MANUEL LOPEZ RAMOS – INTERVIEWED FOR CLASSICAL GUITAR BY JEFFREY GOODMAN – (I met and interviewed Manuel Lopez Ramon in Mexico City in 1987). Question # 4 of 10 JEFFREY GOODMAN, “Over the years have you found that your practice methods have changed and evolved?” MANUEL LOPEZ RAMOS, “I have changed my practicing quite a lot over the years, through teaching, seeing the results on the students. For example, in 1957 I discovered I had many problems in right-hand fingering, At that time it was done by intuition, and whatever finger was near to the string was used. Not by logic. Then I started to develop right-hand fingering according to principles of logic. I feel I am one of the first guitarists to do this. And now many editions are including right-hand fingering. Which is a change from the old system of including primarily left-hand fingerings, If we always use set fingerings with the left hand, we must also reason and discover the exact and best fingerings for the right hand as well.” JEFFREY GOODMAN, “So, when you are performing a piece, you always know which right-hand finger you are using for every note.” MANUEL LOPEZ RAMOS, “Yes, absolutely. When I study a new piece for the first time, I dont think about fingering at all. I first decide what I wish to do musically, and then work out the fingering to express my musical ideas. Then I follow the same fingerings for the rest of my life. Then there are many ways of practicing. First you have your musical idea of the piece, then you divide the piece into many parts to aid your memory in performance. But this is only done once you have developed your overall concept of the piece. For a student, of course it is quite difficult to approach a piece this way. He must play slowly at first and he may not he able to play it at tempo for a long time. That is why I feel it is very important for the student to playa piece that is technically not too hard. Because if he tries to play a piece which is too hard, he will practice it too slowly and form a wrong concept of the piece. The repertoire of the student has to be chosen very carefully.”
Posted on: Sun, 02 Mar 2014 17:43:51 +0000
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