I have recently made available an original instrumental composition for the five-course guitar, titled “En flor,” and a brief paper titled “Personalizing 12TET on the Modern Guitar,” on how 12-tone equal temperament on the guitar is not as symmetrical or stagnant as one might think. As a more overarching theme, the creative application of historical studies has increasingly defined my perspective on music, language, and life in general.
With this in mind, it is fitting to mention my preparatory work on a lesson series titled “Applied History of the Guitar.” I hope to solidify all the scheduling and begin offering the course this fall. Broadly speaking, the curriculum tracks technical trends and evolutions throughout the vast history of the guitar and its related instruments. The ultimate goal is to offer as thorough a sonic palette as possible and apply it to any and all stylistic preferences of the student.
Modern guitar music is shaped significantly by timbre, meaning one must be attentive to the mechanics of the instrument and sensitive to all possible options with regard to tone color and how changes in tone color build a musical narrative. With this in mind, it seems only natural that the rich diversity of the guitar’s history should have a part to play in contemporary contexts. In my estimation, historical research is an incomplete pursuit without answers to the questions of how and why the research is useful in the present.