Summary of the workshop:
Classes from July 5 to July 19 (17 2-hour class sessions).
Final student concert in the main plaza of town, Sunday July 18, 2010.
Sponsored by Spaceship Earth Productions (my production company) who purchased and shipped 21 guitars from Houston, Texas to the San Salvador airport.
Also sponsored by Centro Arte para la Paz, a community center in Suchitoto promoting art, music, dance, language and computer classes for children and young people. They provided the classrooms and all the physical support for the workshop. The Center is run by Sister Peggy O'Neill (Sisters of Charity) and administrated by Berty Rivas, who both were extremely helpful and positive in promoting the workshop, finding students, handling paperwork and making all necessary arrangements for the classes. Additional help was provided by Alcides, 'Lito, Eduardo and a very kind visiting dance instructor, named Diana Bustos. (Here is a link to her blog for her class.)
Workshop goals:
2 classes per day: one during the day for children and teenagers, one for young people and local adults in the evening.
Teach basic sitting position: currently there are no footstools available so I taught Flamenco sitting position: right leg crossed over left, guitar on right leg - on its side, sit up straight in the chair.
Teach terminology and basic techniques: introduction to chords, playing all the strings using rest stroke (i and m) and playing bass strings with p, playing the 1st and 2nd strings at various frets in the left hand, practicing using all the left hand fingers. Focused on good finger placement close to the frets (left hand) and a clear and "non-plucky" right hand stroke (I encouraged using rest stroke with i and m and p on string 6 for support).
Practice as a class to a common pulse/beat: Warmup exercises. After showing how to keep a beat, the instructor would set and count ("uno, dos, tres, vamos"). Example: one warmup we did each day was: Cada Dia, Cada Cuerda, Cada Dedo, which consisted of playing these frets 0,1,2,3,4,4,3,2,1,0 (repeating each at least 4 times) on each of the six strings making sure to use the same left hand finger as fret number. The first few days we practiced tapping our foots and tapping on the guitars all to the exact same pulse, by the end of the workshop students pretty much stayed on beat (though some rushed a little on the final recital, probably due to nerves).
Learn actual songs through reading of music: In the short amount of time, I was not able to teach notes on the staff (called "pentegrama"), so for reading music I had them read fret numbers on one string, or solfege syllables on 2 or 3 strings. The music examples were written on the whiteboard and students copied them verbatim into their notebooks. Some music symbols were used: repeat signs, bar lines, quarter-rests (called silencios).
Inspire the students through in class performances: I performed music for them of various styles, Flamenco, classical, folkloric. Some of the classes favorite pieces were "La Bamba" (I played it as a solo guitar arrangement, melody over bassline), "Cancion de Espana" which was really a Sevillanas I play, and "Romanza" the famous anonymous Spanish Ballad every classical guitarist learns.
Teach basics of guitar care and performance procedure: taught them how to hold the guitars firmly by the neck, how to bow, how to turn the tuning pegs themselves while playing the note (I would tell the direction to tune, up or down, a little bit or a lot, etc). We practiced standing and bowing as a class, which worked well for the recital.
Songs we learned as a class:
Blues de Divertir, ||: 0 0 3 0 | 0 0 3 0 | 0 0 3 0 | 0 5 3 X :|| 0
Where X was a Flamenco style golpe (R.H. finger a taps the top of the guitar below the strings, close to the bridge). Students who had experience played the standard blues progression in E7 while complete beginners played the frets above 6 times then ended with an open string 1.
Estrellita (Twinkle Little Star): with repeat signs and bar lines, wrote solfege names in order of song using: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la to represent the notes C, D on the second string and E, F, G, A on the first string. Intermediate students in the class played the correct chords C (Do), F (Fa) or G (Sol) as dictated by the song.
Himno a la Alegria (Ode to Joy): all played on the first string, written as fret numbers with bar lines, no eighth note values on music line 3, and the last note of line 3 was played as an open string 2. Starts out as ||: 4 4 5 7 | 7 5 4 2 | ... etc. Intermediate students played chords to accompany the class: E (Mi), B7 (Si7), A (La), G#7 (Sol#7), C#m (Do#m) and F#m (Fa#m). Please ask me for exact written versions of the songs.
We performed all these pieces as a group on the final recital, plus a warmup piece called Blues de Seis Cuerdas.
Here is one image from the final concert, I will post a whole series of images after this one for your reference.
If you have interest in participating, supporting or consulting on future workshops similar in nature to this one, please contact me with your ideas or offers of help! I would love to hear what kinds of ideas you all have about this workshop!
-- Edward Grigassy
Suchitoto, El Salvador
July 20, 2010
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