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Are you tired of being almost able to play classical guitar?

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Do too many of your practice scores look like this? 

 

 

 

Do you want to transform a frustrating page of music like this into sounds that fly effortlessly from your fingers?

You may be working hard and practicing a lot. But if you’re still often stuck, chances are high that the solutions aren’t where you are putting most of your effort.

As a teacher I get to see lots of students deal with technical hurdles. We all have unique musical visions, different kinds and levels of music that we’d like to learn, different reasons for wanting to play well, different goals for where we’d like to perform. But the basic technical issues that we all have to deal with to get the music off the ground and into flight are always the same.

In my experience, insufficiently mastered Technical Basics account for 90 percent of the mistakes classical guitar students make.  Improving your mastery of the basics is the only way to fix these. And what’s more, knowing how to practice and hone the Basics as a habit also leads directly to solving most of the remaining 10 percent.

Insufficient mastery of the Basics is especially likely if you’ve:

  • played for many years but practice sporadically,

  • if you’re mostly self-taught,

  • or if you had a teacher or two, but they never had time to show you everything you need to know.

Think of building technique as if you were building an airplane. An airplane that you actually want in the air, flying.

EVERYTHING about it has to be solid and balanced before you can get it off the ground.  If the airplane body’s not solid it will come apart. If the wings aren’t big enough, or the right shape, or in the right place, it will come crashing down. If the engine isn’t powerful enough you won’t get lift-off. If it’s too powerful you’ll go spinning towards disaster.

All advanced, professional players know this basic truth about the basics:

Our Basic Technique supports everything we do, and we practice and hone it and revisit it all the time.  

And because your Technical Basics are the ground-level of everything you do, they have a greater effect on your playing than everything else. The basics are the bottom rungs of the ladder. They have to be solid or all other efforts are bound to clatter to the ground.

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“Whenever I find myself struggling,  or hit some kind of technical limit in a piece that I’m learning , the first thing I do is revisit the basics. Usually find my solution there, in honing some area of my basic technique.” Jay Kauffman

The Basic Classical Guitar Mastery Video Series integrates the essentials of what I’ve learned in 35+ years of playing, practicing, performing, recording and teaching classical guitar, as well as my years of graduate study at the Cincinnati Conservatory and the Juilliard School, into a set of principles and instructions that are as simple, elegant and effective as I can make them.

You can read the title “Basic Classical Guitar Mastery” in two ways:

  1. By emphasizing the first word, Basics--It’s a course that is intended to give you comprehensive and deep understanding of all the Classical Guitar Basics.
  2. By emphasizing the last word, Mastery–It’s a course that is intended to teach you the basic habits that allow you to hone and master your instrument, no matter what level of mastery.
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Basic Classical Guitar Mastery Video Series is a complete, in-depth and state-of-the-art instructional series, centered around over 40 multi-camera view video tutorials. It covers all of basics and many of the more refined secrets of classical guitar technique in a way that is clear to beginners but useful even to quite advanced students. It also offers a grounded, confidence-building approach to getting in touch with and developing your natural ability to evolve both technically and musically.

  1. Jay Kauffman, New York, NY

 

Jay Kauffman

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More Details on what you’ll get:

  • Guitar Instruction Close Up and from Every Angle Imitating good technique is the most powerful way you can acquire your own technique. But most guitar instruction videos show the action from just one or two never-changing angles, making it hard or even impossible to see the most important details. With no less than three, and often four well-chosen camera views in each video, I make it easy to see exactly what you need to see in order to learn how it’s done BCGMvidthumb13
  • Watch it on Any Device While I recommend spending some time watching these on a large screen, such as a desktop, laptop or Ipad—-you can watch these videos easily on any device, even a smartphone. My videos are hosted on Vimeo, known for its high quality and cross-platform compatibility. And the Art of Guitar website is “responsive”, meaning the pages and their content adjust to the size and shape of any device you own. You can pop your phone or tablet on the music stand, read the content, press play, and practice away.
  • Lifetime Access—Learn it all right now, or dip into these videos whenever you need a refresher course Many sites charge a monthly fee for accessing their material. But if you purchase this course now, its content and its membership area ALWAYS available to you. This is essential, because the principles here are the timeless basics of classical guitar technique, that need to be first learned and then refined as you get better and tackle more and more challenging repertoire
  • BCGMvidthumb14A LOT of Content–but it’s never boring There are over 40 high quality videos (2+ hours of content) with great sound (so you can hear the guitar exquisitely well). But I make it interesting. Classical guitar manuals are notoriously stodgy and arcane, but here the concepts are as clear and memorable as I can possibly make them, so you can really learn deeply and retain them. I provide every visual and textual clue necessary for you to learn each concept thoroughly, from moving arrows, text boxes, to inspiring or humorous images and overlays when necessary. As one student remarks: “It is never, ever boring.”
  • Practice the exercises straight from the video screen, or download them and print them out It’s frustrating when someone’s showing you an exercise that you can’t quite figure out, and you have to keep going back to the video when you want to try it again. The technical exercises that I demonstrate share the screen with my hands, in both notation and TAB, so you can try them out along with me. But you can also download them as pdf files, print them out and practice them on your own.

