VANCOUVER CLASSICAL GUITAR FESTIVAL

The Afternoon Daily Workshops comprises of various workshops that target specific skills related directly to guitar playing:

 

Guitar Orchestra will be daily rehearsals where different players will learn and play different parts of the music to make one piece come to life. The Guitar Orchestra aims to simulate the large ensemble experience by rehearsing together, following a conductor, and listening to how the different parts move together. The rehearsals happen daily and are geared towards the closing concert, where participants will showcase the results of the week’s rehearsals.

​

Musicianship is a class where we will work on note-reading, rhythm-reading and developing a sense of beat. These skills are too often omitted during private lessons due to the limitation of time. Learning how to feel the beat and internalizing rhythm, is one of the most crucial aspects of playing music and by the end of this workshop, participants should feel comfortable breaking down rhythm in their own pieces.

​

Technique workshops give students insight on  how the basic mechanics of the body work around the guitar and what exercises are good to develop different skills. From why we sit “the classical way,” to why we use a footstool and alternatives to using one, to how your hands work best for each technical demand, this workshops will help participants develop a basic consciousness of their bodies while playing and a variety of technical exercises on which they can work on for the year. The three technique sessions are meant to tackle specific aspects of right hand, left hand technique and how to put it together to maximize what our hands are capable of doing.

​

Learning Effectively is a two-part workshop where we will discuss aspects of how to best learn a piece and how to appropriately translate the information on the page to your fingers to your guitar. During Assimilating the score, we will look into how to break down the piece into manageable chunks of information that your brain can understand and manipulate most effectively, creating chains that we can convey at will. From breaking down pieces into different issues, finding good fingerings, why right hand fingering matters as much as left hand one, how to create good muscle memory, and how to use the metronome will be explored in this series. In the second part, Putting it to Practice, we will take a look at how to practice and talk about how consistency in the practice room is the way to achieve more successful and rewarding performances. 

​