Introducing: The Baroque Guitar — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:01hey guys welcome back to my series
2. 0:04called introducing where I show you all
3. 0:07sorts of rare and strange instruments
4. 0:09from the past
5. 0:10today's instrument is my absolute
6. 0:12favorites this is the baroque guitar
7. 0:16[Music]
8. 0:56so the baroque guitar or the Qataris
9. 0:59paniolo as the Italians called it at the
10. 1:01time was popular between 1600 and 1750
11. 1:05roughly although it was actually still
12. 1:07being played well into the early 19th
13. 1:09century one of the things I love so much
14. 1:11about this guitar is that it was played
15. 1:13everywhere from the bars and streets of
16. 1:17eighteenth-century Madrid all the way to
17. 1:20the court of king charles ii and even by
18. 1:23king charles ii himself who studied with
19. 1:27the famous italian guitarist francesco
20. 1:30cordetta
21. 1:30now if you've been to many art museums
22. 1:33you've probably come across the painting
23. 1:35of a woman holding a baroque guitar or a
24. 1:37man serenading a love interest under a
25. 1:41tree and in fact people like me who
26. 1:43specialized in these historical
27. 1:45instruments we actually use those
28. 1:47paintings as evidence for how the
29. 1:49instruments were played ok so here we
30. 1:52have the beautiful baroque guitar and if
31. 1:55I hold up a modern guitar you can see
32. 1:57the difference in in size it's a much
33. 2:00thinner hourglass shape it's also quite
34. 2:03a bit lighter there are too many ways of
35. 2:05playing this instrument penteado which
36. 2:07means plucking and rasgueado which means
37. 2:11strumming
38. 2:13here's a short example of Pootie Otto
39. 2:16[Music]
40. 2:29now the second style Graci Otto
41. 2:32strumming is really where all the fun
42. 2:35begins
43. 2:36it's one of the best parts of playing
44. 2:37this instrument because you really
45. 2:39become a percussion player
46. 2:43[Music]
47. 2:57the guitarists of the time developed all
48. 3:00these really intricate patterns of
49. 3:02strumming using different combinations
50. 3:03of fingers and I think by far the
51. 3:06coolest pattern that I've come across is
52. 3:07called a repeat Oh a repeat oh is when
53. 3:10you take your middle finger and your
54. 3:12thumb and by rotating your forearm back
55. 3:15and forth you can play very fast
56. 3:17sixteenth notes so it's just like middle
57. 3:20thumb thumb middle and you just keep
58. 3:22rotating your arm back and forth slow it
59. 3:24sounds like okay so let's go for the
60. 3:34main differences between these two
61. 3:35modern guitars have they're called
62. 3:39machine head's these gears up here which
63. 3:41make it very easy to find you now if
64. 3:45baroque guitars use friction pegs that
65. 3:48are very similar to violin pegs in that
66. 3:50they're just wooden pegs that you turn
67. 3:52and that are held in with friction a lot
68. 3:55of modern guitarists think that these
69. 3:57are accrued and must not work well but
70. 3:59actually when they're fitted well
71. 4:00they're fantastic another main
72. 4:03difference is that modern guitars use
73. 4:06metal frets these little pieces of metal
74. 4:09here baroque guitar instead of using
75. 4:11metal frets uses gut and gut is
76. 4:14intestine dry intestines which usually
77. 4:17came from sheep this is real gut that I
78. 4:20have tied around the neck here and a lot
79. 4:24of guitarists today again would think oh
80. 4:26how crude but there's a huge advantage
81. 4:29with tie-down frets and that's that you
82. 4:31can slant and move the frets to play in
83. 4:33what are called temperaments and they
84. 4:35allow you to actually play more in tune
85. 4:37than fixed metal threads count the mono
86. 4:40guitar also has a very simple
87. 4:42rectangular bridge but the baroque
88. 4:45guitar is a bit more elegant and instead
89. 4:48of a simple rectangular bridge they've
90. 4:50turned it into a curlicue mustache now
91. 4:54for one of the coolest differences the
92. 4:56mono guitar has an open sound hole with
93. 4:59the little decoration around it
94. 5:00all day rosette whereas the baroque
95. 5:03guitar fitting to its name because
96. 5:05baroque means highly ornate baroque
97. 5:08guitar has an incredibly intricate
98. 5:11design inside of the sound hole this is
99. 5:14called arose and it's three-dimensional
100. 5:17it goes inside the instruments and in
101. 5:20this case it's made of goat skin so
102. 5:23let's talk about the tuning it has 9
103. 5:26strings total but we actually call this
104. 5:28a five-course guitar of course is a pair
