A Quote by Julian Bream

When I feel like improvising, I always improvise on the guitar, never on the lute. It's as natural to me as breathing. — © Julian Bream
When I feel like improvising, I always improvise on the guitar, never on the lute. It's as natural to me as breathing.
My own style on the guitar grew out of my experience with the lute. I suppose some people might say I play each like the other. And of course I know a lot of guitar fans who wish I would stop playing the lute and vice versa.
A puppet that starts to improvise badly is almost funnier than the puppet that's improvising well. So the show gets better when the improvising is really good, but also the show can also sometimes get better when the improvising sort of goes a little wrong and that's sort of a blessing to improvising with puppets.
I was pillaging a lot of music that had nothing to do with guitar playing, using a lot of strange tunings and voicings and chord structures that aren't really that natural to the guitar; I ended up developing a harmonic palette that's not particularly natural to the guitar because I was always trying to make my guitar sound like something else.
Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.
When you are accompanied by the instrument - on an instrument like the lute-the lute and voice - you have this sound, and you feel how the music can be so touching and yet so simple.
In my case, I am improvising with existing sound files. I use an MSP patch that a friend of mine made, and you have to improvise when you use this patch. I don't use a guitar in performance anymore.
Americans have been good at improvising for a long time, but in the last few decades, we have gotten very sloppy about the rote memorization of facts. That's a discipline issue. You need the rote skill in order to have something to improvise off of, otherwise you are simply playing air guitar.
...I think of improvising as composing - fo me it's all about playing melodies. When I improvise, there's not a lot of real thinking going on, per se - it's more like riding a wave. and I know how to stand on the board
When I began playing the lute, in 1950 there were not too many lutenists around. I had to work hard, writing out music in museums and libraries. It was before the days of photocopying. And I had just picked up the lute, adapted my guitar technique to it and went from there.
I'm not a real musician. If you give me a bass guitar and you ask me to improvise something, or even be with some musicians and follow them, I wouldn't be able to do it. And I want to change that. I want to be able to be in a group and take my guitar and play with them, without someone showing me, "Okay, you're going to do this and that," because music has always been a big part of my life.
I didn't decide to play guitar, but that was the instrument which I was offered. I've always been interested in horn-type instruments, such as a saxophone; but those instruments are very expensive, so my dad bought me a guitar instead. I didn't like the guitar at first, but after noodling on it for several months, I developed a feel for it.
I don't try to make the guitar sound like the harpsichord or lute. That makes you end up being like a bad copy.
I've always thought that I'm not really a guitar player, but I just practised so much that I developed into a kind of a bit of a musician, but I've often doubted my musical ear. If someone sings me a melody, I have to improvise on that melody, because I can't retain the information they've given me. That's why I still practise today, I suppose, because I still feel inadequate.
Your true passion should feel like breathing; it’s that natural.
I love how Pilates makes me feel, like it opens me up. I have the hardest time breathing, weirdly enough. Even when I have conversations, I need to work on my breathing, so it's something I enjoy because it's peaceful and it helps me relax.
No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing.
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