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tonebase Guitar Course

Intro to Left Hand Preparation

Taught by renowned guitarist 

Mircea Gogoncea

In this course, tonebase head of guitar Mircea Gogoncea introduces the lesser known but nonetheless crucial concept of left hand preparation. Excerpts from standard guitar repertoire at various levels of complexity are used to exemplify proper application of this technique. These include bringing fingers to specific frets before they are needed, maintaining fingers beyond their note-producing needs to facilitate shifts, and even using the elusive "ghost finger" technique to create stability and balance.

  • checkmark icon
    Difficulty: 
    all-levels
  • checkmark icon
    Duration: 
    1
     hours
     hour
All courses on tonebase include subtitles in English and Spanish

Course Syllabus

Introduction

In this course, tonebase head of guitar Mircea Gogoncea introduces the lesser-known but nonetheless crucial concept of left-hand preparation. Excerpts from standard guitar repertoire at various levels of complexity are used to exemplify proper application of this technique. These include bringing fingers to specific frets before they are needed, maintaining fingers beyond their note-producing needs to facilitate shifts, and even using the elusive "ghost finger" technique to create stability and balance.

Preparing Fingers Before They Are Needed

In the first part of this course, Mircea Gogoncea introduces the topics that will be covered and knowledge that will be presupposed from the right-hand technique course.

Shifting

In this section, Gogoncea is going over the most basic kind of left-hand preparation: adding fingers to the strings before they are needed, for added security and stability.

Common Fingers

This section discusses shifts and the many advantages of preparing your left hand during the shifting process. This includes anticipating fingers before the shift, leaving fingers on after a shift, and even adding "ghost fingers" to both chords for ease of movement.

Combinations

In this last section of our course, Gogoncea goes over situations where fingers can be maintained on the strings for longer passages and exemplify the use of preparation principles in several more complex repertoire excerpts.

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Mircea Gogoncea
meet YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Mircea Gogoncea

Mircea Gogoncea is Head of Guitar at tonebase. He has been awarded over 100 prizes in competitions and has performed in over 400 concerts on 5 continents. He holds a doctorate in guitar performance from USC Thornton School Of Music.

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Mircea Gogoncea

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