Category Archives: Guitar

Guitar related

Segovia and Flamenco

Posted on by

Segovia on Flamenco Guitar, Song and Dance – from Guitar Review, 1977

Segovia’s stated credo was that he, like the Blues Brothers, was on a mission from God — well, maybe not God, but a sort of holy mission — to rescue the guitar from the taverns and the associated lowlife folks in whose hands it was then found. Obviously, he could have problems with flamenco.
Well, not quite, as it turns out.

Flamencos and Segovia

Manolo Cano, Andrés Segovia, Sabicas and Rafael Gómez Montero at the CONCURSO NACIONAL DE CANTE JONDO GRANADA 1922

Thanks to Brook Zern of the Flamenco Experience for this fascinating article.

Continue reading →

Reflexive Speed – Jorge Caballero

Posted on by

At last, some hints from Jorge, whose ease of execution and acute analytical mind I have always admired. Quite difficult to understand this concept intellectually, but you will get it if you try it.
This has been around for a little while now and I am hoping for a new lesson soon!
Thank you Jorge.

In the meantime, there is an interesting excerpt here.

Continue reading →

More Airline stories and some positive recommendations!

Posted on by

Seems that many people responded (positively) to the post on JAL’s treatment of guitars on internal flights, so as a way of jumping on the luggage carousel, I thought that I would add some positive recommendations.

For me, the most stressful part of taking a guitar on a flight is the uncertainty that it will be allowed as cabin baggage or not, or that it will be well taken care of in transit in the hold, so here is a list of positive experiences I have had with ground staff and flight crew.

Continue reading →

Japan Airlines offers free guitar boxes to ease travelling musicians’ worries | RocketNews24

Posted on by

This is more like it. Makes me want to fly to Japan more! Contrast previous posts here and here

Recommendations and more stories here.

“For outgoing instrument service, we offer small and large instrument cases to support our customers on trips with important instruments. Now in response to customer feedback we have dispatched guitar sized cases (137cm x 44cm x 21cm) to all airports offering domestic flights. Until now, in such a case you would have to check it as fragile baggage, but from now you can ask for our guitar-exclusive case. JAL will continue to provide you with the best possible service in the future.” image

Japan Airlines offers free guitar boxes to ease travelling musicians’ worries | RocketNews24.

James Joyce’s guitar chord

Posted on by

Continuing my occasional foray into the guitar in literature, here is a famous picture of the author of “Ulysses” and “Finnegan’s Wake” presumably trying out a tune before a session (or maybe about to smash the guitar in frustration). In fact, Joyce was reputed to have had a fine tenor voice, and the singer John McCormack offered to teach him, encouraging him to take music as a career.

The original photo, taken by Ottocaro Weiss ,a friend who was “scandalized” by Joyce’s guitar playing, is housed in Cornell’s James Joyce collection, in an exhibit in a glass closet titled “Poetry and Music.”

Joyce

Continue reading →

One in a billion – Xue Fei’s Sojourn

Posted on by

By paving the way and becoming an international star, Fei has become a role model in her native China. “Lots of young people [in China] see me having a good career, and I hope that I can make them realise that the guitar is a beautiful instrument.” Her passion for what she does is contagious. She speaks about the classical guitar and its music with the knowledge and experience of a veteran, yet with the enthusiasm and vigour of one who has just begun playing. “Personally, I always believed that the guitar the most well-rounded and self-entertaining instrument. It is so personal and intimate, as you have to hold a guitar with your body and to your heart.”

Continue reading →

Karl Scheit

Posted on by

A name to conjure with, Karl Scheit was born in 1909 in Schönbrunn (Schlesien), Austria and died in 1993.
He was the guitar editor for Universal Edition, one of the largest and most prestigious publishers of guitar music in the mid 20th century, with publications in English, French, German and Italian. There is now a new and refurbished “Karl Scheit guitar edition”. Most guitarists I know have at some point or other used his editions, which include the Quatre Pièces Brèves by Frank Martin and Richard Rodney Bennet’s Impromptus.
Scheit

 

Continue reading →

Frankenstein’s guitar, Shelley to van Halen

Posted on by

With news that scientists have succeeded in growing a mini brain in a Petri dish, Mary Shelley’s “creature” might well be on the way to being created in a lab.
Mary Shelley was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).
For our purposes, she was also married to the man who wrote a rather soppy poem about the guitar to Jane Williams with whom he was infatuated when his marriage was on the rocks.He was particularly taken by her musical gifts and skill as a housewife. Gadzooks! What a piece of male chauvinist lumber!
He was even too cheap to buy her what she really wanted, which was a harp from his friend Horace Smith in Paris, and when this proved too expensive gave her a guitar made in Pisa by Ferdinando Bottari around 1815. ‘I have contrived to get my musical coals at Newcastle itself’, he told Smith.
Shelley's guitar

Continue reading →