Bruce Lee said “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.” 

Here’s an outline of the videos in the course: Module 1: All That Supports Your Technique 

BCGMvidthumb22Video 1: Why how you sit is so important

Video 2: Why your natural powers of awareness and analysis are the keys to a constantly improving technique

Video 3: How your pattern of breathing affects your technique for good or for ill

Video 4: How to analyze and adjust your basic posture for a more powerful relationship with the guitar

Video 5: Finding your ideal points of contact with the guitar for more solid playing

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Video 6: Understanding the secrets of how ideal left hand contact with the guitar will improve your playing

Video 7: How to make all the finer sitting adjustments so you can get down to perfecting your technique

Video 8: What other options are there for holding the classical guitar? A demo of alternate guitar supports that can save your back and even improve your expressiveness

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Module 2: What the Hands Have in Common

Video 1: How to enrich your expressivity by clarifying the left and right hand roles in achieving common goalsBCGMvidthumb19 Video 2: How both hands use the same mechanical principles of movement for many tasks Video 3: How to be sure you’re using single most important mechanical principle that both hands have in common. Video 4: What you need to know about your wrists if you want to have a powerful technique and avoid injuryBCGMvidthumb16

Module 3: Mastering Right Hand Technique

Video 1: How to develop a powerful AND expressive right hand position Video 2: How to master the essential secrets of right hand position and finger movement: the do’s and don’ts, right angles and wrong anglesBCGMvidthumb15 Video 3: Understanding all the options for using your fingernails, regardless of how strong or brittle, ideally shaped or poorly shaped they are. Video 4: A detailed rundown of exactly how to shape and use your fingernails for optimal sound and ease of playing Video 5: How to shape and use your thumbnail Video 6: A Step-by-step demonstration of shaping a fingernail Video 7: How to continually refine your nail use as you get more proficient Video 8: Why a powerful free stroke is so important if you want be able to play any and all classical guitar music like a pro Video 9: Free Stroke Essentials: How to get ALL the details of free stroke position and finger movement just right Video 10: Rest Stroke Essentials: How to get the ideal rest stroke sound from your guitar Video 11: Three Steps to developing control and confidence in your free stroke Video 12: How do further hone your basic free and rest stroke technique:   BCGMvidthumb12

Module 4: Mastering Left Hand Technique

Video 1: How to get the essential strength and leverage you need to meet your left hand’s many difficult challenges Video 2: How to master the secrets of left hand position and finger movement: the do’s and don’ts, right angles and wrong anglesBCGMvidthumb11 Video 3: How to get the best results from practicing scales, even if it’s just a few minutes a day Video 4: How master shifting up and down the fingerboard by learning to focus on two key thingsBCGMvidthumb8 Video 5: How to practice difficult shifts so you can play them by feel without even looking : Shifting Exercises Video 6: How to develop perfect pull-offs with all of your fingers Video 7: BCGMvidthumb10What Bruce Lee has to teach you about developing a powerful hammer-on technique Video 8: How to get great hammer-on technique from all of your fingers Video 9: How to master the most frustrating aspect of slur technique–playing slurs while your left hand is holding down chordsBCGMvidthumb9

Module 5: Coordinating The HandsBCGMvidthumb7

Video 1: Why controlling the space between the notes is the most important skill you can develop for clean, expressive playing Video 2: How to use your right hand to ensure perfect, clean shifts and musical transitions BCGMvidthumb6Video 3: How to use right hand articulation to get every shift to sound amazingBCGMvidthumb1Video 4: How to further train your hands to articulate perfect shifts Video 5: How to use left hand articulation to further control and shape your musical choices Video 6: How to move seamlessly between chords, without musical glitches and unwanted noises?BCGMvidthumb1Video 7: How to coordinate your hands to get great-sounding arpeggios and more complex musical patterns

 $120

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 Full Refund Guarantee:

If find for any reason you are not satisfied with this set of videos, even if it’s just that you can’t stand the color of the carpet that shows up in some of the camera views or dislike my haircut, I’ll refund you in full, no questions asked.

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My Guarantee:

If you use the material here in a consistent and dedicated way, your playing will improve tremendously. Jay Kauffman, December 23, 2013, New York City

“Jay’s approach to teaching is distracting me TO the music and away from the usual din in my head which disconnects me from both my hands and the guitar. So instead of listening to the whirlwind of chopped up thoughts I’m usually having while practicing, which are mostly negative (did that wrong, strings ALWAYS buzz, my hands must be misshapen, shouldn’t be even trying to do this, etc.), I am listening to the guitar — to the strings. The second thing is coming naturally from the first: I am feeling a direct connect between my mind, hands and back and shoulders and what sounds are happening. So I feel in control. “

Rachel P, guitarist, guitar student

 $120

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