It is not commonly used compared to other bracing styles and I cannot make any generalizations about how radial bracing sounds, but many have used it with success.

This photo shows a simple form of radial bracing, which refers to any bracing pattern where the braces radiate outward from the bridge area.

Lattice Bracing

In the late 1970’s, an Australian guitar maker named Greg Smallman came up with the first lattice braced classical guitar. It was truly revolutionary, and his guitars to this day can be found in the hands of many of the worlds finest players. The basic physics behind how the lattice works is very simple:

Since a lattice structure is inherently stiff both with the grain and across it, the soundboard can be made much thinner and still be strong enough to withstand the string tension, thus substantially reducing the total weight of the top. The energy of the strings is more efficiently transmitted into soundboard vibration, the net result being a guitar with greater volume, and faster string response.

Another benefit of Lattice bracing is greater ease of playability and dynamics. By dynamics I mean the ability of the guitar to respond to both aggressive and gentle right hand techniques.

Playability is more than simply a function of adjusting string action at the nut and saddle. Although string height has an effect on playability, how the soundboard responds to every subtle nuance of the strings and hands is probably more important to the musician than action height alone.

Here is an example of a lattice braced soundboard. The braces are made with laminated balsa wood and carbon fibre. The soundboard is spruce.

lattice braced soundboard: braces with laminated balsa wood and carbon fibre

The picture below shows some of the design features you might find in a lattice braced guitar made in the Smallman style. The sides are laminated, and much effort has been made in the way of bracing and reinforcement to keep the rim and upper bout of the guitar as rigid as possible. The goal is to send all the string energy to the soundboard and minimize “leakage” to other parts of the guitar, like the sides, back, neck, and upper bout of the body.

photo credit: www.schrammguitars.com/lattice.html

Criticisms of the Smallman Lattice Guitar

Many players have criticized the Smallman lattice as sounding too bright, nasal, or perhaps “banjoey” in quality. Its increased volume and ease of playability cannot really be challenged, but most players will agree that the tonal quality of the traditional fan braced classical guitar is still superior.

Carbon fibre is stiff, lightweight, and dimensionally stable, making it an excellent structural agent, but the more carbon fibre utilized in the design, the more the tone quality seems to suffer. This has led to refinements in the lattice concept over the past decade or so.

Nowadays there are almost as many ways to make a lattice braced guitar as there are luthiers making them. Some makers have simply combined the lattice soundboard with the traditionally made classical guitar body, using a wood lattice with traditional hide glue. Others see nothing wrong with using carbon fibre and epoxy resin in their constructions. The soundboard can be made very thin like the Smallman model, or thicker if the luthier wants the guitar to have a more traditional sound.

Today, the combinations are practically endless; making generalizations on how lattice guitars sound, as if they were all made the same way, is virtually pointless. You might love one and dislike another, as with any instrument.

This soundboard is lattice braced as well, but the bracing has no carbon fibre, often being referred to as an “all wood” or a “hybrid” lattice.

“all wood” or a “hybrid” lattice

Double Top Guitars

It should first be understood that a Double Top Guitar does not denote a particular bracing pattern per se. In fact any type of bracing pattern could be used with a double top – fan bracing, lattice, ladder, radial, or whatever. Double topping refers to the way the soundboard itself is treated. The bracing will be glued on after the double top is made.

Gernot Wagner and Mathias Dammann of Germany are credited as the luthiers who first used nomex laminations in classical guitars.

Double tops are made by laminating a material called nomex, between two ‘skins’ of solid wood, usually spruce or cedar, or a combination of each. Nomex is a paper honeycomb product originally designed for use in the aeronautical industry, although it now has more applications.

This photo shows what Nomex looks like. The luthier laminates (glues) nomex between two skins of wood, using either epoxy of polyurethane glue.

The picture below shows the first layer of wood, or “skin” with the nomex on top. Another layer of wood will be added to the nomex, thus “sandwiching” it between the wood layers. If done correctly, the result is a stiffer, lighter soundboard, although not nearly as thin as a Smallman style lattice top.

Conclusions

As you can see, the history of the classical guitar is one filled with innovation and change. The materials and technologies available to us open up new possibilities. And as musicians put new demands on the classical guitar, luthiers are ready to adapt, always trying to make the ultimate instrument.

The traditional Torres fan braced guitar, including all its variations has been with us over 150 years, and is still going strong. I have every reason to believe that it will continue to prove itself relevant.

The Early Romantic guitar, made by Rene Lacote, although not nearly as popular, has been around even longer, and musicians are still having these early 19th century guitars made or, occasionally restored so that they can play the music of this period on historically correct guitars.

The lattice braced guitar has always been a subject of debate among musicians, yet it has endured for over 30 years. More luthiers are finding ways to refine the lattice braced guitar so that its sound will appeal to more players.

