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Week 4
Bluegrass Week
Advanced Bluegrass Guitar
Russ Barenberg
This class will give you
tools to improve your playing in fundamental ways that will make
whatever you play sound better and more musical. A key thing is to
learn to listen more critically and in greater detail to your own
playing—to better analyze your rough spots and figure out how to fix
them. You will learn to overcome obstacles to your musical progress
by developing an efficient and musical approach to practicing. (It’s
the “teach a man to fish” philosophy.) This is not to say I won’t
lay a little tune on you now and then, but there are plenty of
sources of tunes out there, and learning new tunes will not be the
primary focus. The sessions will be very open to exploring your
thoughts and questions. We will work on both soloing and “rhythm”
playing (which I prefer to think of as accompaniment, interaction
and support).
It’s my goal to establish a mutually supportive atmosphere.
Advanced players can all help each other—you may have insights on how you
overcame a problem or improved in a certain area that would help your peers
(including me!).
Here are some specifics we’ll work on: Tone, timing, pulse,
smoothness and sustain, dynamics, intention, expression, purpose, your role in
an ensemble, composing solos and improvising.
Pre-requisites: The ability to play fiddle tunes and/or
bluegrass solos and rhythm guitar at a moderate real-life tempo. Some experience
playing bluegrass or closely related music in a band setting, or at least with
one or two other people.
Please bring the following: pen, notebook, small recorder,
tuner and metronome.
Looking forward to seeing you at Augusta!
Russ
www.russbarenberg.com
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