Classical guitar fans, behold this interpretation of The Mysterious Barricades...

[exile]

If you're a devotée of classical guitar, and open-minded enough to seek out transcriptions for the instrument of pieces first composed for keyboard, then you really need to see/hear Chris Navin's interpretation of Couperin's The Mysterious Barricades—for my money, the single greatest short composition ever created for the harpsichord, but done on a modern guitar so brilliantly that it's hard to find adjectives strong enough to say how good it is.

In my mind, Navin's interpretation is now the gold standard for this incredibly deep and haunting gift to us from the late 17th/early 18th c. Judge for yourselves...

 

[Makalakumu]

This is a lot like MA. You spend a lot of time learning something and most people do not understand what you are doing. Sad isn't it?

 

[MA-Caver]

I've a long time friend who has studied Classical Guitar for going on 15 years. He's good and through him I've meet Julian Breem (?) and several other noteworthy (classical) guitarists. I sent him the link and asked his professional opinion.
What I think? Well it's good, very good and watching him play I can see how it's also a difficult piece to do as well. Classical guitar to my understanding is radically different than rock/folk/acoustic guitar in the method it's played and how it's done altogether.
ZOOM right over my head on the technicalities of it all... but hey... it sounds pretty and I reckon that's what counts.

Say boah can yuh do dat on a ban-jo?

 

[Carol]

Wow, that was gorgeous. I have to admit, I'm a bit partial to the passion in the music from the Spanish composers. Wish I could hear what he could do with a Villa-Lobos piece or...better yet...with La Cumparsita.

 

[agemechanic03]

I give that guy a lot of credit. I do not play guitar at all, but I am a trombonist and love classical music. But his hands to be stretched out like they were at points, man, I would be HURTING after a while. It was really good. Needs some tweaking, but of course, no matter our rank in the MA's, we will always need tweaking too.

 

[donna]

That was lovely, thanks for the link

 

[Sukerkin]

Sadly, works Net Nannie wont let me at the file to listen to it but the concept sounds very interesting. I'm a Jazz/Blues player myself so the idea of transcritping one instrument to another is not anathema to me - I did it with Close Encounters of the Third Kind once a couple of decades ago :lol:.

 

[harlan]

Lovely. I saw Andres Segovia in a small concert setting when I was a child, and it was a pivotal experience. Time to turn of the classical lute and add some guitar to the collection.

Thanks for the kick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9efHwnFAkuA&mode=related&search=

 

[exile]

Sadly, works Net Nannie wont let me at the file to listen to it but the concept sounds very interesting. I'm a Jazz/Blues player myself so the idea of transcritping one instrument to another is not anathema to me - I did it with Close Encounters of the Third Kind once a couple of decades ago :lol:.

I found another vid of the same performance—maybe this will work for you? YouTube may be a bit more accessible...

Wow, that was gorgeous. I have to admit, I'm a bit partial to the passion in the music from the Spanish composers. Wish I could hear what he could do with a Villa-Lobos piece or...better yet...with La Cumparsita.

My favorite amongst those chaps is Granados, especially the Valses Poetiques. CN has a MySpace site (here) so you might be able to rummage around in it and see if he's recorded any of the great Spanish guitar composers. He sounds like a very interesting guy—an Aussie, with an experimental flair.

Lovely. I saw Andres Segovia in a small concert setting when I was a child, and it was a pivotal experience. Time to turn of the classical lute and add some guitar to the collection.

Thanks for the kick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9efHwnFAkuA&mode=related&search=

My pleasure, harlan, and I envy you—I never got to see the incomparable AS, although I did get to hear Julian Bream in NY a few times (his version of the Granados piece was my own 'revelation'). But when I was growing up, Segovia's name was uttered in our house in only the most reverential tone of voice...

 

[MA-Caver]

My buddy in the Classical Guitar world also utters Segovia's name with reverence and awe. :idunno: I teased him one time and asked... "ohh yeah!?... well can he play "Hey You!" by Pink Floyd??" My friend calmly said... "no, he can't... he wouldn't stoop so low to play that piece of trash." :lol:
Gotta be careful talking music with guys like that.

Glad the editing time did'nt run out before I gotten an e-mail from above friend... here he is on YouTube

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[exile]

My buddy in the Classical Guitar world also utters Segovia's name with reverence and awe. :idunno: I teased him one time and asked... "ohh yeah!?... well can he play "Hey You!" by Pink Floyd??" My friend calmly said... "no, he can't... he wouldn't stoop so low to play that piece of trash." :lol:
Gotta be careful talking music with guys like that.

Huffy sort!

