DESCRIPTION:
As a teacher, I seek out music for my students which inspires and which is full of interesting teaching points. This piece is all about voicing. How & when to play loud fingers/quiet thumb and how & when to do the opposite.

Marc Andes is French, so why the pictures of the Andes? A pun?
No - good music tells a story, and this story is in two voices. The plaintive short phrases sound like they come from panpipes, and that's what brings the Andes to mind. Once we've got a humble, haunting delivery of the tune in our minds, we can move onto voicing.

When a phrase is repeated at the same pitch, I separate the two with tone changes - I visualise an echo across a massive valley - the repeat is quieter, more distant...
In the second verse, the phrase is repeated an octave lower; I ramp up the bass (the human ear always thinks the tune is on top, so this has to be a real "push" on the bass) and I imagine two panpipe players, one answering the other.

Two ways to voice - tone changes and rebalancing the parts - all in one piece.

In my lessons, I show how to get this massive bass without buzzes - it's easy to do, and it helps the listener focus on a second voice. Unlike an orchestra which uses a different timbre to characterise each voice, we only have one timbre at any one time and we need to work harder to make the voicing clear and the piece come alive.

Without voicing, this is a drab, repetitive piece. With attention to voicing, it's very effective.

It's a fantastic teaching piece - students who understand music as opposed to just playing notes always find this a rewarding challenge and a tantalising and exhilarating milestone!

I teach classical guitar at all standards - if you live on the South Coast and would like to explore the music as well as the notes, visit me at http://www.classical-guitar-lessons.co.uk/