shades of grey.

hello. long time no see.

just came back from a masterclass with maestro shin-ichi fukuda, and i must say i thoroughly enjoyed it.

yes yes the air con was too cold and i was playing fernando sor's theme and variations on a theme of mozart from the magic flute, a piece where warm fingers are definitely a plus to the technical side of the performance. although i mutilated the finale and several parts of the piece as usual, this time when i performed it seemed to be different from all the other times i had performed classical guitar pieces in the past. i went in with a 'nothing to lose' attitude, and it does make playing with the audience a metre away from you a whole lot less stressful.

didn't really have much time to go through much stuff, only got as far as the theme hahaha. but i did get some useful tips on technique, both left hand and right. but what strikes me the most about fukuda is his 'laid back style', in yingda's words haha. it really shows through both in his performance last night and today's masterclass. he really is able to make you feel at ease when you play for him. i'll remember the joke when he made when he drew a diagram of the left hand on the whiteboard: something like the fingers he drew were oversized, and he commented that they were 'like segovia's'. ok lah not funny u all probably wont understand.

after last night's performance, i've also learnt you can have a musically communicative performance without having to play without mistakes. fukuda did have one or two memory lapses last night, but as any good guitarist just improvised something on the spot to cover it up haha. and when you look at the concert as a whole (1 and a half hours of recital is not easy) you tend to forgive all the mistakes in the end.

i guess today has definitely been a boost to my confidence in guitar performance. whether or not i do pursue music as a career or not, i think i shall practice hard, explore new pieces, go back to that sagregas technique book that i so detested playing in the past, and perhaps one day i'll compete in the guitar comp, just for fun.

posted by guitar123 @ 7:43 PM 0 comments