Double top guitars have a shorter history. Although they were first made over 20 years ago, they’ve only been made in significant numbers in the last 5 or 10 years. I believe that double tops will go through a process of refinement over the coming years in the same way that lattice braced guitars are.

Superlative concert guitars seem to defy categorization, and no one type of guitar continually dominates over another type in the concert hall. I’ve been to many classical guitar listening events where concert guitars by some of the best luthiers are all played in succession by great players, in a concert hall.

The Guitar Foundation of America and the Guild of American Luthiers Conventions are good places to hear these comparisons.

Out of 30 or 40 guitars there are always half a dozen guitars that stand out from the others. And in that mix of best sounding guitars there are always some traditional fan braced guitars, lattices, and double tops. It’s almost as if the best guitars are born, not built.

I hope you enjoyed the article.

This is a guest post by luthier Marcus Dominelli

Marcus Dominelli
Victoria, BC, Canada
Website: www.dominelliguitars.com

Marcus Dominelli’s full biography at: www.dominelliguitars.com/public/007_Biography.html

Contact:

marcus@dominelliguitars.com

More on Dominelli Guitars from Classical Guitar Canada: Spotlight: Marcus Dominelli – Luthier

• Sheet music: Browse our sheet music section for free and recommended music!
• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

See the bigger picture. You have chosen to be a classical guitarist, you are mastering your profession, now before it is too late, choose a goal. Do not choose a wavering goal, choose something that seems impossible, and do not let anything stop you until you yourself have reached it…

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT: Advice for Musicians Wanting to Break Through: Analyzing the Careers of Andres Segovia and Julian Bream | The Practicing Musician.

• Sheet music: Browse our sheet music section for free and recommended music!
• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

Don’t forget to check out more free and recommended music in our sheet music section!

Classical Guitar: A Method for Students & Teachers
Volume I • Beginner by Bradford Werner

Available as a PDF (88 pages): FREE or by donation
This method took me a few years to build so if you’re feeling generous please give a small donation. By the way, I will never-ever give out your email, I just want it to let you know about updates to the book and other free stuff. Click on the add to cart button.

Previously known as the Guitar Victoria Method, Volume One

Organized into Five Main Sections (88 pages)

Part I: Progressive Method
Part II: Rhythm Training
Part III: Chords and Popular Music
Part IV: Technique Supplement
Part V: Chord Progressions and Reading Supplement

Intention
Students require a wide variety of material unavailable from a single source. Most classical guitar books do not include chords, blues, popular music, or the variety of teaching materials needed for modern instruction. After years of carrying around stacks of heavy books between studios I began to write out my own material. I have left out most fingerings and editorial markings to keep the material clean and ready to use by any pedagogical approach. I find this also aids students in their note recognition skills. Enjoy.

Important information about using this book
This publication is not intended as a self-study method. Nearly every page is designed to give the student and teacher the raw materials for use in weekly lessons. A qualified instructor is essential as this book purposely leaves out explanatory materials, suggestions in fingerings, and technical guidelines for technique and performance practice.

How to use this book (“Super Duper” Important)
1. There are five sections to this book, use them simultaneously
2. Cover every page, especially in Section I
3. Do not write-in left-hand fingerings, students learn faster if they recognize the notes on the staff
4. Phrasing, dynamics, and articulation should be added by a teacher. I have omitted them to produce a clean score and to give opportunities for the student and teacher to work them out as a team

• Sheet music: Browse our sheet music section for free and recommended music!
• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

Many students are unsure about how often they should practice with a metronome because there is little consensus in music education as to the benefits or negative consequences. Before outlining some pros and cons I’d like to tell you what I often tell my students:

If you can’t play your music with a metronome you’ve got a problem. If you can play with the metronome then you need to know when to turn it off.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE via Practicing with a metronome – some pros, cons, and tips | The Practicing Musician

• Sheet music: Browse our sheet music section for free and recommended music!
• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

Besides that I’ve been working on this: Classical Guitar Concerts & Events 2011, check out your town or area for some great concerts in Canada.

A few links:

• Shon Boublil from Montreal was selected to the Semi Final of the Barrios competition.  http://www.barriosworldwide.co​m/2011/es/ (woot!)

• Ongoing blog posts at Jean-François Desrosby‘s blog:  Biomechanics applied to music (Part II)

• Raffi Altounian’s Top Five Pieces to Learn on the Guitar | RCM Blogs

• Tantalus Quartet: new Canadian member Adam Foster!

• A facebook message from the Toronto Society Artistic Director Dr. Jeffrey McFadden

• A Basic Guide to Better Practicing - A little post for beginner and intermediate students

A few upcoming events:

• August 18-20: Pender Harbour Chamber Music Festival presents Daniel Bolshoy

• August 28: Guitar Society of Toronto presents Francisco Bernier (Spain)

Videos of above performers:

• Bernier: http://youtu.be/eKemq9cPPDQ

• Bolshoy: http://youtu.be/1I3wS7wc-5s

Happy practicing folks. 

