Guest Artist - Swede Larson

Swede Larson 

On Friday we were privileged to have Highland Native, Swede Larson, as a Guest Artist in our class. We were all impressed by his skills and talent  - especially after our taste of classical guitar in learning Spanish Theme.  He talked to us about his experiences learning guitar and practicing long hours even as a young child to achieve his goals.  He was fortunate enough throughout his life to study with masters of the classical guitar worldwide.  Some advice he gave was to learn songs in chunks because the attention span of humans is rather short and learning in chunks allows our brain to have pauses in between segments.  He also taught that by learning the basics of guitar position and technique correctly we can always rely on that to help us when other things fail us.  One thing that I loved learning are the reasons for not "planting" our fingers on the guitar while fingerpicking -  it deadens the vibration of the guitar, it causes your  right hand to tense up and not be able to maneuver as quickly, and I can't remember the third reason....

  Here are a few excerpts from his playing:

The next one is my personal favorite.....