105. 5:31of strings that we play simultaneously
106. 5:33so you're thinking ok five pairs of 10
107. 5:36strings and we even have 10 pegs here
108. 5:38why are the 10 strings and that's
109. 5:41because all the sources say that the
110. 5:43first string the honey was always kept
111. 5:46single it was called the shunter valve
112. 5:47which means the singing string and
113. 5:50actually most guitars still have 10 pegs
114. 5:52it's just that this one is false it's
115. 5:56just for symmetry so now let's compare
116. 5:59this tuning with that of a modern guitar
117. 6:01and just a quick disclaimer I'm tuned
118. 6:03out what's called baroque pitch which is
119. 6:05a equals 415 Hertz
120. 6:08rather than 440 Hertz and that basically
121. 6:11means I'm tuned one half-step below
122. 6:14moderate concert pitch okay the first
123. 6:16string on the modern classical guitar is
124. 6:18a high E and it sounds like this the
125. 6:22first spring on the baroque guitar is
126. 6:23the same the second string is a B and
127. 6:28here's where it gets interesting I have
128. 6:30two bees - bees and I plucked them as
129. 6:34one the third string is G and again I
130. 6:39have two g's
131. 6:42next we have addy and I actually have
132. 6:46the same deal but I also have an upper
133. 6:49octave that means that when I play on
134. 6:53that string I get parallel octaves next
135. 6:59we have a again I have two A's
136. 7:03but as you can hear they sound actually
137. 7:06one octave higher now because the guitar
138. 7:15existed for such a long period of time
139. 7:17in so many different countries people
140. 7:19experimented with different types of
141. 7:21strings sometimes they would have a low
142. 7:23a instead of too high A's sometimes they
143. 7:26would have to heidi's instead of one of
144. 7:28each the third string also occasionally
145. 7:31had an upper octave GE on it so compared
146. 7:34to a guitar this tuning is a bit odd
147. 7:35most guitars start high and everything
148. 7:39just goes lower from there this guitar
149. 7:41starts out high and then at the end so
150. 7:46it's sort of an inside-outside tuning
151. 7:47seventeenth-century guitar players
152. 7:50figured out that there was a big
153. 7:52advantage to this tuning and that was it
154. 7:54allowed you to play what they called
155. 7:55campanella's so the idea is rather than
156. 7:59playing a normal scale on a guitar
157. 8:02[Music]
158. 8:04we can play those cross string because
159. 8:06of the reentrant tuning and what's so
160. 8:12cool about that as you can hear is it
161. 8:13allows the notes to over ring like a
162. 8:15harp listen again it's a really
163. 8:21beautiful sound and it's also easy to
164. 8:24play fast and elegantly one of the best
165. 8:34examples of this technique comes from a
166. 8:36Fandango by Santiago de Murcia
167. 8:39[Music]
168. 8:53so this last piece was called Fandango
169. 8:55and fandango's were so popular in the
170. 8:5818th century especially in Spain and
171. 9:01Chile and Argentina the police
172. 9:03authorities and the church got together
173. 9:04and tried to band that style of music
174. 9:06for being played because apparently made
175. 9:09people so rowdy that it caused constant
176. 9:12street fights sexual promiscuity and
177. 9:15even manslaughter so this was kind of
178. 9:19the rock and roll of their late 18th
179. 9:21century broke music is actually quite a
180. 9:24bit like jazz and that there's so much
181. 9:26improvisation going on whether you're
182. 9:28adding extra notes and trills or
183. 9:31mordents or when you're strumming adding
184. 9:33extra divisions by instead of playing
185. 9:36the written rhythm which could be and
186. 9:44that's up to the player and it can
187. 9:46change every single time you play and
188. 9:48that's part of the magic music Baroque
189. 9:50guitarists like all Baroque musicians
190. 9:52were expected to memorize a long series
191. 9:55of chord progressions called grounds
192. 9:57this is a bit like today how any good
193. 10:00guitar player can just jam with it well
194. 10:01bar blues so if someone says hey let's
195. 10:03jam on the 12 bar blues and a you say
196. 10:06let's go so I hope you think this
197. 10:13instrument is as cool as I do if you
198. 10:16haven't already subscribed because I'm
199. 10:18going to be doing more videos in my
200. 10:20introducing series where I'm going to
201. 10:22teach you about more interesting plucked
202. 10:24instruments from the past so thanks
203. 10:27again for watching and we'll see you
204. 10:28next time
205. 10:28[Music]
206. 10:33you
207. 10:33[Music]