A common aspect of the guitar playing technique that causes much trouble is playing the scales at fast tempos. Arpeggios and chords are more convenient so those problems seem more realistic to overcome. But what to do with the scales? Specially when plucking strings with fingers not a pick. About how fast tempos are we… Continue reading
Author Archives → Kristo Käo
Celebrating Birthday with the Iberia Live
Yesterday we performed our dance program in a very-very suitable environment. It was as if the classic black box and a good sounding chamber hall had a child. In fact, it was a theatre hall built to an old bank. High ceiling, good stage, audience sitting around the stage. It was a very special show…. Continue reading
Celebrating Birthday with the Dance Program Live
Yesterday we performed our dance program in a very-very suitable environment. It was as if the classic black box and a good sounding chamber hall had a child. In fact, it was a theatre hall built to an old bank. High ceiling, good stage, audience sitting around the stage. It was a very special show…. Continue reading
Group Lessons vs Private Lessons When Learning the Guitar
Everyone who’s ever been to a school knows that he or she is not the only student in the classroom. In bad cases you may be one of 40 but if we take an average countryside school here in Estonia, you may be lucky enough to study together with less than 10 classmates. But what… Continue reading
Kristo Käo in Warsaw with Leonora Palu
Kristo Käo and Leonora Palu (flute) performed a couple of concerts in Warsaw (Poland) in the end of January 2011. One of the concerts took place at the State Etnographical Museum on 21st of Jan at 18:00. The program included Estonian chamber music for flute and guitar (Rene Eespere, Peeter Vähi, Kuldar Sink) as well… Continue reading
How To Sell the Guitar Music I
Unfortunately the guitar is not the instrument of an orchestra. That’s why the guitarists who are not playing in some band need seriously to think what they are going to do after graduating from music area. In different countries the situation is different but you don’t need to invent anything new, you can always take… Continue reading
Sources for Developing Guitarist’s Playing Technique
Let’s go on with the guitar playing technique and I was previously talking about an important part of the techique – the playing mechanics. So what is a good material for developing your mechanics? The term “playing mechanics” came prominently to my mind unfortunately when I already had done my BA degree in classical guitar… Continue reading
Which Guitar Method Book Is The Right One For You?
One good opportunity to develop the skills of playing the guitar is learning the guitar from textbook. However there are many textbooks (in Estonian a dozen, but hundreds in English and Russian), and a lot of them are available our stores already. How to choose the right textbook and how many should one person have?… Continue reading
How Long Should One Practise a Musical Instrument?
A German study looked at professional violinists and found out that before the age of 21, they had all practised an instrument for 10 000 hours. Given that the violin playing started at the age of 6 mostly, it makes an average of 666 hours a year. In round figures we can say that these… Continue reading
What is a Guitar Playing Technique
As promised before – let’s dig a little deeper into the subject of practicing and this time I’ll express my thoughts about developing guitarists’ playing technique as this is a very important factor in successful guitar playing. Sometimes people say that one or another guitarist (or other instrumentalist or a singer or an athlet) has… Continue reading