Left handed classical guitarist, is there one?

I have been a guitar enthusiasts, a casual player, since my high school years,  and any music that has guitars in it catches my attention whatever the genre from blues, heavy metal, folk, reggae, to Jazz, and lately the classical guitar. 

With YouTube and Spotify (thanks to my daughter's subscription), I was able to download some Jazz guitar music by Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass hoping I would develop a taste for it but jazz was not my thing though, too abstract for me.

I listen to Wes Montgomery once in a while because of the guitar and I sometimes catch a glimpse of comprehension but generally, I don't know what the heck is going on. WTF, it seems there are no wrong notes! Its like they are just fooling around with their instruments and having mindless fun, but somehow, it all seems to fit together. That's what makes Jazz mystifying to me.

Of course, behind the jumble of confusing polytonal, polyrhythmic and abstract mishmash of aural algebra are advanced and  sometimes experimental musical theories that are accessible only to the few who have reached a certain degree of musical divinity.

Wes Montgomery

In my forties, I started to listen and learn classical guitar music out of frustration. I cant sing in tune! I can sing, though, if croaking is counted as one. Finger style guitar lets the guitar sing for me but its not easy especially with  knuckle breaking spread and broken chords that sometimes span three to four frets. But I get by with my short and stubby fingers.

There's a misconception that classical music is on the top of the hierarchy of musical taste. Maybe this is true a hundred years ago when classical music was for the consumption of the noble, aristocrats, and the cultured rich and middle class because of the fact that its an expensive form of entertainment back then with live group of musicians performing the masters' compositions.  

But today, the social media age, when classical music became accessible to everyone through the internet, it's now just another musical genre to be enjoyed, appreciated and studied by anyone who wants to. 

 And also, anyone can now enjoy and learn the pieces since there hundreds of free scores, arrangements, and performances available for free (or for a fee) to anyone who is interested in it.  Of course, a real music school is important for structured and systematic study , but virtual lessons are the next best thing for the hobbyists and enthusiasrs who cannot afford tuitions.

Today, it's not unusual for heavy metal music to be played and enjoyed by classical musicians and vice versa. Philharmonic Orchestras now record and perform popular music from heavy metal to shitty ballads.

 I think one video that made this crossover  popular to ameteur guitarists was the electric guitar cover of Pachelbel's Canon in D by this guy around 2008:

Can you play Canon in D? What the hell is that?

After this guy's video went viral, Pachelbel's Canon in D became the Stairway to Heaven of 2010s. I was asked many times by young guitarists (who thought I could play everything) if I could play it, which of course I couldn't. It was a big thing then. After that video gathered millions of views, electric guitarists followed and uploaded their videos playing amped and effects driven classical and baroque music. 

Anyway...

I am a Jimi Hendrix guy and Jimi was considered the GOAT of electric guitar for his musicality, creativity, and on-stage antics. He also had the added mystique of being a left handed player, and of course, of dying at the "cursed age" of 27. 

There's this idea that left handed artists are better or more gifted with their skills than the normal, average right handed human being. There's Jimi, Paul McCartney, Manny Pacquiao, Sting, etc.

But there's one guitar music genre where it seems there are no left handed players, of note at least: the classical music. 

So, I posed the question to an FB Classical Guitar Group with members from all sorts of musical levels,  from professional concert players, teachers, students to hobbyists and casual players of different nationalities to see if there are any lefties.  Also, I was wondering if left handed classical guitar students are corrected to play right.

Surprisingly, there are a lot of left hand dominant classical guitarists but they play right handed with no problem at all. The reason?

In the classical guitar both hand share almost equal amount of work just like in the piano. Both hands and fingers are doing their work independently and there is no need for one of the hands to be dominant over the other at all.

 In rock, jazz, folk, etc. guitar one hand is doing more work than the other, usually the dominant hand, and this determine how the player holds the guitar's neck and which hand does the strumming and picking.

This does not mean there no classical guitar player who play their guitar inverted at all. 

I mean, there are white crows.

What the heck...

I need to cut down on coffee...

DAY 56: Community Quarantine

    ACHING FINGERS- I was in the mood for the guitar last night. I played for an hour or so. Unfortunately this stressed my digits and I woke up with hurting finger joints.

    I play the guitar only when I'm in the mood and I usually binge at it. It's undisciplined and that is why my playing has not improved. This is a bad habit

   The correct practice is to play a few minutes of targeted technique a day. Five minutes a day can improve playing more than playing for hours in a single day. But I hate playing scales, arpeggios, skips, exercises. I'd rather play a lovely melodic piece than be tortured with repetitions. 

   This is why formal training is important in playing an instrument. I was enrolled by my sister to a music studio a few decades ago. The problem was I already knew how to play and going back to the basics bored the hell out of me. 

 

   I could already pick out tunes by ear and learning to read a score was something I thought was not important then.

   I lasted four sessions. I regretted it. If I had continued, things would have been different. Now, I read music scores like a pre-school reading the KJB. Painstakingly very slow.

    I got older, got bored with pop music,  turned to the classical guitar. 

   I played classical guitar using intuitive finger positioning that I acquired from playing chords and finger style folk guitar, which I have become good at ( I think so), only to find out thats not how it's done in classical guitar. Wrong techniques hinders playing complicated pieces and more importantly, damage the hand and finger joints.

   I have to unlearn all what I thought was proper and then relearn almost from the scratch. This, in my middle age. 

    An example, there is the rule in classical right hand finger motion (the picking fingers) that as much as possible no one finger should play the same note twice or more. I thought this was a crazy rule because heavy metal guitar players can play at the speed of light using only two finger to hold a pick.

    That is until I self learned tremolo. Those triplets is almost impossible to play with one finger. Also, I found out heavy metals players were noobish when compared to players like Paco Delucia and the gypsy Carlos Montoya.

   I have no delusions. I am happy to be able to play easy to intermediate pieces. But there are times that I wish I could play some of Bach's advanced pieces, but these require proficiency in complicated playing techniques which takes a lifetime to master. 

   Maybe I will, maybe not. 

    SAP LIST- I saw the list of SAP recipients posted on Facebook. I noticed that there were entries with the same surnames and addresses from our sitio. This was the same with the other sitios in San Isidro. 

    Obviously these people are related. I don't know how to make of this but at a glance, this is suspect. Of the number of deserving families why did they not at least scattered the money to other families. Why give four to three person from the same family? The barangay officials who gave the list will have explaining to do to his constituents. 

    The masterlist is in the open and people will think what I am thinking now, not good.

   Another thing is that not a soul was chosen from our purok. There are six or seven purok in our sitio and resident from uno and dos are the original inhabitants here. I and my neighbors from dos are titled lot owners while those from purok tres down are informal settlers that occupied the rice field behind purok dos in late 90s to early 2000s. 

   They think that we from purok dos didn't need the financial aid. But there are those who do, they just lumped us together into a class without really checking. 

  ARATILES- The aratiles fruits are ripening and in a few days the number of birds that  congregate here will double or triple. I have stopped feeding them becuase their numbers grew and I don't want our house to be overrun with birds.

  I will have to provide water for them. 

  COCOPEAT- Our house used to be surrounded by coconut trees. Some died others I terminated because they grew thin and tall, a hazzard during typhoons. 

  I dug up the decaying stumped and collected the compost.