Well, it’s been that time of year, again…a time of playing hours every day, scrambling to please the professors at the masters classes at Mesa State University. James and Endre come once a year. It’s always nerve racking because I feel like a child hoping for approval, but yearning to do better so needing the guidance. After spending time with James and Endre, I always leave with a newly inspired and fresh look at what I’ve been doing. They are kind in their suggestions and if one can put their creative ego aside and listen to what they have to offer, great things can come from their close look at what you play for them.
This year I chose two pieces to play for the masters classes. I played “Un Dia de Noviembre”, written by Leo Brouwer. But I put my own spin on it by adding romantic lyrics that lead you through a day in November that we spent together that is like no other day before or since. They had me strengthen the bass notes on the first part of the piece, which rounded the sound and made it a full arrangement. It’s not easy to sing while playing classically. So I was very pleased that I am finally at a point to pull it off.
Then there was another of my own compositions, “The Lazy River”, the first movement of three. The last two are in the making and I will talk about them in a later blog. I wrote the “Lazy River” piece just weeks before needing to perform it. My crazy mind always creates things that I can play so completely…..in my HEAD! But, mastering the singing tones of each note, actually bringing them up from my toes and out of the guitar, itself, is always just an emotional endeavor. I set the goal of playing it at least 20 times each day for the 3 weeks prior to the classes. It may never be exactly the sweet sounds inside my head. But, I think that the concentrated effort paid off. Writing and then mastering a piece is a little like giving birth…without the contractions of course…but with anxious anticipation of the event and the work to produce the final outcome, followed by the exhausted exuberant joy…
Lazy River had to be notated for the master’s classes. The professor has to be able to look at your music and play from it to show you what he’d like to hear. Javier de los Santos helped me with this. I didn’t have a good enough computer program to do what I wanted to do. Javier does. So, I put each note into tablature notation by hand and then recorded the piece using a metronome to be sure that the timing would be more easily deciphered. Then after Javier worked at getting it all put into the computer we sat for several hours playing it and being sure that the music was written as correctly as possible. Javier did a great job and aside from a couple of measures that we need to change, I believe that most guitarists would be able to follow the page. We took the painful time to write in fingerings and positions and the final version has both tablature and notation. My goal is to have a youtube of each of my pieces and then another youtube to help tutor anyone who would like to learn the piece and a way to download the music for a very low price. What a wonderfully romantic notion to think that someone might play one of my pieces…someone who doesn’t even know me…but who has fallen in love with my music the way that I fell in love with Fernando Sor’s music.
I will add a video of these pieces soon. Thank you for reading and for your patience with my not writing so often. I’m nothing without someone to write and sing and play to! THAT’S YOU!!
Good night,
Mary