Day Six: Basketball & Estudio Brillante

Well, it was 28 degrees again this morning when I got up, later than I care to. I prefer to be up and at it by 6:00am. But here's the deal. I had to photograph high school basketball finals in Utica NY. It was 10:30PM by the time I got home. I was beat. That's OK because I fell asleep quickly, however, I awoke at 4:00am and laid there. At 5:30 I was still awake but knew I did not get enough sleep to function at 100%. I toyed with the idea of getting up, but didn't. Dozed off at 6:00 and finally got out of the rack at 7:00. I don't like it. It throws my day off. Anyway, if you would like to see some of my photos click here.

This mornings guitar practice started late. I spent the first hour working on a great composition by Francisco Tarrega titled Estudio Brillante. It's also known as Study in A. Christopher Parkening describes the piece as "An extremely difficult and beautiful arpeggio study". I spent the entire time on the 2nd half of measure 13 through measure 17. This passage is physically difficult for the left hand. The challenges are accenting the bass notes on the first beats, executing the chord changes cleanly and in time, and playing the scale passage of slurred notes cleanly and in time. It requires slow, disciplined repetition.

The area outlined in red is the passage I am talking about here. Below is the scale passage. I play this scale with a full bar at the fourth fret. It is tricky to play in time with a metronome and to get all of the notes sounding CLEARLY. It took many, many hours of slow repetition for me to get it.

I practiced this passage over and over with a metronome set at a slow tempo. I played each individual note as a quarter note, one note on every beat. I then practiced each triplet on it's own beat as if it were written in 4/4 time as opposed to 2/4 time. It was tricky for me to get the slurred notes on the off beat in proper time. Over the years I would occassionaly read through the piece but when I began to seriously work on it two years ago, I had no idea what I was in for! This is a tough piece to master and requires discipline and dedication. It's still not where I want it, but I remeber my early days with the guitar when it seemed impossible to switch from a C chord to an F chord. Well, we all finally master that and so we progress. One of the rewards of this piece is the overall improvement in your technique as you master the challenging sections.