Hello everyone,
Starting from Tuesday 9 November, I will be giving online classical guitar lessons on the forum.
My aim is to help isolated amateurs who don't have the opportunity to have a teacher. I want to help them to progress by giving them goals and advice. I hope my forum students will provide help to one another and forge bonds of solidarity among themselves.
My role in these lessons will consist solely of giving you a reasonable goal, advice, and audio and video examples. I will not be commenting on the mp3s and videos that you upload here for the support and advice of other members of the forum, and indeed the teachers on the forum, if they have a little time to devote to you. For my part, I shall unfortunately not have the time available to be able to reply to your questions except very rarely.
I ask help to make these lessons work, and I urgently need one or more coordinators who will manage the groups of students. This teacher, or these teachers, will check first that any student following the lessons fulfills the three requirements which I spell out later. It is enough that the candidate student confirms that he has advertised the lessons among his friends, or indeed in shops/stores or on the net, for his candidacy to be approved.
These lessons are not free: in exchange for my work at your service, I ask 4 things of my future students:
1. I ask you to participate more actively in forum discussions by posting messages more often. I ask you, if possible, to help other members, either by your advice or at least by your encouragement.
2. I ask you to start by publicising my online lessons. This includes publicity on Facebook, Twitter, newsgroups, or by putting up a notice in your newsagent's window, etc. The more students I get, the more you will be able to help one another. You will progress better because you will be able to compare your own work with that of numerous other guitarists who will be playing the same pieces as you, at the same time as you, and under the same time constraints as you. That is why publicity for these online lessons is very important. I repeat, the more of us there are, the richer and more instructive the course will be. Tell your guitarist friends about it too.
You could also put up notices in luthiers' shops, music stores, concert halls, CD stores. You can also send the information to newspapers and magazines, who might perhaps report it.
3. I ask students who want to follow my lessons, as a courtesy, to be registered on the forum with their real forename and surname, or at the very least with their real forename followed by a pseudonym of their choice. To change your username, make a request in the "Your messages to the site administrator" forum.
4. Please do not contact me by private message, but only by posting a message on the forum.
To register for the course, and also to confirm that you have publicised my lessons, use the topic: Registration for forum lessons.
To publicise the lessons, here is some text and a poster that you can send to your friends by email, or put in your blog, or put up in your local baker's window:
Free classical guitar lessons on the internet
Lessons given by Jean-François Delcamp
(Professor at the Brest Conservatory of Music, Dance and Drama - France)
The lessons will begin in November 2010 and finish in June 2011.
These lessons correspond to the first three years at the conservatory
The conditions for registering are available on the forum
http://www.delcamp.us/
Description of the "Online classical guitar lessons by Jean-François Delcamp"
These lessons are open to all those who speak English and who can upload mp3 or video recordings of themselves playing the pieces I shall provide for study, on the forum "Online classical guitar lessons".
Here is how the first lesson will be conducted:
On Tuesday the 9th of November I will create two topics with the titles "D01 - Lesson 1" and "D02 - Lesson 1". I will indicate in my posts there the pieces or exercises to be worked on, I'll give scores in PDF format, or links to scores, with mp3 or video examples.
To register for my online lessons, there are no formalities, you only need to choose which of the 3 levels offered suits you best. A student can change courses during the year, if he realises that he would be more comfortable in a different level. After having confirmed in the "Registration for forum lessons" thread that you have publicised my lessons, all you have to do is upload (in a reply to the lesson thread) your recording of one of the study pieces which I shall provide in order to be considered as a registered student and a participant in the course.
Each student can record several or, preferably, all the pieces and exercises which I shall give out for each lesson. After a week to ten days of work, no more, the student will upload his first recordings in a single post. Participation in one lesson at a particular level is closed as soon as the next lesson at the same level begins. That is to say that each lesson will remain open for your posts and attachments up until the start of the next lesson at the same level. After that date, the previous lesson will be locked and it will no longer be possible to post new messages, though the lesson will remain available in read-only form.
I ask all students to listen to the recordings of each of the other students of the same level, then to give their encouragement, opinions, and if possible their advice. Then the student, after having received that feedback, can post a second series of recordings taking into account the advice and opinions of the other members of the forum. In the absence of a video, photographs of yourself playing the guitar could allow others to give you advice on the best position to adopt for holding your guitar. All advice is welcome, and I am counting on the assistance of all members to help, encourage and advise students and finally to enable them to progress.
I'm asking for your help. I would ask teachers registered on the forum to be kind enough, if they have the time, to give their advice to members occasionally.
Students can proceed as they wish: they can follow the lessons at the level they have chosen from the three levels offered, and they can start and stop when they choose. If you decide to stop, please let the others know by posting a message on the forum.
Calendar:
Lessons for the first year conservatory level (D01) will start on:
Lesson 1 Tuesday 9 November
Lesson 2 Tuesday 23 November
Lesson 3 Tuesday 14 December
Lesson 4 Tuesday 11 January
Lesson 5 Tuesday 1 February
Lesson 6 Tuesday 22 February
Lesson 7 Tuesday 29 March
Lesson 8 Tuesday 19 April
Lesson 9 Tuesday 24 May
Lesson 10 Tuesday 14 June
Lessons for the second year conservatory level (D02) will start on:
Lesson 1 Tuesday 9 November
Lesson 2 Tuesday 30 November
Lesson 3 Tuesday 21 December
Lesson 4 Tuesday 18 January
Lesson 5 Tuesday 8 February
Lesson 6 Tuesday 15 March
Lesson 7 Tuesday 5 April
Lesson 8 Tuesday 10 May
Lesson 9 Tuesday 31 May
Lesson 10 Tuesday 21 June
Lessons for the third year conservatory level (D03) will start on:
Lesson 1 Tuesday 16 November
Lesson 2 Tuesday 7 December
Lesson 3 Tuesday 4 January
Lesson 4 Tuesday 25 January
Lesson 5 Tuesday 15 February
Lesson 6 Tuesday 22 March
Lesson 7 Tuesday 12 April
Lesson 8 Tuesday 17 May
Lesson 9 Tuesday 7 June
Lesson 10 Tuesday 28 June
If you are a member of the "002 posted messages" group, you can download the scores for the lessons here: Collection of scores for guitar - levels D01 to D03. If you are not yet a member of the "002 posted messages" group, you first need to post two messages on the forum in order to be registered in the group. This can take a while, so please be patient, but if you have not been registered within 24 hours of posting your second message, please contact a moderator.
In the hope of your company in the shared ambition to improve our playing of the classical guitar.
Yours, Jean-François
I believe this is an amazing effort to further the classical guitar community. As long as anyone have internet access, they can benefit from some serious lessons. Some of the contributors at Delcamp are seriously high level, and now people of all social and economic standing can have some guitar lessons!
Jeremy
