Not impolite at all – thanks for writing. Hitting walls is very common and I’ll be able to give you great advice as well as a long term way of managing your practice, your growth and musical experience. First, we’d start with technique. You can check out more information here about my approach. In addition to the private time I’ll send you assignments mid-week. All materials have written instructions, a video-taped introduction and practice-along-with-Scott videos.

I charge $80.00 per hour, two lessons per month. There is a cash discount. All above mentioned materials come with that fee.

Jason, I’d be happy to meet with you in person to go over all potential questions before you decide.

Thanks and thanks for your service!

Yours,

Scott

I’m a full-time Soldier in Vancouver, WA needing help w/ my CG hobby; I’m hitting walls. The one thing that is keeping me going is the Shearer scale book; I can see finally see where many of the notes are. I am grateful to one of your teachers for taking the time to build a scale exercise book for us.

2. Picture yourself just after your performance, what would you have liked to accomplish?
Be comfortable enough with the performance anxiety issues that some of the dynamics and phrasing that I am practicing can come through in performance.

3. What new skill (please see above) would you like to add to your skill set for this performance? (I’ll call these Secondary Skills).
I am focusing on clean slurs, especially in my Bach Prelude.
Tom

Memory issues are usually one of the top concerns. Here are a couple of great practice directives to employ to solidify memory; Backward Sectionals and Left Hand Sequencing. Two weeks each – so that’s a month’s worth of work – get at it!

Developing the ability to phrase means placing dynamics and rhythmic alterations in the appropriate places. As with most skill sets I’d recommend doing that work each day in both technique and repertoire. So practice your dynamics, accerlandos and ritards in your scales (build that dynamic range). Get use to getting more volume and coming down to a pianissimo. Begin a scale a little slow, speed it up a bit and then finish with a ritard.

Now on the musical side you can practice the above with a piece but I’d recommend Counting Measures and Conducting. These practice directives will give you the idea of where the phrases begin and end, (usually in four measure groupings) as well as the high points of the sections and the entire piece.

You can assign each of these to a two different pieces. Okay Charlie – let us know how you progress. Report back in two weeks or less!

Thanks,
Scott

Lorimer told the story at one point of using his downtime while serving on a grand jury to transcribe a number of Weiss sonatas for guitar, and said that he had done about 40 of Weiss’s 600 some sonatas in all. He says that even today, he considers them to be quite good. I’m aware that he has published two of them, but would love to see some of the others.

Thanks, Scott, for arranging the event, and thanks, Michael, for making it so worthwhile to participate.

It surprises some people but most musicians I know are not audiophiles…but I guess I could have a pair of speakers hooked up somewhere. A nice little iPhone stereo would be nice.

I agree Lee – what a great opportunity, I learned a lot!!

OK, I have Scott’s permission to make my one complaint (not saying I wouldn’t complain even without his permission). As the only person their with significant hearing loss I have to say Scott’s studio needs a really great sound system. I could hear Lorimer ok, but would have liked a bit more volume. The Lorimer music that was played before he came on was unintelligible to me. Can you imagine a professional musician who is not extremely picky about good sound reproduction??.

Thanks to Scott for a great event. Hard to imagine anyone other than him putting together this unique experience.

Also fascinated to hear about his encounter with Stockhausen and the interpreters of the baroque era.

I guess I was excited to hear more about his approach to arranging baroque music for the classical guitar, (a selfish quest as I prepare to record a CD’s worth of Lorimer arrangements). Most interesting was the reason for the noticeable increase of slurs in his new arrangements and re-arrangements of his older arrangements. I got that it was part of the un-equalness required in what appears to be regular rhythms. I love the story about Leonhardt describing the difficulties of slurring on the harpsichord, the concept of holding one note down, into the other, and his envy of how easy it was to do on the guitar.

Also, the trills – shorter trills were the order of the day for lutenists.

Expound? Let me know what you thought!