A Note from the Player’s Bench
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
RTHK 4: Portraits of Guitar Legends (Repeat) 不可不聽的結他大師, by Clarence Mak.
I am not a music major, and I make no claim to be. What follows comes from somewhere quieter than that — from years of competing in the Yamaha Guitar Festivals, of playing a Tatay from Valencia, and of once exchanging that guitar with Clarence Mak, receiving back a different voice from the same wood and strings. Clarence went on to study formally in Spain, build a career in electronic music, and teach at APA, where my son later studied conducting. None of us knew, at any point, how those threads connected. I find that rather beautiful. It is from that web of quiet coincidences that I write.
What I offer here is not instruction. It is a reflection — from someone who has lived alongside this music long enough to have a few things worth saying.
There is a stage built for you. Segovia built it, Bream and Williams walked it. A great tradition does two things: it inspires, and — if you are not careful — it calcifies. The question worth asking, at any given moment, is which of those two things is happening. Segovia’s way became the only way for a generation, and something was lost in that narrowing. The tonal beauty he drew from his Ramírez and Hauser — colours that luthiers themselves had not known were possible — did not pass automatically to those who followed. It had to be earned, note by note, stroke by stroke, in the same spirit of humility and persistence that made him extraordinary in the first place. Apoyando and tirando are not historical obligations. They are living tools. The difference between them is felt not in the fingers but in the ears — and if you cannot hear it, you are not yet there. Yet there.
The hardest discipline in music — as in wine tasting, as in conducting — is not being seduced by your own responses. The moment you begin performing appreciation rather than truly listening, something closes. I have seen it in both worlds: the person who has decided what they think and repeats it ever after with great fluency. They are not without charm. But they are not growing. The guitar is larger than any single vision of it — larger than Segovia’s, even. The instrument that once sat in cafés has carried Bach, Villa-Lobos, and everything in between. That entire range belongs to you — not just the neo-romantic corner that Segovia preferred.
When you pick up a great instrument — a Ramírez, a Hauser, a Fleta, a Romanillos, a Smallman — there is a moment before the first note when the wood is already speaking. Your technique is the conversation that follows. It is worth pausing to listen before you begin.
The stage is there. It has always been there. What you bring to it is entirely your own.
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