New (old) piece is finished

Long time since my last post.

During that time few things happened: I wrote a set of “Pieces for Kids. Level I”, finished one of my older pieces called “A Tune”, which I was composing in 2015, but didn’t finish, went to a lecture of Patrick Zeoli (student of Abel Carlevaro) about the guitar technique.

Starting from September 2018 I decided to concentrate more on preparing students for different exams, competitions and concerts, which requires more planning, time and dedication. Beginners need to have a good foundation for their playing technique and there is not that much various and diverse basic pieces for guitar to play and to develop in a gradual way. So, I decided to write a set of pieces for my students that I thought would fill some technical gaps in their playing and would be fun to learn and play. Feels like it is my vocation and I like the results.

“A Tune” grew up to a musical form of a song from a one-bar motive. At the time, in 2015, I didn’t have enough knowledge to develop the piece organically: to vary the melody in different ways, to give it different moods and colors, building up the tension to culmination and keeping it all smooth, natural and interesting, maintain the style well. These days I know more about composition and able to solve larger scale of tasks.

Playing musical instrument requires a lot of brain work: how to move fingers, how to achieve greater coordination and cooperation between both hands, how to create better sound etc. Reading and listening to different professors of guitar from different generations is giving better understanding to what I do, how I do it and how to teach it to the others. In January 2019 I will give a lecture in Old Town College (where I currently teach composition and guitar), about the playing position of guitar (how to hold the instrument) based on Fernando Sor book on guitar technique.

In near future I would like to concentrate on finishing my older compositions, that left unfinished back then, on writing new set of “Pieces for Kids. Level II” and on practicing solo, as well as the guitar duo repertoire (The Jack Duo is planning to start giving concerts from February 2019!).