My impression is, though, that great classical musicians regard popular music as an interesting source of ideas; certainly Yehudi Menuin, one of the greatest violinists of all time, was like that, and plenty of Romantic era composers actively recruited the popular 'street' music of their time for their compositions (a lot of Brahms' stuff in particular sounds like it was lifted from a klezmer band's repertoire :lol. Or look at the way folk melodies and 'peasant' tunes were used by people like Dvorak, Max Bruch and others of that era... I knew a guy back when, a successful writer, who used to say flatly that writers don't give a damn where they get their ideas from. They have no pretense or even pride, according to him; if they hear something they like and figure they can make use of it, they do. Shakespeare was his favorite example. I think great musicians are the same.

Who knows what direction creative influence can come from? These guys are smart enough not to be fussy...

 

[harlan]

Ma-caver: thanks for sharing the vid.

Never made a formal study of music, but the few artists I've met (that includes martial artists, graphic, voice, etc.) that were good technicians usually had the ability to seperate ego from a critical analysis of other's works. ('Critical' as in the professional sense.) If I may generalize, the worst 'diva' personalities seem to go hand in hand with insecurity.

Some Bream for Exile:

And some Dvorak, sung by Robeson, for me.

 

[Sukerkin]

Excellently spoken, sir :tup:. This disconnect between 'Classical' and 'Popular' is a modern invention - at one time they were one and the same and melodies were melodies, only the arrangements changed in response to the amount of money you had.

My favourite trick with classical guitarists of my aquaintance, who made the mistake of getting too snobby, was to steal the music off the stand in front of them and challenge them to finish the piece :lol:.

 

[Carol]

Ma-caver: thanks for sharing the vid.

Never made a formal study of music, but the few artists I've met (that includes martial artists, graphic, voice, etc.) that were good technicians usually had the ability to seperate ego from a critical analysis of other's works. ('Critical' as in the professional sense.) If I may generalize, the worst 'diva' personalities seem to go hand in hand with insecurity.

Some Bream for Exile:

And some Dvorak, sung by Robeson, for me.

Beautiful clips Harlan. Thanks so much for sharing them.

 

[Sukerkin]

Huzzah! Got home and got to watch the OP's link (YouTube is likewise banned by the Net Nannie at work ).

What wonderful stuff.

Didn't see the huge stretches that aged mentioned (tho' guitar playing does hurt unless you're using really light gauge strings) but nice fluid fingering (ooh er missus !! ).

 

[Carol]

Huzzah! Got home and got to watch the OP's link (YouTube is likewise banned by the Net Nannie at work ).

What wonderful stuff.

Didn't see the huge stretches that aged mentioned (tho' guitar playing does hurt unless you're using really light gauge strings) but nice fluid fingering (ooh er missus !! ).

Here's another one for you Suk...

Sr. César Amaro playing the most famous tango of all...


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[Sukerkin]

Excellent stuff, Carol, thanks for that.

I particularly loved the high-end harmonics interweaved with root-end melody lines - that's something I liked to chuck in back in the days when I played four hours a night rather than ten minutes every six months . It's something that's hard to do precisely but you can make it look really casual (and thus make yourself out to be uber-cool to any guitarists watching ROFL).

 

[MA-Caver]

Excellently spoken, sir :tup:. This disconnect between 'Classical' and 'Popular' is a modern invention - at one time they were one and the same and melodies were melodies, only the arrangements changed in response to the amount of money you had.

My favourite trick with classical guitarists of my aquaintance, who made the mistake of getting too snobby, was to steal the music off the stand in front of them and challenge them to finish the piece :lol:.

As one who practiced literally for 4 hours a day 7 days a week my buddy (in the vid) could do it... with one that he was well versed in. Newer ones... whell... I dunno.

Exile, he wasn't that huffy just said that Segovia thing as a joke back because he knew I was joking. He enjoyed rock and roll to an extent. Was able to play Stairway to Heaven complete via classical... sounded neat.
Of course I had a hard time trying to convince him that Robbie Krieger of the Doors was a trained Flamenco guitarist and that he did play that intro to the song Spanish Caravan. Just couldn't think/see how someone who played that particular piece flawlessly (he could the entire song) would want to waste time with an electric. Hmm... maybe he IS huffy. :lol:

 

[Sukerkin]

I have to say that I do agree with him to an extent, in that the acoustic has a generally better breadth of emotive timbre (no, not timber ) available for use.

You can get a greater range of noises out of an electric by plugging in the various effects boxes but I've always preferred to coax expression out of my old Rio Grande EKO than anything else ('till my missus killed it).

You can't beat a bit of Electric Blues tho' .

 

[exile]

My favourite trick with classical guitarists of my aquaintance, who made the mistake of getting too snobby, was to steal the music off the stand in front of them and challenge them to finish the piece :lol:.

Improv used to be the name of the game. Handel and Scarlatti had a series of keyboard duels that people would pay to attend in which one offered a theme, the other came up with some hair-raising variations on it and then the first would take those variations and do mind-bending variations on the variations, and so back and forth they went for a couple of hours... sort of like musical fractals in real time. They made quite a haul that way, I gather. Now those guys knew all about improvisation....