Matthew Hutchinson - A New Voice in Classical Guitar

Lack of Updates and Canceled Lesson

Evening!

There've been no updates during the last couple of weeks because I've been working on, for the most part, the same two arpeggio studies, plus a new exercise I was given during my last lesson. I've also had no lesson for the last couple of weeks because my teacher had other pressing matters to attend to. Unfortunately, I also had to cancel tonight's lesson due to personal business.

Suffice it to say, it's been a very busy couple of weeks. See you next week!

New MP3s

Here are recordings I just made for exercises 21 and 23. Comments/constructive criticism are welcome, keeping in mind that they took a few hours to get relatively decent recordings of. It's difficult to play well when you know you're being recorded (grin).

Exercise 21

Exercise 23

Here's the sheet music for both exercises:

For some fun comparison, here's a clip of another piece I recorded last June:

Duet Eight

Getting Close...

This week we focused on exercise 21. I'm still struggling with the last line of the piece, but I'm getting better. My teacher wants me to be able to play the whole thing, straight through, with even more confidence and minimal mistakes, before we're ready to move onto something new. He's also assigned a more basic exercise to help me work on alternating between my index and middle fingers when arpeggiating:

We also touched a bit on exercise 23. During the last few weeks, we've both noticed how I seem to place an emphasis on the highest note in the melody when playing it. There's nothing wrong with that - it's how we've been learning it - but he really wants to see me be able to play a more even tempo with less emphasis on that high note. Right now, I'm doing this:

1-2-3-4-5-6 | 1-2-3-4-5-6...

This is what we want me to be doing:

1-2-3-4-5-6 | 1-2-3-4-5-6

The difference between the two is there's no emphasis on the fourth (high) note.

As an aside, someone's started a new thread on a message board I frequent, asking other guitarists to post pics of their best finger stretches. I decided to contribute, and took these pics:

Based on other responses to the thread, that 6-fret stretch in the bottom photo seems to be the average maximum. Suffice it to say, I'm pretty damn proud of myself. I couldn't perform either stretch a year ago.

:)