-Bradford

• Sheet music: Browse our sheet music section for free and recommended music!
• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

This post is from The Practicing Musician Blog. The Practicing Musician is a blog about inspiration and personal development in daily music practice. There is one juicy post per week by yours truely.

The post was written for beginner students or intermediate students that could use some motivation. Hopefully some of the professionals who read this can leave a comment at the bottom and fill it out the article with their personal experience.

Here’s a guide to better practicing. I use these quick tips myself and prescribe them to my students. Although many of the ideas listed may seem like common knowledge, you have to ask yourself, “do I actually do this when I practice?”

This list is meant as an inspiration to practice well rather than any kind of “answers” or “tricks.” The truth is, if you ask any professional musician about how they learned to practice they will usually answer with something like this:

“I learned to practice by studying with excellent teachers. Every teacher gave me some of their years of experience and after some time I learned to incorporate them into my own practice philosophy.”

Use a timer and get to work (not play):

Timing yourself is one of the best tips in the book. Remember to set a short time, your goal is to create a time of condensed and concentrated effort, not to slave yourself into practicing a long time. During this time you do work, not play. Work is when you are tackling problems and practicing solutions. Play is when you are just running material. Save the play for the end after you’ve practiced.

Make your work positive:

Reward yourself when you actually get to work. It’s not all about self-discipline. Make your practice sessions into something special. I usually treat myself to a gourmet coffee, which I get to drink when I actually sit down to practice. Others might take the time to get away from everyone and have a bit of quiet time just before practicing. Whatever you do, consider making it a habit that will encourage you to sit down and get to work with a smile, because starting is the hardest part.

Here’s another tip: make your practice session positive by working on ultra-small amounts of music, but very playing well, and exactly the way you want it to sound. If that means only being able to play one tiny half bar of music at a time, then so be it. Choose your ideal aesthetic and make it happen in your playing. This is a way to make sure you feel good after every session, and a way for you to know that you’re on the right track. Reach your full potential, if only in small amounts—it will become easier to get through more material at this new high level of quality each time your try it.

Practice well – problem solving and efficiency:

I already mentioned this briefly but I thought I’d expand on the idea. The best students are the ones who don’t repeat their mistakes. That’s one reason why we have teachers. Teachers teach students to learn how to solve problems and introduce alternative ways of approaching issues based on their own experience. When I teach students how to practice, I tell them that they must isolate problems and get to solving them right away. Find out what the aesthetic is (the particular sound, style, or ideal) and try accomplishing it in small amounts. Make a mental list a of your “problems” and tackle them one at a time. Don’t waste your precious time again and again by repeating mistakes.

Every time you make a mistake or play something in a way you didn’t intend, you are training your muscle memory to repeat that mistake. In essence, you are training to make more mistakes. So make sure you practice well at all times during your condensed and concentrated timer session.

The great classical guitarist John Williams once said that as a child he only practiced 30 minutes a day. John Williams is one of those flawless players whom I would have expected to have been a strung-out child addicted to practice by age five. But instead, he only practiced 30 minutes a day? I can only imagine that during those 30 minutes he used his time ultra-wisely. I tell my students that you don’t have to practice very much, but you do have to practice very well. Here’s a video of John Williams playing.

Get inspired:

Before you practice you need to remind yourself about why your are practicing in the first place. It’s probably because you love playing music and taking part in this great art form. Maybe it’s because you like creating music by combining your own interpretive ideas with that of mastermind composers such as Bach.

Reading material can be great too. Maybe it’s this blog or maybe a book about practicing, but whatever you read in needs to get you inspired to play. Maybe even better is watching YouTube videos of professionals. Sometimes just watching others can inspired us and teach us on a subconscious level.

Keep at it:

My students have taught me a lot about the importance of routine and consistency. They show up to lessons every week and practice on average 45 minutes to one hour each day. After a year of lessons, they are good little classical guitarists—they’re happy, I’m happy, their parents are happy. All they had to do was practice regularly. They didn’t doubt themselves in their practice sessions because practicing is like brushing their teeth—you just do it every day. Whether you’re practicing for 4 hours a day or just 45mins, be consistent.

Some of the greatest people in history weren’t the smartest ones or the most talented—they were people who simply did whatever they set out to do. While the rest of us were watching 1000 hours of Star Trek episodes, those guys were out there practicing. So get to it and “make it so!”

