I have been playing classical guitar for 8 years in local restaurants. I have asked myself sometimes, while playing, what am I actually doing. Am I just trying to pronounce nice, rounded sounds or is there something else to deal with?

Generally, my inner aim is to make good music. But what is good? Someone may answer, that if there are no false notes, It's almost perfect. Another measure is speed. If you can develop high speed, If It is still clean, It's perfect (perfect- what a perfect word for describing so many different things and still saying nothing). Clean and high speed. that seems enough for winning some contests and starting to tour around the world, intoducing classical guitar as nuisance for freeks.

Classical guitar musical standard is lower than the fortepianos's. I do not know what is the real reason for that. Is the reason impossibility of not "overplay" yourself into meaningless techician and still earn living. or is it obligatory status of teacher, if you want stay alive.

Here, in Estonia, there is actually one single possibility to stay alive with guitar - start to teach beginners. Start to deal with problems like "How can I play this C7 chord?" and forget about "higher problems".  I have tried to keep myself on water with playing in restaurants, but It's hard and unstable. I'm thinking about additional unmusical (for sake of freshness) day-work seriously last times.

What I mean under those "higher problems" which are familiar for pianists but meaningless for guitar-players?

The most important among them is "horizontal integrity". In simple words, "feeli of end" at the end, simplicity of listening. In another words, if piece is not ending, I can feel it. This is about phrasing, where are the breathing pauses, what notes are grouped together and what are not. Guitarists tend to destroy the integrity in sake of "musicianship". For guitar-players the "musicianship" is something mystic, unexplainable. One just gets a "feel" and music starts to flow. This is utterly untrue, one must analyze meanings of "words" and "sentences" in music. Try to put them together in one big thing, which can be taken as one.

Another thing is dynamic depth. Difference between loud and quiet notes in melody line. This is the trick, which can seduce listener much. If the melody is dynamically "flat", it's boring. Dynamic dimension is also important when trying to make difference between melody and accompaniment layers in music. It's hard to follow music, when accompaniment is louder than melody. There are some important notes, which must be much louder than others.

Speaking about dynamics, there are such thing as cogent accents. I have taken guitar as nice instrument for making convinient accents, giving to music clear rhytmical structure. This layer of meanings, giving accents to right places, is often forgotten.

Which leads to staccato-legato layer in music. One can deal with it separately. One can play music instead fast-and-clean-approach with attention to legato-staccato-layer.

One activity to deal with is the "humanization" of theoretical rhytms. Notes in music can be taken as syllables in speach. If you speak with mathematically correct rhytm, you'll sound like robot. In music, especially in music with steady rhytm, It's accepted. But you can make guitar to "speak". There are lot of possibilities, light tenutos, over- and underdotting (changing lenghts of dotted notes). Additional pauses before accelerandos ect. It's most inportant for freely flowing ballads and songs.

One can listen to perfect recordings via radio or by CD, where the music is extremely clear and unhezitating. Therefore some hezitation or lapse can sound quit seductively for contemporary people, who is used to listen to music in extra-high "studio-standard". Sometimes the big players like Yamashita refuse to cutoff unclean notes for the sake of high,  actually unhuman standard.

It's nuisance to play just one sentence of notes called tune without any variation day after day, maybe a bit faster and cleaner, explaining this for oneself as progress. This is, what the entertainment industry is dealing with, players playing one piece again and again w/o any modification, singing the same song along with  prerecorded tape. It can be the key to musical degradation, too.

Actually, I'ld like to write critics about guitar music found in Youtube or elsewhere and put those articles here. For the sake of integrity. Otherwise I'ld dissolve myself into unlimited space of commentary.

Allar, In Tallinn 26.04.08