Tony Cusack's Guitar Blog

There's no doubt that the proliferation of online tutorials presents a challenge to the traditional music teaching business model. But the web is an even handed enabler, and it is by no means "all over" for face-to-face tuition.

While my own teaching focus is on classical guitar it's not musical taste alone that steers me in that direction (i.e. I will rock out at the drop of a plectrum :-). No, what makes me want to teach classical is my repeated experience that that's what works. If I may quote my own words:

Learning an instrument requires sustained focus over a period of years with incremental steps taken as the student becomes ready for them.

A proposition easily appreciated but difficult to realise in practice. The caveat "as the student becomes ready" highlights a key music teacher skill: to mediate repetoire and student. Of course a teacher must have repetoire knowledge, acquired through their own playing hours. But knowing when and how to introduce a student to a particular work requires a unique combination of practical and psychological insight which can only be acquired through experience. Experience in the form of teaching hours generally and, as regards the particular student, sufficient face-to-face time to develop insight into their taste and capability. For the teacher the cultivation of this mediative skill calls for a certain vocational dedication which itself draws on the psychological support of the student/teacher relationship.

These truths are well understood in the world of traditional music pedagogy, an environment in which the guitar has established its niche over the past 120 years or so. There exists in consequence a wealth of quality teaching and performance material that teachers can draw upon to take students through a graduated programme. This happy circumstance is much less the case with respect to contemporary popular music, and I would offer two main reasons for this relative deficiency: one being the simple fact that contemporary/pop music has not been around so long; and secondly (at risk of slight controversy) due to the characteristics of the genre itself.

It's beyond the scope of this article to adequately qualify these statements but I do offer the following observations.

Pop music rarely calls for a high level of instrumental skill but places much greater emphasis on (i) sonic textures achieved through sound processing hardware/software and (ii) the manifestation of pop culture itself in the ideas communicated through song lyrics, attitudes implied by the style of vocal delivery and so on through to the full catastrophe of fashion, visual media and celebrity.

Trying to teach music to someone whose conception of the art/craft derives largely from pop culture presents a small ethical dilemma for the teacher. One one hand it is well nigh impossible to give these students what they need, namely a graduated programme, if one is obliged to draw solely on late 20th/early 21st century rock/pop/jazz repetoire. On the other hand it is ridiculously easy to give them what they want. Usually the focus is on playing a facsimile of the recorded version of a particular song rather than mastering a style (bluegrass, jazz, metal etc) and for that purpose the instruction methods of the web (tab and video) are just the ticket.

I have a student Dion, now 13 years old, who has excelled at classical guitar after some two years studying with me. A few months ago I gave him a simple arrangement I'd made of the Titanic theme (Our Live Will Go On) - just by way of light relief from his classical examination programme. He came back a couple of weeks later playing a more advanced arrangement he'd learned from a tablature he'd found on the web. Not only is the arrangement in an open tuning (DADGAD), but it also calls for a capo shift in mid stride. (There are special capos to facilitate this bit of meta-technique, of which I confess to being entirely ignorant prior to Dion's seamless demonstration.) I'm quite chuffed with the development because it illustrates the cultivation of individual creativity that often remains merely aspirational and also because it demonstrates how differing agendas can be satisfied with a bit of flexibility on either side. We would never have found our way to that arrangement following the path we were on, largely dictated by the AMEB exam programme. But had Dion not developed his technique through the exam programme there's no way he would have been able to cope with the arrangement.

Finally: an issue for some whose first foray into guitar is via the contemporary music route is the tendency to repeat themselves, playing the same not so challenging bits of repetoire over and over again. If you don't push yourself to acquire some technique in your early enthusiasm then you probably never will. So it is not a bad idea to take some classical lessons to begin with, even if your longer term objective lies in other genres.

Classical guitarists exploring the lute repetoire may well reach the conclusion that those works will only ever sound their best when played on the lute itself. That's what happened to me, in any event! It is a dilemma because lute right hand technique uses the flesh of the fingertips while the guitar calls for some length of fingernail. 

In late 2012 I acquired a new 11 String Alto Guitar (a.k.a. Altgittaren) in an endeavour to get somewhat the better of the situation. As you may see from the image this instrument design is significantly different to the standard six string guitar, in having a dual length neck and fingerboard. The main fingerboard appears much the same as a standard guitar but is in fact shorter by about 10 cms and supports 7 strings, while the secondary neck extends well beyond normal and supports a further 4 bass strings.

