Hi,

I am quite new to this board and I have been having a look round, it seems very busy and informative, and the layout is swish.

I am hoping to hang around and chat, by way of introduction info about me can be found at,

www.matthewmcallister.com

I am looking for disscusion on all classical music but especially the classical guitar, who are your favourite players etc...

Any other guitarists on here,

M

Welcome to the boards!

I play guitar, but my Frederick Noad days are sadly behind me. Been playing around with Equinox for Guitar by Takemitsu to see how crappy my playing is now. And it's pretty bad.

Hey, I had to play the Frog Galliard back when I took lessons as a kid. Not "had to" as in I minded or anything.

Anyway, my teacher (K. Tiernan) was one of Andrew York's students. I always liked playing Andrew's pieces (Muir Woods and Watercolor were my favs).

Nice website, you're playing sounds great.

Thanks for the kind comments, I appreciate them.

Very interesting about the Andrew York connection, I'm quite a fan of his writing, Muir woods is a really good piece.

So do ou think the Noad book might get dusted off sometime and the old classical chops will be awakened!

I would really appreciate if you signed in my guestbook, I am lookng for some more intelligent feedback up there!!! lol

Tell me more about your music interests?

I'm mostly into studying composition now. I spend more time with this than I ever did practicing guitar, so I think this discipline is going to stick. I've decided to go the traditional route and learn counterpoint, harmony, form, orchestration (there's the Schoenberg way and the John Cage way)...etc...but I have no interest in writing "neo-classical" music.

I still have yet to figure out where I'm going with all this...but composition is something I'm willing to fail at. I enjoy the learning process.

There are millions of composers out there...I don't really relate to many of them, though. You either have these atavistic "midi-composers" writing scherzi or people who start with abstract paper-concepts that don't really mean anything musically.

Plenty of John Cage followers...but the musicians performing your work better be damn good composers themselves. With this sort of music there are always "opportunities" for interesting musical events to occur, but they rarely seem to. Usually, these people are indignant from some sort of serialist indoctrination in college. Yes, you can randomly obtain some of the same effects that serial composition produces...I don't need to dedicate my life to proving this, though (how many times can we lose our musical innocence anyway? I think about one time).

Well, that's the hell I'm in...and I don't have much to show for it yet! The world's going to have to deal with me sooner or later...I just don't know which.

You can peruse my list in the "what are you listening to now" topic to see what my basic interests are...

How about yourself?

My tastes are extremely varied, obviously playing classical guitar I am a big fan of the typical Rodrigo, Granados, Albeniz repertoire but as is shown on the album I'm deep in the rennaisance and baroque era'a there is a world premeire recording up there of Douglas Whates also, lots of different styles of writing tend to lend themselves to my quite intimate way of performing and playing, so therefore a concert / album programme is very varied.

My listening tastes are also varied, I love jazz, jan garbarek, ralph towner, miles davis, john scofield, brad meldhau, herbie hanncock, I am a huge bach fanatic, glenn gould, art of fugue, violin sonatas, keyboard partitas, cello suites etc.

I like scarlatti, wagner, reich I am very appreciative of minimalism and especially reich and glass.

Cage and Boulez I can take or leave dependent on my mood, shoenberg though I like.

Apologies for the miss spellings, I'm typing at speed which is as usual leaving mistakes behind!

If you write something for guitar send me a score!!!!

If I write for guitar, I'll send you a score.


Who made those famous Scarlatti transcriptions for guitar?

Excellent, the more new music the better!

Scarlatti editions hmm, the best are Leo Brouwer's editions they are first class, john duarte probably will be the most recorded, a little dodgy though in my opinion.

Looking forward to the score already.

Any more info regarding yourself and your world of music, I am finding it all rather interesting..

Just read over a few of your opinions on composing, you sum up a lot of what happens to young composers as soon as they hit any sort of formal training wether that be college or private tutorials.

I strongly believe that if a composers writing has a realistic understanding of an instruments register and it's capabilities in sound then that composer is authentic, respectful and coherent.

I find to many contemporary composers write ridiculous music for indtruments, far too difficult doesn't ever sit well, and lacks familiarity with the instrument.

Jilted conversation and bad communication happen in life all the time, and I feel that the more coherent a composers grasp of language and dialect (say that really means knowing your instrument) then people will get it.

All flying off the top of my head, excuse the bad grammar.

I really like Lou Brower