Courses

Classical Guitar with Karin Schaupp Carlos Bonell and Alan Banks
24-27 August

Here you have four days of intensive guitar therapy in the form of workshops, individual masterclasses and seminars with Karin Schaupp, Carlos Bonell and Alan Banks, focusing on technique, sight-reading, constructive practice, performance skills and ensemble playing.

Here Karin will be discussing the problems associated with performance anxiety and ways of reducing this.

Composition with Dr. Frank Lyons
24 -27 August

The aim of the Composition Course workshops will be to encourage participants to spend the festival writing a new piece for guitar, whether expanding on work already prepared or starting a piece from scratch. Composers will have the opportunity to incorporate electronics into their work using the state-of-the-art facilities in the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Ulster Magee Campus. Guitarists Carlos Bonell, Karin Schaupp and Alan Banks will be on hand to offer advice and new music specialist Brian Keenan will work closely with each composer, whatever their level of compositional experience.

Analysis Workshop: Friday 25 August (3-4pm)

Frank Lyons will give workshops on the art of analysis; using standard repertoire such as Tarrega, you will be gently introduced to analytical concepts which will increase your understanding of the music and help you make informed interpretative decisions.

Electric Guitar with Clive Carroll
Saturday 26 August (10-5pm)

On Saturday Clive will focus on the electric guitar, looking at the development of left-hand and picking techniques and investigating concepts such as soloing over chord progressions using blues, pentatonic, and diatonic major and minor scales.

Steel String Acoustic with Clive Carroll
Sunday 27 August (10-5pm)

On Sunday Clive will concentrate on steel-string acoustic, looking at finger-picking, chord voicing and non-standard tunings

Whatever your level, Clive will offer something for everyone over the two days of workshops.

Flamenco Guitar with Sean Woods
Saturday 26 August (11-1pm) Sunday 27 August (11-1pm)

Over the two days Sean will take you through some of the different techniques and rhythmical concepts which are essential in the art of flamenco. The two forms that will be looked at this year will be the Solea and Tarantas.

Some techniques that will be explored will be the three, four and five beat rasgueos and the mechanics of the alzapu. The workshop will aim to cater for all levels from beginners to intermediate/advanced and will take the form of small group work and individual tuition.