Various tunings are possible but the general intention of this design is to allow classical guitarists to  better realise⁽²⁾ lute compositions, so the most common scheme for the altgittaren adopts that of an 11 course lute. The design was conceived by Swedes Georg Bolin and Per-Olof Johnson in the 1960s and exploited to superb effect by Göran Söllscher in a series of recordings of Bach and Weiss lute works.

In the context of the classical guitar's ongoing popularity it has become commercially viable to deliver high quality process-built instruments at a price within reach of mere mortals such as me. My instrument for example was manufactured by Italian firm Milagra, and retailed in Australia for around AUD $3,500. See Laudarra for further information and sales of these instruments.

I have to admit that I found it more difficult than I expected to adapt my playing technique to the different proportions of the altgittarren. Most of the disorientation has been in my right (plucking) hand owing to the fact that the first six strings, where 99% of the action occurs, are offset by a couple of centimetres, relative to standard. If you look closely at the graphic you'll see that the 6th string, which is dark coloured, intersects the soundhole at its centre rather than toward its upper edge. So the strings are not where they "should" to be as far as one's right hand & forearm are concerned.

I feel the same lateral disorientation, although to a lesser extent, in my left (fretting) hand. Longitudinally however my left hand feels liberated by the shorter, more lute like, scale length, with previously impossible stretches now within reach.

The sound of the primary notes, which is slightly tinkly, causes the open bass strings to sympathetically resonate and the resulting feedback loop sustains the note well beyond normal. The ongoing resonance of the basses also produces a drone effect, akin to but not so clearly audible as that of the sitar; rather more a sheen with a hint of echo/reverberation.

Overall the altegitarren is a very effective compromise for a guitarist with a particular interest in renaissance baroque repetoire but who does not want to go to the extent of playing the lute itself.

I am one 4th of the Kirribilli Four guitar ensemble. The group takes its name from our rehearsal venue at Kirribilli on the leafy suburban side of Sydney Harbour.

Of a weekly evening in the season we gather at the Kirribilli Neighbourhood Centre to devour fish & chips (or other choice from the "many excellent take-aways in the area" - the mad Italians for example) before setting to the music of masters old and new.

Depending on mood and the programme for our next gig we choose one or several works from our repetoire to work up through the evening. There follows a couple of hours of the kind of thing portrayed so well in Vikram Seth's An Equal Music, albeit at a less distinguished level. Fortunately there have been no divorces yet.

To round the evening off we retire to the Village Ristorante to variously lament or applaud the demise of capitalism, western civilisation, education, good manners etc. Altogether an excellent cultural experience.

Visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Kirribilli4

Gigs

Bob Harrison, Tony Cusack, Bernard Hickey, Ian Cox

We perform mainly at musical society concerts and charity events, five or six times a year. Always on the lookout for opportunities, so if you have a function that might suit please get in touch.

Repetoire

The following is a representative selection from the K4 repetoire.

Bohemian Rhapsody - the famous Queen/Freddie Mercury classic, arranged by Mark Houghton.

Joseph Hadyn - Concerto for Horn no. 2 in D, Ist movement Allegro Moderato. Warm and upbeat, a classic of classicism.

Modest Mussorgski - The Old Castle from Pictures at an Exhibition. Ingenious harmonic colour over a repetitive rhythm - a gothic masterpiece.

Isaac Albeniz - Tango. Come here for instantly recognisable melody, and everyone's idea of romantic.

A Smooth One - Tony's arrangement of the Benny Goodman tune. The original septet recording included jazz guitarist Charlie Christian.

Vincent Lindsey-Clark - Freewheeling. Contemporary English guitarist composer's tribute to the bicycle.

Inspiration - Richard Charlton's arrangement of the Gipsy Kings hit.

Some of the above can be viewed in performance in the Videos section of our Facebook site.

I like to imagine that stringed instruments began with some pre-historic archer idling time by thrumming on his bow.

Through their history such instruments have had metal or gut strings, and now metal and various synthetics.

The prevalence of the electric guitar in the second half of the 20th century has led to a curious linguistic anomaly in today's guitar world.

The term acoustic guitar is nowadays taken to refer to the electric guitar's immediate predecessor, being a form of guitar developed in the later 19th century USA. This guitar is strung with metal strings and sounded with a plectrum rather than plucked with the fingers.

Since the advent of the amplified version the term acoustic has been applied retrospectively to distinguish the earlier un-amplified instrument.

What we now call the classical guitar has not figured in this shift and strangely falls outside the term 'acoustic guitar' in vernacular usage, although it is indeed acoustic in the relevant sense.