Matteo Carcassi: Study in A Minor (Etude No.7)

While study­ing this Carcassi étude — and ana­lyz­ing as many ver­sion as pos­si­ble in aid of that — I real­ized that clas­si­cal music is like wine. They’re both based on a cen­tral theme or taste, and it’s the sub­tle dif­fer­ences between the inter­pre­ta­tion of each per­former or wine mak­er that make them unique and inter­est­ing. That’s why you need to lis­ten to a lot clas­si­cal music (or drink a lot of wine) to devel­op a palate. I bet two dif­fer­ent musi­cians (or even the same musi­cian at two dif­fer­ent points in their career) play­ing the same piece would sound the same to some peo­ple for the same rea­son that two dif­fer­ent mer­lots would taste the same to oth­ers.

This is sup­posed to be played alle­gro, but I’ve yet to hear a ver­sion above 105 bpm that did­n’t feel rushed to me, so I pre­fer to play it andante1. Luckily, I enjoy clas­si­cal music, and I can tell the time I’ve invest­ed in devel­op­ing that foun­da­tion trans­lates over to non-clas­si­cal songs, not only in the extra fin­ger pre­ci­sion but in prac­tic­ing tech­niques too.

I’m still using elec­tric strings2, which I’ve had on longer than any oth­er set, cause I love how crisp and brassy the tone is through­out the range. For a piece like this where the melody switch­es between bass and tre­ble, that becomes real­ly impor­tant.

  1. Also cause I’m not good enough to play it that quick­ly yet. []
  2. XL Chromes, warm/mellow, flat-wound, extra light gauge. []

9 comments

  1. I love it! When we hang out please feel free to play more often. Actually, you should come play in my base­ment while I carve. Holy hell fun times.

    • We are def­i­nite­ly doing this. It would prob­a­bly keep me more focused on prac­tic­ing and less on play­ing around.

  2. Beautiful.

  3. Just love­ly Jeff :)

    • Thanks Steph. :) Did you get that string replaced on your gui­tar?

  4. I sup­pose only some­one with clas­si­cal musi­cal train­ing can pick up a new instru­ment so fast.

    • Either that, or a per­son with a lot of time on his hands. :)

  5. That was great!

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