Brazilian Guitar Workshop

BRAZILIAN GUITAR MUSIC WORKSHOP MUCIO SA

GOALS: To provide a solid introduction of the basic elements that compose the Brazilian guitar-playing universe both into its cultural and historical environments. Open to amateurs and professional musicians and taking in account the participants level, this workshop will be based in both the intuitive and the technical aspects of the rhythms and other elements of the Brazilian music. To help each student there will be a little text and CD recording of the various exercises involved. Those are made strictly for this purpose. During the workshop there will be used nylon stringed classical guitars (also known as “Spanish “ guitars), so any amplification will be avoided. This workshop is particularly targeted at the intermediate and advanced guitarist but beginners, singers and other instrumentalists can benefit from it as well.

CHAPTERS.

1. A Guitar player’s health. We surely want to play guitars for many years and as healthy as possible!!! This chapter will be dedicate to the ergonomics of the guitar playing,posture, finger positioning, shoulder positioning, relaxation, warm up exercises.” pumping” exercises for both left and right hand finger muscles.

2. Elementary, formal and intuitive comprehension of Brazilian rhythms. After a short rhythm exposition and a little historical description there will be made exercises for a basic understanding of the Brazilian Rhythms, using only the body and the voice there will be improvised a “Percussion ensemble”.

3. Samba I A short history of samba, using the chapter 2 elements in the guitar, the use of ”ghost notes” both in the right and left hands

and the basics of rhythmic independence for left and right hands and fingers. 4. Samba II Other samba styles and patterns, combinations between those.

5. Chorinho: “The Brazilian jazz” Right hand thumb technique. What is Choro and what is the “baixarias” (low strings ornamentations). The guitar s roles in this style. A short introduction to improvisation and scales most used in Choro style.

6. Bossa Nova Basic elements of bossa nova’s history, the “song-samba”, the jazz influence, basic rhythms and concepts, typical chord substitution and voicings of the bossa nova.

7. Northern Brazilian Rhythms

A little introduction to the basic elements of styles like the Baiao, Xote and Frevo.

8. Playing in ensemble Dynamics and rhythm sense. Practical exercises - An introduction to ensemble playing in the Brazilian context.

9. Conclusions. The nylon stringed acoustic guitar is the most popular musical instrument between Brazilian songwriters and performers. You can say this is the fundamental musical instrument of Brazil. The greatest part of the so-called “MPB” (Brazilian Pop Music) repertoire comes from guitarists-songwriters so we can say that most Brazilian music is guitar-oriented. The acoustical nylon stringed “classical” guitar is found not less than in the Brazilian music’s heart. That’s why understanding the Brazilian guitar playing in is understanding Brazilian music itself.