Keep a practice journal:

Practice time logs are useful but I often burn out keeping track of time in log. I just try to play a consistent amount everyday. However, one neat thing about a timed log is to measure your progress during a week in relation to your amount of practice. If you practiced a ton and your feel like a better player..well then you know there a connection there.  I prefer a practice journal. In your journal I recommend you:

1. Write down the problem you are planning to solve and where it occurs in the piece of music. Make sure to revisit it if it wasn’t solved to your satisfaction.
2. Make a list of technical exercises to work on that outline a weakness in your foundational skills. So, for example, if a legato scale passage is a problem, you might need to focus on practicing legato scales.
3. Keep a list of goals you’ve actually completed. Being able to say “I really did get better at that today” is wonderful thing to say at the end of your practice session.

Maintain a balanced technique routine:

All I can say about this is that if you want to feel good and positive about your sessions you have to keep your technique in order. Sloppy technique feels awful and can be a constant negative drain on your energy. So keep your technique up and you’ll likely find your practice sessions to be more positive.

Learn to read music well:

For many of us, this is the #1 issue leading to mental fatigue during practice. If you don’t have to use up energy learning where the notes occur you can dedicate your energy toward technical and musical considerations. So make sure to incorporate music reading into your practice sessions.

I usually make students spend a solid year on music reading so that when we begin to focus on harder repertoire they will not find it exhausting.

Record yourself:

There are tons of inexpensive mp3 recorders out there so pick one up because they are great tools. Many of my students also record their lessons and concerts just to get a chance to hear themselves objectively.

• A basic mp3: Zoom H2 Handy Portable Stereo Recorder
• The amazing H4 recorder:  Zoom H4n Handy Portable Digital Recorder
• Video and sound: Zoom Q3HD with 1x Optical Zoom 2.4 LCD Screen, Gray

Make Musical Friends:

I’ve noticed very clearly the connection between my students who have musical friends and the ones who don’t. The students with music friends are often more inspired and have additional energy and ideas stemming from their musical conversations outside of the lesson. So make contacts by joining a club or orchestra, play some duets with someone, or just go to concerts and introduce yourself.

Because practicing music is a life-long activity, don’t do it alone!

Other resources:

Books:

• The Inner Game of Music – A guide to yourself really. Excellent.
• The Art of Practicing: A Guide to Making Music from the Heart
• The Musician’s Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness

Free ebook:

• A 65 page free ebook on better practicing by Chris Foley of the Collaborative Piano Blog. What more can be said? Get it while it lasts students! Get the Free ebook here: 31 Days to Better Practicing – The Free Ebook – Chris Foley’s Posterous.

This post is from The Practicing Musician Blog.

• Sheet music: Browse our sheet music section for free and recommended music!
• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

In the first in a series of posts, we asked classical guitarist and Conservatory faculty member Raffi Altounian which pieces he recommends all guitar players learn. Here’s what he told us.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: Raffi Altounian’s Top Five Pieces to Learn on the Guitar | RCM Blogs | The Royal Conservatory of Music.

• Sheet music: Browse our sheet music section for free and recommended music!
• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

• Visit the new Concerts and Events : 2011 Events

Objectives:

1. To post concerts by guitar societies, music series, or individual artists. Help me update this page by emailing: admin@classicalguitarcanada.ca
2. A useful tool for artists and agents planning to concertize in Canada allowing them to see who is presenting and where.

I think this will be a more interesting way to present concerts and events. With this page you’ll be able to see activity in Canada as a whole. It will also save me TONS of time and will free up time for me to write actual posts. However, I will also be doing a weekly “what’s up in Canada” kind of post to make sure concerts still get promoted. Here’s the first one:

Upcoming:

August 28: Guitar Society of Toronto presents Francisco Bernier (Spain)

Aug 18-20: Pender Harbour Chamber Music Festival presents Daniel Bolshoy

Videos of the artists:

http://youtu.be/eKemq9cPPDQ

http://youtu.be/1I3wS7wc-5s

• Sheet music: Browse our sheet music section for free and recommended music!
• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

A 65 page free ebook on better practicing by Chris Foley of the Collaborative Piano Blog. What more can be said? Get it while it lasts students!

Get the Free ebook here: 31 Days to Better Practicing – The Free Ebook – Chris Foley’s Posterous.

• Sheet music: Browse our sheet music section for free and recommended music!
• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule

A neat little article about the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. show titled “Guitar Heroes and Early Music.” Includes some sound samples from a lutenwerk and more.

Our regular musical interlude this time includes a look at some innovative Italian American guitar makers and the legacy of early music that continues to flourish in New England today

READ THE FULL ARTICLE via Guitar Heroes and Early Music | Arts & Collections International.

• Sheet music: Browse our sheet music section for free and recommended music!
• Canadian Recordings: Canadian Classical Guitar Recordings
• Student tips and professional development: The Practicing Musician
• Concerts and Events in Canada: Canadian Classical Guitar Events and Concerts Schedule