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POPSWhat Does It Take to Become a Good Musician?
Written from the perspective of a guitarist but applicable to all. I know that half of what musicians become, is because of the time they spend with a guitar in their hands, in their mind. It is almost the same as really practicing, imagining the guitar in your hands, playing this and that. The older I become, the more I realize it. I have been playing long enough that there is very little difference between practicing and visualizing and I have come to the conclusion, that this time visualizing, is a major part of the equation. That is why love is the key. If you didn't love the guitar, how could you think about it all the time? In the book, "This is your Brain on Music," Daniel J. Levitin comes to the conclusion that to be good it takes about ten-thousand hours on your instrument (that equals about 3 hours a day for 10 years). But I will add that a lot of these hours can and have to be knocked off in your head. I'm not that sure that your brain knows the difference.
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POPSIs Musical Ability Genetic? There probably is some truth to this. However note the headline in bold mentioning Beethoven, and then the article's opening sentence names Bach. This immediately reminded me of an article (no. 5 in the list) covering this very topic: talent vs dedication. I'll quote the relevant arguments below: There is no such thing as musical skill. There exists only a large set of musical skills. Think about some of the very different types of skills a musician needs to have: a highly developed ear, good physical technique on his/her instrument, heightened creativity, the ability to improvise well, songwriting/composing skills, the ability to play in time, the ability to play with others, the comprehension of music theory, a good memory, the ability to read music, etc.
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POPSAncient Greek Music Theory - Modes The Greeks had developed a complex system of relating particular emotional and spiritual characteristics to certain modes (scales). The names for the various modes derived from the names of Greek tribes and peoples, the temperament and emotions of which were said to be characterized by the unique sound of each mode, which included the Ancient Greek subgroups (Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians), one small region in central Greece (Locris), and certain neighboring (non-Greek) peoples from Asia Minor (Lydia, Phrygia). Thus, Dorian modes were "harsh", Phrygian modes "sensual", and so forth.
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POPSThe Chord Scale This is also helpful in putting together simple progressions, or even whole songs.
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POPSKoyunbaba - Presto Written by Carlos Domeniconi, an Italian born composer currently living in Germany; although this piece is Turkish in influence. Another facet of this composition is that the guitar is tuned to an open tuning, C#minor, which isn't very common in classical guitar.
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POPSAncient Chinese Bells The importance of that discovery grows when we realize that it took the West a thousand years to develop the cathedral bell, and we didn't have it until the middle ages. Bells are very hard to make, yet China had these remarkably sophisticated Zhong bells during the Golden Age of Athens. The bells produce a rich tone, they take far less bronze to get it than a cathedral bell, and then they deliver two sounds for the cost of one. It's easy to look right at something that's very sophisticated without seeing the sophistication. It took us eighty years to catch on to these remarkable, but unassuming, bells. The best inventions are like that. In the best inventions, elegance masquerades as simplicity.
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POPSClassical Guitarist Ernesto Tamayo The links in the clip quit working. Go to source linked above or in comments to hear audio. He performs works by Barrios (nice tremolo technique) and an original composition.
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POPSClassical Guitarists: Aaron Brock & Elliot Frank Aaron Brock died at the age of 32 shortly after this interview/performance of a rare undiagnosed heart ailment. Such a shame. Here he tunes his guitar to an open tuning. The two movements he plays start out very somber and slow increasing to a dramatically intense flurry of right-hand picking and left-hand slurs (hammer-ons/pull-offs), and finally decelerating back to the original motif.
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POPSAmazing Circle of Fifths This source starts out simple, but gets very in depth. I don't pretend to fully grasp all these applications of it, nor was I able to clip most of them without explanations.
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